euphemistic conceptual metaphors in epitaphs from highgate cemetery

Review of Cognitive Linguistics 9:1 (2011), 198–225. DOI 10.1075/ml.9.1.10creISSN 1877–9751 / E-ISSN 1572–0276 © John Benjamins Publishing Company

Euphemistic conceptual metaphors in epitaphs from Highgate Cemetery

Eliecer Crespo FernándezUniversity of Castilla-La Mancha

Death is a timeless taboo in which psychological, religious and social interdic-tions coexist. In consequence, human beings feel reluctant to deal with the subject of death using straightforward terms and therefore tend to soften the effect of what they really wish to communicate. With this in mind, it is the aim of this paper to explore the euphemistic language on a sample of epitaphs from the Eastern Highgate Cemetery in London. As figurative language constitutes a potent source for death-related euphemism, the present study proceeds to trace an account of the different conceptual metaphors in epitaphs within the framework of Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The results obtained support the idea that most of the conceptualizations of death observed in the gravestones imply a positive value-judgment of human mortality and aim at assisting those left alive in coping with the pain of loss and the fear of dying.

Keywords: death taboo, conceptual metaphor, euphemism, epitaph

1. Introduction

Though every historical period develops its own taboos,1 which can be considered as symptoms of the customs, censorships and bad habits of its society, certain ta-boo topics can be documented in any society and in any historical time period. One of them is undoubtedly death, a timeless taboo in which psychological, re-ligious and social interdictions coexist. What is more, death is not only a taboo, more precisely a fear-based taboo (Allan and Burridge, p. 1991, p. 153), but also a good example of a mystery, since death is a phenomenon of which none of the living has any direct knowledge, as Bultnick (1998, p. 1) notes. For some reason or another, it seems evident that death is a subject that most people nowadays would rather avoid, a topic that, far from having lost its interdictive strength with the passing of time, remains one of the greatest taboos in our contemporary society.

Euphemistic conceptual metaphors in epitaphs from Highgate Cemetery 199

Death is, in fact, as alive in our advanced technological society as it was in primi-tive peoples.

Given the interdictions surrounding death, it seems logical that language us-ers usually feel reluctant to deal with the phenomenon of death using straight-forward terms and therefore tend to soften the effect of what they really wish to communicate. To this end, they resort to euphemism, i.e., the process whereby the taboo is stripped of its most explicit or offensive overtones thus providing a way to speak about those experiences, too vulnerable and intimate to be discussed with-out linguistic safeguards.

Despite the reluctance to mention the subject of death, there are communica-tive situations in which one cannot evade the notions of death and dying. This is the case of epitaphs, i.e., inscriptions placed on tombstones, which, for hundreds of years, have been a significant part of the death ritual.2 Given the obvious need to refer to mortality, the seriousness of the situation and the social impositions of these particular texts, it is no surprise that epitaphs constitute a breeding ground for euphemism in reference to the taboo of death.

With this in mind, it is the aim of this paper to explore the death-related eu-phemistic language on a sample of 160 epitaphs from the Eastern Highgate Cem-etery, which opened in 1854 as part of a plan to provide modern cemeteries around the outside of London and is still used today for burials. More precisely, as figura-tive language constitutes a potent source for euphemistic reference and a common device to cope with death, the present study proceeds to trace an account of the different conceptual metaphors aiming at substituting death-related notions in epi-taphs. For this purpose, the theoretical assumptions on which the present study is based are derived from the well-known cognitive model of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (henceforth CMT), initiated by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). By so doing, I attempt to gain an insight into the cognitive role of metaphorical euphemism as a resource to tone-down the taboo of death in gravestones found in Highgate Cem-etery. This seems to prove a worthy enterprise, because whilst there is substantial body of research on the metaphorical conceptualization of the taboo of death (Al-lan and Burridge, 1991, pp. 161–164; Marín Arrese, 1996; Sexton, 1997; Bultnick, 1998; Crespo Fernández 2006), I do not know of any study exclusively devoted to conceptual metaphor as a purely euphemistic device in the language of epitaphs, apart from my own contribution to the subject.3 In spite of the fact that little has been written about the specific topic of this paper, the epitaph has received consid-erable scholarly attention. Since the seminal essay by Samuel Johnson, published in 1806, there have been many studies on epitaph writing (Mills-Courts, 1990; Scodel, 1991; Kichner, 2008, among others), as well as an overwhelming amount of epitaph collections, which became fashionable in the nineteenth century and are still being published (Green, 1993; Harris, 1999; Solomon, 2004, just to mention a few).

200 Eliecer Crespo Fernández

This paper is structured as follows. After dealing first with the concept of epi-taph, its types, functions and linguistic properties, I move on to the theoretical framework on which this paper relies. Then I introduce the corpus and the meth-odology employed before analysing the function and interpretation of euphemis-tic conceptual metaphors in reference to the taboo of death, which constitutes the primary focus of this paper. A summary of the results obtained will bring this study to an end.

2. The epitaph: Concept, functions and typology

The term epitaph comes from the Greek ἐπιτάφιος (epi ‘upon’ and taphios ‘tomb’). As defined by Cuddon (1998, p. 279), an epitaph is “an inscription on a tomb or a grave; a kind of valediction which may be solemn, complimentary, witty or even flippant”. The analysis of epitaph writing corresponds to the epigraphy, i.e., the study of inscriptions or epigraphs on enduring substance such as stone or marble; to be more precise, the epitaph is included in the funerary epigraphy, which deals with the analysis of inscriptions marked on tombstones. In the present piece of research I consider the epitaph in its widest sense, as any type of inscription placed on tomsbstones, more or less long, in prose or in poetic form, regardless of its pur-pose: presenting some sort of basic biographical information about the deceased (the name of the decedent, the dates of birth and death), offering consolation on the face of death, expressing the grief of the surviving relatives, complimenting the deceased, memorializing his or her virtuous life or relaying a message to the living.

From a linguistic point of view, the epitaph constitutes an instance of func-tional language i.e., language that is doing some job in some context (Halliday, 1985, p. 10), in so far as the verbal devices detected in this type of funeral notices perform a particular function in their context. To be precise, the “job” of epitaphs is twofold: first, they indicate the identity and resting place of the dead; second, they serve as focal points for those left alive, either to facilitate mourning for those intimate with the deceased or to provide information to visitors to the cemetery (cf. Kichner, 2008, p. 15). Taking these functions into consideration, epitaphs can be said to be socially oriented, and their social purpose is likely to be deciphered by exploring their observable elements and patterns. From this perspective, I con-sider the epitaph here as a goal-oriented text4 whose function as an instance of functional language is carried out via different euphemistic metaphorical concep-tualizations.

The distinctive characteristics of epitaphs vary enormously in the same way as their aims do. As far as the narrative voice is concerned, in some cases the message comes from the mourner whereas in others the dead themselves “speak” from the


grave and address the reader in the first person.5 Other tombstone inscriptions are dialogic in nature: there are at least two interacting voices, those of the departed and the mourner. Some epitaphs can be associated with storytelling in so far as they remind the reader of the linearity of life from birth to death. In this sense, as Kichner (2008, p. 17) notes, epitaphs “can tell stories on behalf of those who can no longer speak for themselves”. In other cases, epitaphs possess great literary merit: they use well-chosen descriptive words and figurative language to commemorate the departed and comfort those left alive. Other inscriptions are good examples of laudatory texts in which hyperbolic references to the moral virtues or social rel-evance of the deceased abound.6 In sum, epitaphs are varied in structure, subject-matter, style and, of course, perform very different functions.

From all this it can be deduced that epitaphs go beyond a mere announcement of demise; rather, they constitute a proof of mankind’s position towards mortality. Tombstone inscriptions are undoubtedly far from being homogeneous, and it is precisely in their variety where much of their richness lies. As happens with obitu-aries (cf. Crespo Fernández, 2006), epitaphs constitute a hybrid genre in which both publicity and information coexist, in which emotion and objectivity go hand in hand. In this way, two main types of epitaphs, which roughly correspond to the two main functions of epitaphs above mentioned, can be distinguished, namely informative epitaphs, i.e. objective inscriptions that provide basic information (in-cluding the name of the decedent, the dates of birth and death or the age at death); and opinion epitaphs, i.e. personal and intimate funeral texts in which feelings and emotions, as well as social and political concerns, play a significant role. The char-acteristics of both types of epitaphs are indicated in the table below.

Table 1 shows the radically different characteristics of informative and opin-ion epitaphs. The former are objective and, relying on impersonal language and standardized formulae, perform a locutionary function, that of transmitting the relevant details of a death. Opinion epitaphs, however, are basically subjective in

Table 1. Main characteristic of informative and opinion epitaphs

Informative epitaphs Opinion epitaphs

Objective Subjective

Locutionary Perlocutionary

Impersonal language Intimate and emotive language

Standardized formulae Personal formulae

Basic facts about the deceased ComplimentsConsolation

Referential function of language Emotive, conative and poetic functions of language


nature and, usually by means of emotive language and imagery, perform a perlo-cutionary function, that is, they are oriented towards causing a favourable impres-sion on the reader by showing the social relevance or exemplary conduct of the de-ceased providing thus a way for consolation to those left alive. Another source of difference lies in the linguistic functions that epitaphs fullfill. Following the theory of communicative functions introduced by Jakobson (1960), the referential func-tion is characteristic of informative epitaphs, in so far as their purpose is simply to report about reality, whereas opinion epitaphs carry out different types of func-tions, depending on the purpose of each epitaph: emotive (expressing the sender’s state of mind); conative (inciting the receiver’s response in the form of a preach for the soul of the deceased); or poetic (focusing on the message for its own sake).

Several classifications of epitaphs have been proposed according to the subject matter and tone of the funerary inscriptions.7 As epitaphs are socially oriented texts that perform different functions, opinion epitaphs can be classified accord-ing to the social functions they fullfill. In this way, several subtypes can be distin-guished: consolatory epitaphs, i. e., those that attempt to offer some consolation to the living and help them accept the reality of the loss of a person close to them; laudatory epitaphs, i.e., those that compliment the deceased by transmitting his or her personal virtues or social relevance; epitaphs of lament, i.e. those that dis-play passionate expressions of grief concerning the death of a loved one; warning epitaphs, those inscriptions that present a warning message from the deceased to grave visitors on the need to lead an exemplary life before death comes; and jocular epitaphs, those that help people to come to terms with death, by downgrading it through humour. In any case, it is worth mentioning that the boundaries that limit the different subtypes of opinion epitaphs are rather fuzzy, as sometimes different functions overlap in the same epitaph. Given the logical space limitations, I will not deal with each of these subtypes here in depth, but I will refer to them in the course of the analysis when necessary.

In sum, epitaphs constitute different ways to cope with the subject of death in gravestones. Given the emotive and consolatory nature of opinion epitaphs, one should expect a proliferation of euphemistic death-related metaphorical ref-erences in this type of funeral texts. For this reason, opinion epitaphs constitute the basis of the present research and the contents of the corpus. Prior to moving on to the interpretation of the euphemistic conceptual metaphors collected in the epitaphs, a brief explanation of the theoretical frame of CMT and its relationship with euphemism seems necessary.


3. Theoretical assumptions. Conceptual Metaphor Theory and euphemism

The theoretical assumptions on which the present paper is embedded into are de-rived from the well-known CMT, initially developed by Lakoff and Johnson in their seminal work Metaphors We Live By (1980). Broadly speaking, the cogni-tive approach claims that metaphor is a device with the capacity to structure our conceptual system, providing, at the same time, a particular understanding of the world and a way to make sense of our experience. From this standpoint, metaphor is defined as “a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system” (Lakoff, 1993, p. 203); that is, a mapping or set of conceptual correspondences from a source domain (the realm of the physical or more concrete reality) to a target domain (the death taboo, in this case). A metaphorical mapping presents submappings or ontological correspondences between the source and target domains as a result of reasoning about the latter using the knowledge we have about the former. There-fore, within the cognitive tradition, there is no question that metaphor enables language users to delimit and reify abstract concepts in particular terms. In this regard, following Lakoff (1993, p. 208), metaphor should be considered as a mode of thought and reason rather than as a matter of language.

The framework of Cognitive Linguistics opens a new way to the interpreta-tion of euphemism, which is primarily a mental phenomenon and, as such, can be fruitfully studied from a cognitive approach. Cognitive issues, however, have been largely excluded from the analysis of euphemism, a phenomenon that has been studied from different fields such as lexical semantics, sociolinguistics, rheto-ric and, more recently, pragmatics.8 Few scholars, however, have considered eu-phemism from the perspective of conceptual metaphor theories. One of them is Chamizo Domínguez (2005), who argued that many euphemisms are structured by their integration into conceptual networks. In this vein, as euphemism can be accurately described in terms of cognitive abilities, Casas Gómez (2009, p. 738) has recently defined euphemism “as the cognitive process of conceptualization of a forbidden reality, which manifested in discourse through the use of linguistic mechanisms (…) enables the speaker, in a certain “context” or in a specific prag-matic situation, to attenuate (…) a certain forbidden concept or reality”.

A good case in point of euphemistic conceptualization is the metaphor death is a journey, in which the mapping projects attributes from the source domain of journeys onto the target domain of dying. The source domain of journeys is used to understand, structure and mitigate the taboo domain of death. It is pre-cisely in this correspondence between the source and the target domains that con-ceptualization fullfills its euphemistic function. Needless to say, the nature of the source domain chosen and the values that are given priority in the metaphorical


structuring of abstract concepts have a significant effect on the euphemistic capac-ity of the metaphorical item. Indeed, the filter of metaphorical conceptualization through which reality is presented provides us with a partial understanding of the concept, masking or revealing particular aspects of the topic being dealt with (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, p. 10). This process makes conceptual metaphors read-ily accessible for euphemistic reference and provides significant information con-cerning the way in which death is actually perceived and understood.

When giving priority to some value systems over others, contextual and socio-cultural considerations play a crucial role. We should not forget, after all, that a given conceptualization depends to a great extent on contextual elements, that is, on the facets of context, i.e “the speech event, its participants and their immediate circumstances”, as Langacker (1997, p. 243) puts it. In fact, our conception of the target domain as expressed in a source-domain pairing is grounded in our knowl-edge and experience of how the reality expressed by the source domain is cultur-ally understood. This helps to explain how, depending on the culture and society in which the deceased lived, the epitaph may take on several forms, ranging from the religious to the humorous. Indeed, it is the reason why the religious euphemis-tic sense of the source domain in death-related metaphorical expressions like go to Heaven is understood instantly, given the marked tendency of the Christian faith to reason about death.

Though it is not within the scope of this paper to describe metonymy in detail, it is worth noting that this device of figurative language coexists and interacts with metaphor in the conceptualization of abstract concepts like death. Both devices are so closely connected that a large number of conceptual metaphors have a met-onymic basis, as shown by Bultnick (1998, pp. 62–72) in the figurative language of death, Radden (2000) and Barcelona (2003, pp. 241–246), among others. In this vein, Goosens (2003), significantly enough, coins the cover term metaphtonymy (including the types of “metaphor from metonymy” and “metonymy within meta-phor/metaphor within metonymy”) to account for the interaction between met-aphor and metonymy in figurative language. The main difference between both processes, though, lies in the fact that conceptual metonymies do not involve two domains, one of which is more abstract than the other, as is the case with concep-tual metaphors; rather, they operate within a single domain in a relation of conti-guity whereby a part of a concept stands for the whole, the cause for the effect, the result for the action and so on. In any case, as the boundaries between metaphor and metonymy are rather fuzzy, rather than discussing the different types of inter-relation between both mechanisms — see the volumes edited by Barcelona (2000) and Dirven and Pörings (2003) for a comprehensive analysis —, I will simply con-sider them here as devices that serve the purpose of conceptualizing an abstract concept like death in particular terms.


4. Data and methods

The corpus samples 160 epitaphs collected, as said before, in Eastern Highgate Cemetery. The choice for epitaphs as the source of empirical data for this article is not random. On the one hand, epitaphs are undoubtedly a breeding ground for euphemism related to the taboo of death, as mentioned earlier. On the other hand, when dealing with epitaphs I strongly believe that it is necessary to focus on some authentic data, avoiding thus an approach to the metaphorical language of death with examples constructed by the author (Marín Arrese, 1996) or excerpted from lexicographic sources (Bultnick, 1998). Indeed, fictitious inscriptions lack the charm of authenticity, which in the case of epitaphs is absolutely necessary in so far as it provides the study of funerary inscriptions with an added sociologi-cal value. In the examples used to illustrate the analysis, the family names of the deceased have been hidden under the initials, as I think that verbatim copies of the epitaphs might prove unpleasant to the relatives or friends of the dead. The orthography and punctuation are copied verbatim from the originals.

The choice for Highate Cemetery was not by chance either. This world famous cemetery was declared a place of outstanding historical and architectural interest in 1983. Situated at the top of Highgate Hill, in North London, it is divided into the Western (original) Cemetery, built in 1839, and the Eastern Cemetery, inau-gurated in 1854, where the corpus for the present piece of research was collected. It is worth noting that there are about 167,000 people buried in both areas of the cemetery in more than 50,000 graves. Though this cemetery has been the source of substantial research (Curl, 1993, pp. 224–228; Barker, 1998, among others), it has been, surprisingly enough, neglected in linguistic analysis; indeed, to the best of my knowledge, no study so far has been devoted to the language of funerary inscriptions in Highgate.

Let us now consider a number of methodological questions arising from the use of the corpora of epitaphs. As my main purpose in undertaking a study on epitaphs is to gain an insight into the cognitive value of euphemism in grave in-scriptions, I randomly collected the epitaphs on all types of graves in different parts of the Eastern cemetery without giving priority to some graves over others, in an attempt to offer a complete picture of the way in which human beings cope with death and the act of dying in gravestones. Therefore, there was not a selec-tion of gravestones on the basis of their metaphorical richness, historical value or social relevance of the deceased. I did not include those epitaphs which could not be satisfactorily read due to partial or complete destruction of their inscriptions.

As for the methods employed to analyze the sample from a linguistic point of view, I searched for euphemistic substitutions of the taboos of death and dying upon all types of gravestones. In order to organize the wide variety of metaphorical


euphemisms substituting the linguistic taboos of death and die that existed, once I detected a metaphorical substitute, I assigned it to its corresponding concep-tual mapping following the model of CMT. In this sense, it is worth noting that I have not focused on isolated conceptual metaphorical substitutes, however in-teresting they may be; rather, I have concentrated on larger groups of conceptual metaphors, which has allowed me to study each of the most salient death-related conceptualizations more thoroughly. It is also important to say that the vast ma-jority of metaphorical euphemistic references encountered in the graves belong to the category of opinion epitaphs, which constitutes the basis of the corpus for the present piece of research. This is so because metaphors seem to occur only very rarely, if at all, in informative epitaphs, as these inscriptions rely on impersonal language and standardized formulae (see Section 2).

Before leaving this section, I must admit that the cognitive analysis of death-related metaphorical language presented here can obviously make no claim to be-ing complete or exahustive, given the limited number of epitaphs that constitutes the corpus in comparison to the total number of gravestones existing in Highgate. Though I am aware that relatively large corpora are needed to reach valid conclu-sions in quantitative terms, especially if one covers large time periods, I honestly believe that the corpus data used here can be both reasonably representative of the way the taboo of death is used in epitaphs and illuminating in the search for a wider and comprehensive account of the features of euphemistic metaphorical language in gravestones.

5. Death-related conceptualizations

Within the cognitive model of CMT, the metaphors observed in the epitaphs col-lected from Highgate Cemetery can be analysed in terms of the cognitive map-pings to which they may be assigned. I have found seven conceptual mappings for the metaphors excerpted from the obituaries, namely death is a journey (49 different metaphorical substitutes), death is a rest / a sleep (39), death is a joyful life (26), death is a call from God (8), death is a loss (7) and death is the end (3).

Before going into further detail, it must be said that the majority of these con-ceptualizations view death as a positive event, as a sort of reward in Heaven after a virtuous life on earth. In fact, by virtue of their cognitive support, and under the influence of Christian faith, five out of the seven conceptual metaphors pointed out conceptualize the domain of death in terms of a domain with positive connota-tions, namely as a journey with a destination in Heaven, as a joyful life in Paradise, as a rest, as a sleep and as a call from God. There are only two sets of correspon-


dences in which death is portrayed negatively: a loss and the end. Accordingly, most of the conceptual metaphors in the corpus imply a positive value judgement of death. In this respect, it is interesting to note how the positive or negative value judgement in a death-related mapping greatly depends on the nature of the source domain, as Simon-Vandenbergen (cited in Bultnick, 1998, p. 84) has claimed. In fact, it seems evident that a joyful life, a journey, a rest, a sleep or a call from the Saviour are domains with positive connotations, whereas a loss and the end imply a negative value judgement of the concept being dealt with. The graph above displays the percentage of metaphorical euphemistic substitutes in each cognitive domain.

In turning to the conceptualizations of death shown in Figure 1, the first no-ticeable quality is that the conceptual metaphor death is a journey is the most relevant from a quantitative point of view (it is the source of 49 euphemistic sub-stitutions), followed by death is a rest / a sleep (39) and death is a joyful life (29), whereas the associations death is a call from God (8), death is a loss (7) and death is the end (3) are the least frequent. In what follows, I will attempt to clarify how the source domains shown in Figure 1 (a journey, a rest or a sleep, a joyful life, a call from God, a loss and the end) are applied in order to tar-get euphemistically the taboo concepts of death and dying. To this end, I will first deal with those conceptualizations that refer to the larger number of metaphorical substitutes in the corpus data of epitaphs.

5.1 death is a journey

In the epitahs collected for the present study, the conceptual metaphor which views death in terms of a journey with a spiritual destination is the most frequent. It is, in fact, the source of 49 metaphors, which makes up more than one third

36%

29%

21%

6%6% 2%

A journey

A rest /a sleep

A joyful life

A call from God

A loss

�e end

Figure 1. Conceptual domains for death in the epitaphs


of the dead-related metaphorical items found. This conceptualization, typical of consolatory epitaphs, is based on the trivial assumption that the dead person is no longer around human mortality is thus conceptualized as a departure from this world in which a basic domain of experience like death is understood in terms of a different and more concrete domain, a journey, an association which provides the basis for the verbal mitigation of the taboo.

This metaphorical mapping transfers different attributes from the source do-main of a journey to the target domain of death. To be more precise, it presents different sets of conceptual correspondences as a result of using the knowledge we have about journeys to verbalize the taboo of death: first, the act of dying corre-sponds to the act of leaving; second, the destination of the journey is an encounter with God in Heaven; and third, the dying person is the one that embarks on the journey. In all these conceptual correspondences, the notion of movement plays a crucial role.9 Movement can conceptualize death from two perspectives: as a movement of the body, which constitutes the most concrete and material expe-riental basis for the items belonging to this metaphor; and as a movement of the soul that gets separated from the body when the person dies and starts a journey to a new spiritual life (cf. Bultnick, 1998, p. 32). In what follows, I will attempt to clarify how the submappings just mentioned are used to target euphemistically the experiential domain of death.

In the metaphors which respond to the death-is-a-journey conceptual as-sociation, the act of dying corresponds to the act of leaving and, consequently, the deceased is obviously the person who embarks on the journey, the traveller, as pointed out in the preceding paragraph. The vast majority of the metaphorical substitutes for the linguistic taboo die observed in the corpus are verbs of mo-tion like pass away (the most common euphemistic metaphorical expression, with 23 occurrences), depart (and its corresponding noun departure and adjective de-parted), leave, pass on, go and fly away. These euphemistic verbs focus on the act of leaving, on the starting point of the journey, rather than on its conclusion. In cases like these, the destination of the journey is left implicit. This happens in the example that follows in which the act of dying is toned down by means of the verb phrase departed this life:

(1) “Bessie” Sarah Elizabeth The fondey loved wife of Josiag George D*. who departed this life10 after long suffering bravely borne June 14th 1902. Aged 44 years “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord” Father in Thy Gracious keeping Leave we now this gracious one sleeping


Pass away, an old euphemism favoured by Victorian sentimentality which dates back to the fourteenth century (Rawson, 1995, p. 309) is, by far, the most common euphemistic verb in this conceptualization, as said above. Its euphemistic value primarily comes from the meaning that the particle away acquires in a death-re-lated context: it is interpreted as gradual motion from existence into termination. Therefore, pass away views death in terms of a gradual and slow process; in this way, it creates a peaceful atmosphere surrounding death and transmits the idea of death as a quiet experience. It is this sense of tranquility that has made pass away one of the most common euphemistic verbs to refer to the act of dying. Apart from that, the high occurrence of this verb in the language of death also derives from the fact that it is used regardless of religious beliefs. As Gross (1985, p. 206) main-tains, “pass away works equally well for believers and non-believers, since it holds out no promise one way or another about a future existence”. In the corpus, this euphemism is accompanied in some cases by the adverb peacefully, a downtoner which has a lowering effect on the force of the verb and, by doing so, contributes to attenuate even more the act of dying. Consider the following inscription:

(2) In ever loving memory of Walter B*. who passed peacefully away On 28th march 1929 Aged 69 years

Not all the metaphorical items within this conceptualization focus on the act of leaving. Others emphasise the final destination of the journey, which becomes concrete and explicitly religious in most epitaphs: the encounter with God in Heaven. This view is based on the Christian belief in a joyful meeting with the Saviour after earthly existence, a notion which provides the euphemistic support of expressions with the verbs to pass (pass into the Light, pass Home) and to go (go to Heaven, go Home and go to our Father’s Home above).11 The following epitaph focuses on the joyful meeting with God as the destination of the spiritual journey:

(3) In Loving Memory Of John Harvey S*. who died Jan. 20th 1886 Aged 39 “Not lost to memory or to love but gone to our Father’s Home above”

In the phrase gone to our Father’s home above there is an explicit mention of an upward movement in the term above. In accordance with Lakoff and Johnson’s consideration of orientational metaphors (1980, p. 14), this upward movement is


typically identified as having positive connotations, which are clearly recogniz-able in up-spatialization metaphors like happy is up, more is up or good is up, just to mention a few. In epitaph (3) the movement-image that is common to all the metaphorical items included in this conceptualization is combined with the explicit reference to the destination of the journey, i.e. our Father’s Home above, which reinforces the positive view of death in this expression. Indeed, as suggested by Bultnick (1998, p. 86), the particular value judgements of a metaphor greatly depend on the type of destination that is brought to the fore. And the destination in (3), Heaven, is obviously the greatest reward for any soul within the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The Christian tradition speaks of a journey moving not only from life to death, as seen so far, but also from death to life (Sheppy, 2004, p. 181). This is reflected in the inscription that follows:

(4) Henry L*. Loving remembrance of William R*. who passed from death unto life August 13th 1901 Aged 77

Here the transition from death to life implies that death marks the beginning of a new spiritual existence. This view provides the euphemistic support of the state-ment in so far as physical death is depicted as the gateway to a new form of life which is paradoxically equated to death. In this respect, there is a curious change of focus from life to death in which the latter is implicitly considered as an event which opens up new expectations of spiritual life for the deceased and, by so do-ing, provides some sort of consolation to the living. This consideration of death as the starting point for a rewarding afterlife is the conceptual basis for the consola-tory metaphor death as beginning a new life, proposed by Allan and Burridge (1991, pp. 163–164), which gives rise to euphemistic terms and expressions that view death as a desirable event under the influence of Christian beliefs. This is the reson why this conceptualization is closely related to the death-as-a-joyful-life metaphor that I will analyse in 5.3.

The destination of the soul’s journey is not inspired by religious beliefs in all cases. For instance, in the following epitaph the end point of the journey into the afterlife is not a joyful encounter with God in Paradise, but a meeting of the dead person with the soul of his dad, who died earlier:


(5) In Loving Memory Of Lawrence H*. 7th June 1968–9th March 2002 Gone to join his dad

In any of the correspondences of the journey-metaphor discussed so far the de-ceased corresponds to the person that has been capable of embarking on the jour-ney. From this perspective, there is a change from one position to another: the dying person is supposed to have moved and, for this reason, considered to be somehow alive, which ultimately leads to the denial of death itself. Consider the following epitaph:

(6) Henry L*. 1919–1988 Do not grieve we are all pilgrims on a journey towards the same destination

In this inscription the denial of physical death as a means for consolation is con-veyed by the way in which death-related concepts are verbalized: pilgrim ‘de-ceased’ and journey ‘death’. These metaphors implicitly deny the total cessation of bodily movement as an intrinsic attribute of death, as the pilgrim who is capable of embarking on a journey is obviously capable of moving. In this regard, through the movement-image the metaphors included in this conceptualization do imply a negation of death as well. It is in this view of the deceased as an alive being that the death-as-a-journey metaphors primarily fulfil their euphemistic function.

The same denial of physical death appears in the epitaph that follows. Using a quote by Aristophanes (“Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, advanced a stage or two upon that road which you must travel in the steps they trod”), the inscription explicitly states that Ada Methvin is not dead; rather, she is said to have started the journey before those who are still alive. It is just a question of time:

(7) In memory Lest we forget – Of – Ada M*. who was called home July 2nd 1911, in her 31st year She is not dead but gone before


Here it is interesting to notice how ambiguous the metaphorical term gone is. There is no explicit mention of the destination, and there is no expectation of a return whatsoever. In this respect, Sexton (1997, p. 341) wonders why gone is used instead of dead, if we accept that the primary function of death-related meta-phors is to provide a framework for understanding that which cannot be easily understood. The answer to this question lies in the euphemistic nature of gone. We should bear in mind that the ambiguity is a defining feature of euphemism as a linguistic phenomenon. Following Chamizo Domínguez (2005, p. 10), a term acts as a euphemism because, in a given context, it is capable of generating an ambigu-ity which suggests that there may be a distasteful concept underneath. So, however ambiguous it may be, the term gone evokes death in an effective way without re-sorting explicitly to the concept it stands for.

There are also some metaphors that draw attention to the conceptualization of borders that have to be crossed between the starting point of the journey and the destination. For instance, the expression pass into the Great Beyond “clarifies a conception of a dead person having to cross a particular border” (Bultnick, 1998, p. 37). This border is conceived as the boundary between life and death, the bridge that the dead person has to cross to get to “the other side”. Take the following epi-taph:

(8) In ever loving memory of Evelyn Muriel D*. M.B.E. The dearly loved daughter of Fred and Allie D*. Born March 18th 1889, passed into the Great Beyond January 27th 1926

In sum, the journey metaphor constitutes an effective means to target euphemisti-cally the taboo of death; indeed, the metaphorical items included in this concep-tualization imply a positive value-judgement of human mortality, which is usually seen in terms of a journey with a joyful destination. By doing so, this conceptual association does offer some sort of consolation and relief to those left alive.

5.2 death is a rest / a sleep

Closely associated with the view of death as a desirable condition, I have found 39 metaphors (29% of the metaphorical euphemisms detected) which betray a con-ceptualization of death in terms of a peaceful rest (in 22 cases) or a sleep (in 19) in


consolatory epitaphs. The importance of the death-as-rest metaphor in the funer-ary language is out of doubt: indeed, this conceptual association is the origin of the term cemetery, which is actually a euphemism in itself: it comes from the Greek κοιμητήριον ‘resting place’ (cf. Gross, 1985, p. 213).

The most frequent terms in this mapping are sleep (and fall asleep) and rest (in passed to rest, at rest and enter into rest). This “rest” acquires a religious sense in the cases of rest in the Lord, rest in His very hand and rest at God’s will. Furthermore, rest appears in the well-known formula rest in peace (from the Latin requiescere in pace) usually through the acronym R.I.P. This formula, far from transmitting any personal feelings regarding death or having a true euphemistic sense, is a stan-dardized way to refer to death widely used as a closure of informative epitaphs accompanying the name of the deceased and the dates of birth and death. As a consequence of its continuos use in the reference to death, this formula has been “contaminated” and its meaning has narrowed to the taboo sense alone. As Bur-ridge (2004, p. 213) claims, this stands as a proof of the strength of the taboo: “Taboo senses never fail to dominate, and eventually kill off all the other senses”.12

The metaphor that associates death to a sleep and a rest appears in the follow-ing epitaph by means of the verb sleeping and the phrase resting at God’s will:

(9) Robert L*. 2.12.1923–18.2.1996 Two tired eyes are sleeping Two willing hands are still The one who worked so hard for us is resting at God’s will

A rest and a sleep have been included within the same conceptualization on the basis that the underlying notion of both rest and sleep metaphors is based on the fact that a rest and a sleep are temporary and, therefore, death is also conceptual-ized as a temporary event. This analogy implies that the cessation of bodily func-tions and speech is not automatically identified with the symptoms of physical death, as they are also present in a peaceful sleep. Furthermore, the relaxation that is obtained through sleep is transferred to death, which, in this way, is conceptual-ized as peaceful and serene. From this standpoint, the conceptualization which relates death to a rest or a sleep provides an effective euphemistic reference to the taboo mainly because this association ultimately leads to the denial of death as such: the dying person is no longer dead, but sunk in a comforting sleep. The negation of death as a means for consolation that this metaphor implicitly suggests is made explicit in the following consolatory epitaph:


(10) In loving memory of Ella who fell asleep July 30th 1881 aged 8 years for the maid is not dead but sleepth

The consideration of an abstract concept like death in terms of sleeping is probably the conceptualization in which we can see more clearly how a concrete and physi-cal action is used to conceptualize an abstract concept like death.

5.3 death is a joyful life

The idea of a peaceful and everlasting existence in Heaven is used to conceptual-ize death euphemistically in 23 metaphorical substitutes (that is, in 21% out of the total of euphemistic metaphors in the corpus) which invariably appear in opinion consolatory epitaphs. This conceptual metaphor is based on the Christian hope that death is the gateway to an afterlife in which the deceased will joyfully expect the res-urrection of the dead in Heaven. This view of death reflects both the Church’s con-cern for the resurrection of Christ and the consideration of death as life (cf. Sheppy, 2004, p. 32). Accordingly, this conceptualization is closely related to the metaphors that have to do with the notion of an afterlife like death is eternal life and the already mentioned death is the beginning of a new life, proposed by Marín Arrese (1996, p. 44) and Allan and Burridge (1991, pp. 163–164) respectively.

This cognitive mapping transfers the attributes from the source domain of a joyful life to the target domain of death. In this regard, the metaphors of hope and consolation observed in the corpus to refer to death that arise from this conceptual association (like perfect peace, higher life, holy life, among others) present positive overtones. In fact, death is even prefered to life, as happens in the following epi-taph in which the deceased is said to be “with Christ, which is far better”:

(11) Marjorie A* Widow of Captain Sir Robert Baret S*. C.B. Passed away 1st December 1914 With Christ which is far better

Due to the fact that the target domain of death is seen in terms of the source do-main of joy, life tends to be viewed in negative terms. This negative value-judge-ment of earthly life inspired by religion is implicitly conveyed in expressions like “with Christ, which is far better” in (11) or “safe in the arms of Jesus” in (12).13


This view of death as a joyful life is also present in the death-is-a-journey metaphor seen in 5.1 whereby the final destination of the journey, that is, the en-counter with God in Heaven, is based on the Christian belief of a joyful meeting with the Saviour. In the epitaph that follows, there is a combined conceptualization of death as a joyful journey in so far as the deceased is said to go to with a cheerful spirit to a happier and holy life:

(12) In loving memory of Charles John F*, D.C.M. 2nd Lieut. 2nd Northamptonshire Regt. The eldest son of Charles and Annie F*., who died on wounds received at Ypres, 28th July 1918, aged 36 years

“Safe in the arms of Jesus”

He went with a cheerful spirit, and faced the battle’s strife, but God in his mercy called him to a happier, holy life

As happens in the two conceptualizations commented so far, the metaphors for death employed lead to its denial as a means for consolation. Take the following epitaph in which the notion of death as eternal life in Paradise implicitly denies death itself:

(13) Forever in our hearts our wonderful mother Mercy E*. 1st October 1940–12th October 2001 Aged 61 Sweet mother, thank you for being loving, caring and supporting We will never forget you He who believes in the Lord Jesus shall not perish but have eternal life

Here a verse in the Bible (“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only be-gotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life”, John 3:16) provides the basis for an illusory negation of death which is explicitly stated in the concluding part of the epitaph. Obviously, the fact of denying death and promising an everlasting life is accepted as a means to cope with the pain of loss. Indeed, from this viewpoint, dying is not the end, but a gateway to new spheres of existence beyond terrestrial life.


5.4 death is a call from God

The consideration of death in terms of a call from the Savior provides the eu-phemistic reference to human mortality in eight cases, which covers 6% of the metaphorical death-related references in the corpus. This conceptual metaphor is based on the conceptual metonymy action for result. Following Panther and Thornburg (2000, p. 216), a result can be considered a state, a resultant event or even a resultant action. In this case, an action –a call from God– stands for the result produced by the action itself –death. This view of physical death as a direct consequence of an action performed by God places the following inscription in the category of consolatory epitaphs:

(14) Alive in Christ Ralph James H*. The devoted husband of Rosamond Agnes H*. was called to the higher life June 19th 1932 Aged 60 years His spirit still guides his loved ones

The state expressed by “called to the higher life” is seen as the result of an inten-tional behavior of an external unmentioned agent (God), who has control over life and death. In this view, the action performed by God is meant to refer euphemisti-cally to the act of dying.

From a different angle, this conceptualization can be considered as an exten-sion of the death is departure metaphor if we take into account, following La-koff (1993, p. 232), that departure is an event and this event is the action on the part of some causal agent who brings about departure. In this regard, an event (death) is seen as the result of an action (a call) performed by an agent (God).

5.5 death is a loss

The conceptualization of death as a loss is not very representative from a quan-titative point of view: it is the source of only 6% of the metaphorical substitutes in the corpus. It must be noted that this cognitive association, which originated as a gaming reference in the fourteenth century,14 has a metonymic basis (the effects of death stand for death) which focuses on the negative results of death. The conceptual basis of this mapping lies in the fact that life is perceived as a valuable object and death is thus seen as the loss of this possession (Bultnick, 1998, pp. 44–45). In this sense, contrary to what happens in the majority of the


conceptual mappings observed in the epitaphs collected, the metaphorical sub-stitutes arising from this figurative association cannot be said to provide any sort of consolation or relief. In fact, as Allan and Burridge (1991, p. 162) maintain, the conceptual metaphor of death as loss evokes death as “malign fate”, as an event that human beings cannot control, leaving them powerless in the face of the unavoid-able event. This conceptualization is therefore the raw material for epitaphs of la-ment, in so far as it is an effective way to express the grief of the surviving relatives. The noun loss and its corresponding verb lose are the most frequent metaphorical alternatives in this conceptualization. The following epitaph is an example of this conceptual equation:

(15) Cherished memories of Joseph H*. who fell asleep 26th April 1993 — Aged 59

It broke our hearts to lose you but did not go alone for part of us went with you the day God called you home

It is worth noting that, together with the non-metaphorical killed in action and died of wounds received in action, lose is the verb most commonly used in the epi-taphs of those who were killed fighting for their country. In this respect, Scodel (1991, p. 409) claims that epitaphs upon soldiers tend to revive a sense of the pub-lic importance of the dead in the twentieth century, when there was a decrease in the living’s contact with the dead and with death in England and the other Western nations. Consider the inscription below of a British soldier who perished in the battlefield during the First World War:

(16) In loving memory of Horace M*. Lost in the Great War 1917, aged 35 years

The metonymic basis of this conceptualization is clearly seen in the nouns that also fall under this cognitive equation like void and absence. Indeed, these terms emphasize the notion that beyond death there is nothing but the absence and void left by the deceased on earth. Take the epitaph of lament that follows:


(17) Remembrance of Mary Ann The beloved wife of Alfred P*. who died March 20th 1876 aged 43 years

What happy hours we once enjoyed How sweet the memory still but they have left an aching void the world can never fill

It seems evident that the epitaph above does not offer any kind of consolation to those left alive. Its pesimistic overtones are conveyed by means of aching void in reference to the death of Mary Ann, a metaphorical noun phrase included in the death-as-loss conceptual metaphor. Contrary to what happens in the epitaph (15), in which the grief of the relatives on the face of the loss is somehow amelio-rated by the idea of an eternal life with God after physical death, in (17) it is said that the void left by the absence can never be filled and, in this respect, the sense of despair is obviously heightened.

5.6 death is the end

The conceptualization that associates death to the end provides the basis for un-derstanding and mitigating the notions of death and dying in 3% of the euphe-mistic terms and phrases. Though of little relevance in quantitative terms, it is a conceptualization that obviously deserves some attention.

In this metaphor, death is conceptualized in terms of our bodily experience of spatial domains. By virtue of the source-path-goal schema into which our ev-eryday experience is organized, life can be understood as a process with a starting, an end point and a time span. That this is so can be gathered from Lakoff (1987, p. 275): “[c]omplex events in general are also understood in terms of a source-path-goal schema; complex events have initial states (source), a sequence of inter-mediate stages (path) and a final stage (destination). From this viewpoint, death is conceptualized as the final stage of our lifespan by means of the mapping death is the end. The most obvious case in this conceptualization is the noun end. In the consolatory epitaph that follows, death is viewed as the end of the process of human life:


(18) In loving memory of Enid R*. 1938–1996 Loving and kind in all her ways, upright and just till the end of her days. Forever in our thougts

The phrase end of her days ‘her death’ helps to understand human death in terms of finality, as Bultnick (1998, p. 59) suggests. After all, we should bear in mind that the passage of time will eventually lead to death. In this respect, Johnson (1987, p. 117) points out that “we have a metaphorical understanding of the passage of time based on movement along a physical path (…) toward some end point”. And physical death is precisely that end point. This explains why death is euphemisti-cally conceptualized as the last moment in our lifespan through metaphors like death is the end.15

The same as happened in the death-as-loss conceptualization seen earlier, the metaphor that understands death as a concluding phase in human existence cannot be said to provide any sort of relief or consolation whatsoever; it merely implies an acceptance of human mortality as the final destiny that awaits all hu-man beings, a conception devoid of any religious considerations.

6. Concluding remarks

In the light of the present research, it seems evident that metaphors pervade the lexicon of death and form networks by which we conceptualize this taboo in concrete terms. The cognitive analysis of epitaphs from Highgate Cemetery un-dertaken here has revealed different features of death-related figurative language which can be summarized into the following points: first, most conceptualizations observed in the gravestones imply a positive value-judgement of human mortal-ity, as the source domains employed (a journey, a rest, a joyful life and a call from God) are concepts with positive connotations; indeed, the group of metaphors that imply a negative value-judgement of death (death is a loss and death is a void) have little quantitative significance; second, death is most commonly conceptual-ized as a liberation from earthly life under the influence of religious beliefs in an eternal life in Heaven; third, the proliferation of consolatory metaphors aims at as-sisting those left alive in coping with the pain of loss and reflects personal feelings and attitudes towards mortality.


It must be stressed that the majority of the metaphorical items included in the conceptualizations that are inspired by religious beliefs have, to a lesser or greater extent, hyperbolic overtones. In fact, metaphors that conceptualize death in terms of a journey to Paradise, a joyful life in Heaven or a call from God consid-erably upgrade the event of death and magnify the biological act of dying. These consolatory metaphors constitute inauthentic means of expression because of the exaggeration that they imply. In cases like these, the epitaph writer gives informa-tion for which he obviously lacks adequate evidence and, by doing so, violates the Maxim of Quality proposed by Grice16 in so far as the information transmitted may lead to false inferences and even actual lies, in a proof of the subjectivity at-tached to opinative epitaphs. Nevertheless, these “lies” are accepted in the context of the epitaph as a means for consolation.

It is also interesting to say that a considerable number of metaphorical items do not attempt to soften the impact of death and make it less “deadly”; rather, they take a step further and implicitly deny death itself as a means of consolation. These inscriptions consider that the dead person is alive as he or she is capable of embarking on a journey; others conceptualize the deceased as someone who is sunk in a comforting sleep. Though beyond the research interest of this paper, it is worthy of note that in some epitaphs not only a direct reference to the subject of death is avoided, but also any euphemistic alternative. This is so because in the very act of alluding indirectly to the unmentionable concept, the euphemistic substitute calls it to mind. On these occasions, the only effective way to ameliorate the taboo is silence, which, on certain occasions, stands out as the most effective euphemism.

Evidence from the corpus suggests that figurative language cannot be con-sidered as a defining feature of epitaphs. In fact, conceptual metaphors have only appeared in two types of opinion epitaphs: those that are used for consolation and those aimed at displaying expresions of grief, that is, in consolatory epitaphs and in epitaphs of lament respectively. Laudatory and warning epitaphs do not seem to resort to metaphors to reach their aims. The presence of different linguistic mechanisms in tombstone inscriptions obviously derives from the fact that epi-taphs vary considerably as regards to the subject matter, formal structure, style and intentions. They are, in a nutshell, very heterogeneous texts.

From an anthropological perspective, conceptual euphemism can be consid-ered as part of the cultural manifestations of death denial typical of Western so-cieties, like the displacement of the event of death from home to the impersonal modern hospital or the removal of death from the living via brief funerals, among others (Hayslip, 2003, p. 35). In fact, many of the death-related euphemistic meta-phors encountered in the epitaphs can be considered as an attempt to deny death and remove it from our lives.


In sum, what emerges from the present research is that the framework of CMT provides solid tools for analysing how death, that fear-based and timeless taboo, is dealt with in gravestones. This model offers significant information concern-ing the way in which the taboo of death is actually used, perceived and, what is more important for the aim of this paper, mitigated. In this way, by applying the cognitive model to the study of euphemism, I hope to have contributed to a better understanding of taboo areas like death and provided an insight into the cognitive processes underlying death-related figurative language.

Notes

1. Following Wardaugh (1992, p. 43), I understand by taboo “the way in which a society express-es its disapproval of certain kinds of behaviour believed to be harmful to its members, either for supernatural reasons or because such behaviour is held to violate a moral code”, whereas the lin-guistic taboo is the projection of this conceptual interdiction at the level of language, which leads to the fact that “certain things are not to be said (…) or, if those things are talked about, they are talked about in very roundabout ways”. For a comprehensive analysis of the implications of the concept of taboo and the literature on taboo language, see Chamizo Domínguez (2009).

2. Though archaeological evidence and written records show that memorials were an impor-tant part of ancient societies such as the Egyptians, Greeks or Romans, the practice of marking the site of a grave by means of an inscription did not become widespread until the eighteenth century, as noted by Àries (1982, p. 78). However, it was not until the Victorian era that the cem-etery was conceived as a site for mourning, which obviously made epitaphs proliferate (Kichner 2008: 18). This was derived from the reorganization of burial space and the strong sense of reli-gious spirituality and sentimentality attached to death at that time (cf. Jalland 1999).

3. See Crespo Fernández (2008) for a cognitive analysis of epitaphs collected in the Cemetery of Albacete (Spain).

4. I shall use here the term ‘text’, following Fairclough’s multidimensional perspective of dis-course, as the discoursal element of social events which is subject to a double contextualization: first, in their relation to other elements of social events; second, in their relation to social prac-tices (Fairclough, 2005).

5. By doing so, the epitaph brings alive the voice of the deceased. From this point of view, epi-taphs perform the same function as all literary texts. As Johnson (2008, p. 14) points out, “what an epitaph accomplishes is what all literature has to accomplish: to make poetry that convinces the reader that the poet speaks, that the poem gives access to his living voice, even though the individual author may have been buried for more than two hundred years”.

6. Samuel Johnson considered that the good epitaph should be laudatory by its very nature: “As honours are paid to the dead in order to incite others to the imitation of their excellencies, the principal intention of epitaphs is to perpetuate the examples of virtue (…). Those epitaphs are, therefore, the most perfect, which set virtue in the strongest light” (1806, p. vii).


7. For example, Solomon (2004) distinguishes seven types of epitaphs: epitaph as biography, epitaph as greeting, occupational epitaphs, epitaph as blessing, epitaph as a metaphor for hope and epitaph as a window to the past.

8. For a revision of the linguistic and extralinguistic definitions of euphemism, see Casas Gó-mez (2009, pp. 725–733).

9. In fact, Bultnick (1998, pp. 34–38) considers the conceptual metaphor death as a journey as a subdivision of the more general cognitive association death as movement.

10. Hereafter, the terms and expressions that I want to highlight in the epitaphs offered as ex-amples will appear in italics.

11. However, as Gorer (1965) notes, the use of religious euphemisms does not necessarily mean that those who use them have strong religious convictions or really believe in an afterlife.

12. As a consequence of their identification with the taboos they stand for, over the course of time euphemistic words can become taboo words themselves and acquire the negative connota-tions of their taboo referents. This process, which is comparable to Gresham’s law in economics (‘Bad money drives out good’), is referred to as “The domino theory of euphemism” by linguists like Bolinger (1980, pp. 73–74).

13. The negative view of earthly life appears more explicitly reflected in the conceptual met-aphorization used in nineteenth-century obituaries, in which life is described as lower scene, scene of wretchedness and anxiety, whereas death is referred to as happiness or abode of peace (Crespo Fernández, 2006, p. 119).

14. Chaucer’s narrator in The Book of the Duchess used the term lost to relate chess and death in a linguistically fresh way (Neaman and Silver, 1990, p. 176).

15. Marín Arrese (1996, pp. 48–49) distinguishes between two conceptualizations that are closely related: death is the last hour and death is the end. This scholar considers that in expressions like “The hour is come” or “The sands of life are running out”, death is conceptual-ized as the last moment in our lifespan through the metaphor death is the last hour. The conceptualization death is the end focuses on the end-point of the process of human life. It is the source of expressions like “The latter end” or “The ebb of life”.

16. Grice put forward four Conversational Maxims (Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner) that language users are supposed to adhere to in the attempt to achieve a successful communica-tion. The Maxim of Quality was formulated as follows: “Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence” (1975, p. 46).

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Author’s address

Eliecer Crespo FernándezDepartamento de Filología ModernaUniversidad de Castilla-La ManchaFacultad de EducaciónEdificio Simón AbrilPlaza de la Universidad, 302071 Albacete (Spain)

[email protected]

http://www.archive.org/details/collectionofepit01john

http://www.archive.org/details/collectionofepit01john

mailto:[email protected]


About the author

Eliecer Crespo Fernández, PhD, is Assistant Professor at the University of Castilla-La Mancha. His research interests focus on the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of euphemism and dys-phemism, particularly in the taboo areas of immigration, sex and death. He has authored the book El eufemismo y el disfemismo (Universidad de Alicante, 2007) and articles in Estudios Ingle-ses de la Universidad Complutense (2006), Atlantis (2008) and Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (2010).

euphemistic conceptual metaphors in epitaphs from highgate cemetery

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