Originally published: . Volume 7, No. 5. Source pages: 11.
“Passed away”, “kicked the bucket”, “gone with the wind”, “in a better place,” and “in heaven now.”
“No longer with us”, “didn’t make it”, and “not here anymore.”
These are some of the more common ways we talk about the topic of death, that Dr. Brook Breaux and her student researchers from psychology at the University of Louisiana Lafayette have found. The group conducted studies to learn more about the words we use, and don’t use, when we talk about, or don’t talk about, the big one.
Mark LaCour is one of the students conducting the research. He explained that terms like “passed away” were by far the most common. But there were some unusual ones, too.
“The faiths got ‘em” and “in the sky” were examples, LaCour said. There were also references to murder or suicide, “which we did not mention in the instructions,” he said.
Very few studies have directly examined the idea that people tend to avoid using direct and literal words to describe death, but rather express facts about death in symbolic and figurative terms.
The University of Louisiana Lafayette researchers found that our language has many words for living, but many fewer words for death. The authors wrote, “The results suggest that although speakers of American English use words related to death (106,633) and dying (113,757), they do so at a noticeably lower rate as compared to words related to life (379,285) and living (201,323).” The authors presented their results at the Southeastern Psychological Association meeting held in New Orleans recently.
Breaux and her students asked participants to provide examples of how they, or their friends or family members, might say that someone had died, without using the word died. On average, participants produced six words, with the most common being “passed away.” A full 75 percent of the participants produced this as their first response. And 93 percent produced at least one response referring to the afterlife.
What else did they find?
“While women didn’t generate more phrases compared to men overall,” said Mark LaCour, “they did generate more phrases that were categorized as involving continuation, the afterlife, of positive affect compared to men,” he explained.
The researchers asked participants if they experienced the death of a family member or a close friend as well as their rating of how many deaths they have experienced compared to the average person.
“Strangely enough,” said LaCour, answers to these questions were not predictors of any of the variables we looked at (e.g., number of metaphors generated, number of metaphors within a category).”
“Even stranger,” he noted, “some individuals were highly discrepant with their answers. For instance, people who said they had not experienced the death of a family member or close friend would rate themselves as having experienced more deaths than the average person while another participant would report that they had experienced the death of a friend and family member, yet still rate themselves as having experienced fewer deaths than the average person.”
Dr. Breaux’s group has an ongoing research agenda in this area, and they hope to uncover information that helps with managing fears and coping with mortality.
Dr. Brook Breaux (R) and her student researchers from University of Louisiana Lafayette presented at SEPA this year. Back row (left to right): Kylie Garber, Iesha King, Dylan Richard, and Dustin Dronet. Front row (left to right): Mark LaCour and Dylan Harrell.
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