Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Forum for Linguistic Studies, cilt.7, sa.12, ss.498-515, 2025 (Scopus)
The aim of this study is to compare the discourse structures of death notices written in various cultural contexts,
using interpersonal metadiscourse model as a theoretical framework. The distribution of interactive and interactional
metadiscourse markers in death notices published in English and Turkish newspapers was examined to determine how these
markers contribute to discourse organization. To achieve this goal, the document analysis method—one of the qualitative
research approaches—was employed. The corpus of the study comprises 557 death notice texts (33,618 words; 449 in
English and 108 in Turkish), systematically coded and analyzed for interactive and interactional markers under this model.
The study found that while the frequency of interactive markers was similar in both cultures, significant cross-cultural
differences emerged in the distribution and normalized frequency values (calculated per 1000 words) of interactional
markers, which show how the writer influences the reader, were different. Turkish, for instance, did not employ any hedges.
Attitude markers were the most commonly used interactional metadiscourse markers in both languages, and the use of
euphemistic language use was often preferred to express the event of death. This cross-cultural variation underlines how
cultural norms shape linguistic choices in sensitive events like death, thereby demonstrating the sociological embeddedness
of discourse. By addressing an understudied genre within a cross-cultural framework, the study contributes to the fields of
discourse analysis, genre studies, and intercultural pragmatics.