Talking about dying and death: On new discursive constructions of a formerly postulated taboo

Abstract

In this article, we pursue a critical and multimodal discourse analysis of texts in the context of the innovative German discourse project ‘30 young people talk to dying people and their relatives’ – an initiative by two German universities encouraging young people to develop an explicit attitude towards death. We take a detailed look at the various text forms (short films about discussions between the young people and dying patients, online postings about their experiences, etc.) by asking how the concepts of ‘dying’ and ‘death’ are new and differently constructed in these various textual artefacts. A formal as well as critical analysis of the semantic content produced by the participants will examine how this content is produced and how new types of sociocultural practices become visible in these texts.