The Bloomsbury Handbook of Language and Death

An essential reference to the intersection of language and death and dying, this book presents an overview of the methodologies, current debates, history and future of research in language-related death studies.

Adopting a highly interdisciplinary approach, the book explores a wide variety of phenomena and contexts of death and dying, examining language and discourse from linguistic, psychological, philosophical, and anthropological perspectives, among others. Divided into three parts, it considers three viewpoints from which death and dying can be understood: first-person, second-person, and third-person. The chapters cover an extensive array of topics, from presentations of death within social media and news reports, through to specific contexts of dying and types of death, including palliative care, assisted dying, suicide, and COVID-19. They also engage with data from across a range of national, cultural, and linguistic contexts, offering a broad international perspective.