My culture is engraved on my tombstone

Authors

  • Erdoğan Bada Çukurova University
  • Ömer Gökhan Ulum Adana Science and Technology University

Keywords:

Textual analysis, content analysis, culture, language, tombstones

Abstract

We, humans, mirror our cultural characteristics in death just as we do in life. This study focuses on the way the dead communicate with the living through their gravestones. For this, we surveyed, photographed and documented a plethora of gravestones affiliated to Shamanism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and conducted content analysis of thematized scripts on stones and objects left on graves for remembrance. Our findings suggest that each set of beliefs displays specific as well as common messages concerning the deceased and the society they belonged to. The study asserts that although we, ephemeral creatures, pass in our final hour, our gravestones keep transmitting our cultural identity from generation to generation with information regarding who and what we were.

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Author Biographies

Erdoğan Bada, Çukurova University

Prof. Dr., Çukurova University, Faculty of Education; Department of Foreign Language Teaching

Ömer Gökhan Ulum, Adana Science and Technology University

Lecturer, Adana Science and Technology University, School of Foreign Languages

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Published

2016-12-12

How to Cite

Bada, E., & Ulum, Ömer G. (2016). My culture is engraved on my tombstone. Journal of Human Sciences, 13(3), 5407–5422. Retrieved from https://j-humansciences.com/ojs/index.php/IJHS/article/view/4246

Issue

Section

Anthropology