Production of collective memory in The New York Times' obituaries and its Overlooked series : a corpus-based study

Abstract

Obituaries are a genre of commemoration where individual lives become a part of the collective memory through how the events and people they represent are portrayed. The Overlooked series published in The New York Times aims to give obituaries to people who did not receive one at the time of their death for different reasons. This thesis aims to compare the obituaries of The New York Times with its Overlooked series to find out what are the similarities and differences between the two obituary cycles, what the vocabulary used can tell us about the production of collective memory, and how it differs in the two obituary types. For this goal, corpus-assisted discourse analysis is used. The corpus tool Sketch Engine is used, with two corpora created for the aims of this thesis. One corpus consists of the regular obituaries published in The New York Times from January 1, 2021, to December 31, 2021 (1,388,794 words), and the second of The New York Times' Overlooked series up to and including December 2023 (241,153 words). The introduction discusses the history of the obituary genre and Overlooked together with who are the subjects of obituaries. The first chapter provides an overview of previous research into the obituary genre, its role in shaping collective memory, previous research on obituaries as a discourse, and how media has attempted to use affirmative action strategies to create a more inclusive collective memory. The second chapter introduces the methods used, Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis, the corpora used, and the key findings of the corpus-assisted analyses of the vocabulary used in The New York Times' obituaries and its Overlooked series. The conclusion summarizes the overall findings of the thesis.