Grief after suicide: A study of taboo and metaphor

Abstract

This article analyzes the negotiation of taboo surrounding grief after the suicide of a loved one. It draws on ethnographic fieldwork with a support group and individual interviews with its members. While the topic of taboo was prominent at group meetings, the same group members tended to claim in the interviews that they had not experienced it. To explore the issue of taboo, beyond affirmation or denial of its existence, we analyzed how the bereaved navigated the topic of suicide in language using Werner’s psychological theory of metaphor, which argues that metaphors arise to circumvent explicit reference to tabooed subjects. Members of the grief group clearly developed different strategies of metaphorical and other linguistic rephrasing to deal with the topics of death and suicide. Additionally, their language use differed depending on the person’s attitude toward the suicide, whether he or she was alone or with other group members, as well as whether the general public was being framed as an out-group.

Keywords

Grief suicide taboo Werner metaphors language use

Grief is a conflicting emotion that involves on the one hand an attempt to keep the memory of the deceased alive and on the other to come to terms with the reality of the loss. Theories of grief, going back to Freud (1917/1984), have tended to assume that it is an incapacitating emotional response that should be worked through quickly (Breen & O’Connor, 2007; Granek, 2010). More recently, new understandings have emerged (e.g., see Granek, 2010; Klass, 1996; Kofod & Brinkmann, 2017; Walter, 2006) that see it as a more multidimensional experience, highlighting the importance of contextual factors. For example,

Grief is a unique experience that occurs within a historical, social, cultural, and political context, and our research endeavors need to recognize it as such. These contextual factors all affect an individual’s grief experience and, as such, must not be omitted or viewed as extraneous variables. (Breen & O’Connor, 2007, p. 209)

Grief is here not to be studied as simply an expression of an individual’s private emotion, but as a part of a human world in which interactions, society, history, and culture all play a part (Valsiner, 2014). As Stearns and Knapp (1996) put it, “grief is a not pure response; it is conditioned by its dependence on an evolving cultural context, highly sensitive to functional and larger cultural issues” (p. 149).

Grief following a suicide has much specificity and as such is often used as a point of comparison with bereavement after other kinds of loss, such as to an illness or accident (Chapple, Ziebland, & Hawton, 2015; Cvinar, 2005). On top of coming to terms with the permanent absence of the deceased, researchers have noted that grief after suicide involves a major life rupture (Jordan & McIntosh, 2014), feelings of shame and guilt, fragmentation of relationships with significant others, social isolation, and exclusion (Peters, Cunningham, Murphy, & Jackson, 2016) as well as being blamed, misunderstood, stigmatized, and having the need to find meaning (Harvey, 1998). Scholars (e.g., Peters et al., 2016) as well as the bereaved themselves often blame the tabooed nature of death (Holden, 2001) and suicide in particular (Anneberg, 2002) for these experiences. Taboo can here be defined as “something you do not talk about,” to quote one of this study’s interviewees. Thus, the bereaved, especially by suicide, suffer from both the loss of a loved one and the inability to talk about it (Emborg Bejder, 2011).

The present article analyzes how those bereaved by suicide express and negotiate their experience of loss and taboo. It draws from a yearlong ethnographic study of a grief group in Denmark, focused on losing someone to suicide. The first author participated in group meetings, gatherings with other grief-groups, and did in-depth interviews with group members. Emotional dilemmas, the distinctiveness of grief after suicide, group dynamics, and taboo were all salient themes, but this article will focus on the last. First, the article outlines Werner’s (1919) theory of metaphor, which is used as the study’s main analytic tool. Second, it proceeds to describe the context and initial observations of the grief group discussions and individual interviews. Third, it analyzes strategic language use in the individual interviews to, in most but not all cases, circumvent taboo. Lastly, article concludes with a general discussion of how the bereaved by suicide themselves experience, make sense of and communicate their loss in different contexts.

Metaphorical expressions of taboo

In his book The Origins of Metaphor, the psychologist Heinz Werner (1919) hypothesized that metaphorical language can be traced back to what have been expressions of tabooed topics, such as death. It is the constraints imposed on one’s expression when trying to address topics of taboo that situates and creates the motivation for constructing metaphors. Words and sentences referring to something that could be considered a taboo are systematically replaced and avoided by means of various linguistic strategies. Thus, a topic of taboo, such as suicide, can be expressed through the use of metaphorical language and thereby become visible in another more indirect and subtle way. This would facilitate the bereaved by suicide’s opportunity to talk about their loss and loved one in a manner that would be more socially acceptable.

Werner (1919) distinguished between two views on metaphor: a logical and a psychological view. From a logical point of view, a metaphor is a substitution of one verbal representation for another representation (Cornejo, Olivares, & Rojas, 2013). Consider, for example, how we speak of a broken heart: The heart is not literally broken. However, this view’s focus on purely linguistic features of metaphor is limited in scope, as it leaves out the subjective experience of incongruence in a metaphorical analogy. Therefore, Werner advocates a psychological view to understanding metaphor and its use. If the bereaved by suicide use metaphors, it is not just the existing incongruence of expressing a topic of taboo that is important but also their experience of doing this. Werner mentions actions referring to the destruction of a living thing as particularly prone to taboo and therefore metaphorical transformation. It follows that we should find a rich set of metaphors surrounding suicide—an act of destroying oneself.

Building on Werner’s psychological approach to metaphor, Cornejo et al. (2013) argue for a pragmatic analysis focused on the experience of the individual who intentionally uses a metaphor. Metaphors are a way of using language to insinuate rather than explain something. Cornejo (2007, p. 484) says, “metaphor is a contextualized, ongoing process of meaning development that has reality in the phenomenological experience of the person.” Therefore, the concise verbal form of a metaphor contrasts sharply with the amount of insights that it can elicit: “The gap between what words say and what they actually mean is more blatant than in any other linguistic expression” (Cornejo et al., 2013, p. 485). Subsequently, the contents of the metaphor exceed what the words offer, and the apparent meaning seems but a scarce substitute for what we actually experience when interpreting a metaphor. Again, returning to the metaphor of a broken heart. The image that is being evoked when talking about a broken heart underpins the severity of emotions that are felt but can be hard to explicitly explain. If we only focus upon the linguistics in this example, the subjective feeling of heartache is overlooked.

Emphasizing an effort to bring metaphor back into its actual context of use, Cornejo et al. (2013) write that metaphors should be studied in real human beings with a phenomenological focus, in contrast to the conceptual metaphor approach (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Christensen and Wagoner (2015) make the following methodological suggestion to accomplish this:

With the understanding that metaphors are always said by a certain person, in both implicit and explicit dialogue with others, with a more or less well-defined intention and that all these factors are constantly developing, a thick description of a rich data set is essential for understanding the metaphor psychologically. (p. 528)

Young (2008) is the only researcher to provide a thick description and analysis of metaphorical use among people who have been bereaved by suicide. However, she worked with a logical view of metaphors, did not employ the concept of taboo, and focused on a general bereavement group, not one dealing with suicide. Thus, there is a gap in the literature existing on the field of taboo, metaphors, and bereavement by suicide. This leads to our guiding question: How do bereaved by suicide use metaphors to express a tabooed subject and what psychological work do the metaphors do? This will be answered with a thick description of the grief group meetings and in-depth analysis of excerpts from individual interviews.

Entering the field

The study has been driven by the interest of “being there” and observing events and processes as they occur, as is typical of ethnography (Flick, 2014). This involved participating in group meetings, formal events, presentations, and activities—practically everything the members of the grief group allowed—but in a less active and visible way than the bereaved themselves. Most of the time was spent observing, carrying out practical assignments such as making coffee, listening, and following the members rather silently. The focus was always on the bereaved individuals’ experiences and their expressions, stories, conversations with one another, and what they thought was important to tell.

The group consists of approximately 15–20 members, though most of the time there are between 7 and 10 participating in a given meeting. All its members have lost a loved one to suicide, but the time since the loss took place varies considerably from a few months to 14 years ago. Also, some of the members have been in the group for 12–13 years, whereas others had just entered it the previous month. Despite its relatively open boundaries, most of the members are approximately 55–75 years old and female—there were only three men at the time of the fieldwork.

There is one meeting a month on average. Sometimes the members meet more than once a month because of other arrangements (such as presentations on grief etc.), but the group itself has an official monthly meeting. The meetings are often guided by a theme decided beforehand, e.g., guilt or shame but are open to changes if other themes or topics are of bigger interest for the participating members. The group meetings are led by one or two members—those who have been there the longest. They are, as they say themselves, not professional counselors but consider themselves knowledgeable because of their personal experiences. Therefore, the group serves as a support group, but not a grief group with a leading therapist. This is also one of the reasons for the longtime memberships.

During the period of fieldwork, four semistructured interviews with active members of the group were conducted with those, who regularly attended meetings. The demographic information for each is provided in Table 1. The aim of the interviews was to further explore some of the prominent themes that were mentioned multiple times in the grief-group meetings that functioned as a framework for making the interview guide, namely: (1) taboo, (2) emotions and their expression, (3) the members’ experience of bereavement, and (4) their thoughts and feelings about the grief group. The interviews were distributed over two weeks and lasted about 1½ to 2½ hours each. The first author carried out the transcriptions of the interviews to ensure confidentiality.

Table 1.

Characteristics of the interviewees.

Name	Gender	Age	Relation to person lost (and years since suicide)	Forewarnings of suicide
Karen	Female	60s	Both children (12 and 10 years ago)	Both children had a psychiatric disorder
Emma	Female	60s	Husband (3.5 years ago)	No idea husband was suicidal
Peter	Male	70s	Wife (13 years ago)	His wife had depression
Cathryn	Female	50s	Son (1 year ago)	Her son had psychiatric problems

The interviews were analyzed using what Stake (2005) calls a collective case study (see also Demuth, 2017). Each of the interviews was studied in-depth and then compared to the other cases. For the sake of space, only short excerpts from the interviews are presented in this article, but their interpretations build on a thorough reading of all the materials. The comparison is done to provide multiple perspectives to interpret individually and collectively.

Observations of group meetings

The first group meeting attended started with introductions: the six members present at the meeting told who they were, who they had lost, and how long ago it happened. The first author told the others about herself and of her interest in conducting interviews as well. Then, the meeting proceeded as usual. The members discussed how the worst thing after having lost a loved one to suicide was how people did not say anything to them at all. At the end of the first meeting, the group invited the first author to continue participation in grief meetings. Thus began the field study.

The group member’s rephrasing of suicide became clear in the second meeting, a month later. One member used the phrase “he ended his days.” Also, they talked about how the group proved a space for them to tell their story, in contrast to their everyday experience. They said that other people do not want to talk about what happened, nor the loss or the grief, because they either get upset or do not know what to say. The members of the group described this as a part of the taboo that encircles suicide. At the third meeting, two months later and at the fifth meeting, five months later, the bereaved once again talked about how other people have a hard time understanding what it means to be bereaved by suicide—resulting in their strange reactions.

The sixth meeting had the theme “what do we say to other people?” The members of the group talked about how they sometimes choose not to say that their loved one death was a suicide. One of the members then said that she does not know whether that enhances the taboo. Another member reacted by saying that it did not have anything to do with taboo (choosing not to tell the cause of death), but that it rather was a protection of oneself as well as one’s right to privacy. Additionally, some of the members talked about how they often phrase the suicide in a different manner such as “life became too hard” or that he/she “chose not to live.”

Consequently, what should be clear now is that the members of the grief group talk about how people avoid them in various ways, how relations change, that they rephrase the act of suicide, and that the group functions as a safe space to talk about hard things. In addition, when confronted with a preliminary conclusion about the presence of taboo, the members of the group verified this. Thus, taboo was focally present in group meetings. However, when it came to the individual interviews, the picture became more complicated.

The question of taboo in the interviews

The topic of taboo and other people’s avoidance has been a major topic of discussion in the grief group. Given the centrality of taboo in the meetings, much of the interview guide revolved around that theme. However, when asked in the interviews whether they had experienced taboo, their answers came as a surprise. Karen hesitated when asked the question and responded “na-ah.” Emma said that she believed that there was not a taboo around suicide. Similarly, Peter answered the question: “No-o. Not particularly taboo. I have experienced, that you should not talk about it after three months (…).” However, a few minutes later, Peter says “but taboo is still in Denmark, even if it is, around suicide at least. Still a, a, it is still a taboo for many (…).” Thus, here we have rather opposing views present in the same interview. In contrast, Cathryn answered “no-o [short break]” and then went on to talk about how life must continue for those left behind, distancing her answers from the question posed. Thus, the bereaved clearly have a complex relationship to the notion of taboo. It became necessary to find an indirect analytic strategy for looking at how they navigate it.

Metaphors of grief and suicide

As we have seen, quite contrasting views on taboo and its existence (or non-existence) are present, not only when one is looking at the group meetings against the individual interviews, but also inside of the interviews themselves. To understand these seemingly contradictory views, we started to look closer at not only what was being said but also how it was being said. For example, while questions in the interviews were posed using the word “suicide,” most group members used softer rephrasing, such as “chose not to live.” Some of the most explicit metaphors, however, seemed to be aimed primarily at making sense of and working through the loss rather than avoiding taboo as such. Consider the examples of “life and death as a journey” and “suicide as a homicide.”

Karen introduced the metaphor of grief as luggage when asked whether she believed that her feelings of grief were different from others. She did not believe they were. Then she was asked whether this gave her a sense of peace or a larger frame of understanding. She answered:

(…) Well, it is a luggage, that you have your whole life, right, well it is. That. That you might get better and better at handling, right, but eh. It is a bit. Well I might think that we in today’s Denmark, right. There is not offered a lot of space to. It takes time.

The metaphorical expression used here suggests that grief is a burden (i.e., luggage) that one should learn to live with on the journey of life, rather than something one overcomes and “moves on” from (similar to the theories of Attig, 2004 and Klass, 2006). In other words, one can be better in handling the luggage, but cannot leave it. The specific luggage metaphor draws on the conceptual metaphor of life as a journey (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), while the particular metaphor of luggage is embodied through the experiences of difficulties in movement while being “burdened” or “weighed down.” Karen is aware of the incongruity in the use of this specific metaphor here—grief is not luggage in the literal sense—while the conceptual metaphor of life as journey may be used without such experience. Interestingly, the metaphor death as a journey is also quite common in different cultures around the world; it implies that the deceased do not cease to exist but rather go somewhere else (Metcalf & Huntington, 1991). Cathryn comments: “I can by no means accept, I can say to myself that he went on a long journey. But to tell myself, that he is dead [her voice gets thick and she gets tears in her eyes]. No.” Sending the dead on a journey creates distance without obliterating them.

To explain why grief following a suicide is particularly hard, Emma employed a vivid metaphor of suicide as homicide. This metaphor came up in relation to the existence of contrasting emotions and whether she had experienced them herself. She said:

Well, you probably have heard my quote many times [I: yes]. Eh. That suicide. Is a. It is a homicide, where there is a victim and where there is a perpetrator [I: yes]. And you are mad at the perpetrator, and you feel sorry for the victim. And that is. Absolutely. Contradictory [I: yes]. That it is the same person (…). (Italicized for emphasis)

This metaphor of murder, or self-killing, highlights the elementary dilemma behind every suicide (In Danish: selvmord). It is a way for her to express her contradictory feelings and difficulties of coming to terms with them. This dilemma, consisting of a perpetrator and a victim, elicit opposite emotions directed toward the same person. The metaphor’s power lies in the messy and interwoven emotions that it tries to grasp and verbalize, and as such it is also often used at group meetings and formal events. It is even introduced to new members of the group to help them understand and put into words their overwhelming, ambivalent, and unmanageable emotions. As Sommer-Rotenberg (1998) argues, the language used to describe events is not only a reflection of one’s own attitude but also something that influences the attitudes of others. Thus, Emma and the group share an attitude about the emotional dilemmas experienced after a suicide. For example, Peter also refers to this metaphorical expression to emphasize how grief following bereavement by suicide is special and why it is so difficult to grasp.

Like Karen and Emma, Peter too draws on metaphorical expressions in relation to suicide but does so in a rather different way. Whereas Karen and Emma rephrased and softened discourse when talking about grief and suicide, Peter chose to highlight it. The following quotation is a response to the question of how suicide differs from other types of death such as cancer:

I believe, that it is something special, to commit suicide, because. The fact that you do it by your own hand, there is no one, who purposely wants to get cancer, but eh, my wife did not want to get a depression either [I: no]. But eh, the decision to take your own life, to com-, that was hers, right [I: yes]. She frequently said. That was before, she got worse, that if she has had cancer, then people world talk about it. Eh, they would not want to talk about suicide. Eh. So there is that dimension that it is by your own hand [I: yes]. That, that makes it, eh, that pop-smart with, as I sometimes use, that Emma from the group brought to the city, with the murderer and the victim being the same person. (Italicized for emphasis)

Whereas others like Karen used the soft phrase “chosen not to live,” Peter actively highlights the fact that suicide is done by one’s own hand, involving a conscious decision and agency, which makes suicide different from other types of death. While both Emma and Peter use the metaphor of homicide as an illustration of the difficulties bereaved by suicide face when dealing with their loss, there is a difference of strategic emphasis: Emma softens the taboo while Peter highlights it.

Moving beyond metaphors

Not only did we find abundant metaphorical use and rephrasing in the transcripts, but also other strategic uses of language shedding light on taboo. For example, suicide as a noun was mentioned 11 times in the first interview with Karen, but not once in relation to her own children—instead, she used the phrasing “[child] died” multiple times. Karen only used the word “suicide” when talking on a general level or when she referred to another person’s story. Additionally, when talking to Karen about whether people behaved differently toward her, she told a story that she described as a “misunderstood consideration.” These dynamics were present in other cases as well.

Emma also used the phrasing “he died,” when she talked about her husband. However, she mentioned the noun suicide 22 times—twice as much as Karen did. What differs from Karen, though, is that Emma once used the word suicide in relation to her own husband as well as “took his own life” on one occasion. Therefore, neither Karen nor Emma used the term suicide more than once (in total) even though they often refer to their children and husband, respectively. Cathryn follows a quite similar pattern, using the word suicide 14 times, but only three times directly in relation to her son, preferring instead to phrase “he died.” Peter is an outlier on this point in that he said “she committed suicide” multiple times. He used the word suicide 37 times, 9 of which are in relation to his wife, and only once said “she died.” As will soon become clear, Peter takes a strategy of self-conscious advocate of breaking the taboo.

Thus, there is a clear difference in how the four members of the group choose to talk about grief and suicide. But how deliberate is the use of metaphors and verbal rephrasing to talk about topics of taboo in a manner that is more socially acceptable? Why do they talk about their loved ones as having died and choose to avoid the word suicide (with the exception of Peter)?

Moving toward taboo

Peter is certainly aware of his choice of words—he used the word “suicide” by far the most and directly to talk about his wife. When talking about taboo and whether he himself had experienced it, he first mentioned that taboo still exists in Denmark. However, asked if taboo had existed in Peter’s own family, he gives the following answer:

(…) So, for us it was not a taboo, and I have, moreover, from day one said that my wife committed suicide, and not used rewritings, I have not said heart attack or, chose not to live [I: no]. It is a nice way to put it, but I use word-, I always say that my wife committed suicide. And, then you feel the taboo, because people get, weird in their facial expression and say, you are so open talking about it. (Italicized for emphasis)

Even though Peter (and his family) do not consider suicide as being a subject of taboo, he is very aware of its existence outside of the family. Noticing his emphasis on how he consciously used the phrasing “my wife committed suicide” and not how she “chose not to live” (like Karen said), the first author asked:

I: “You said, that you do not use rewritings, but that you are very straightforward. Is there a reason for, why you deselect all rewritings of suicide?”

P: “Yes. Because, I. Well I think, you should call things by their proper name [I: yes]. And things do not, either gets worse or better by, that you call a shovel a shovel and a spade a spade [I: no].

Peter also talked about how other people react with a weird facial expression when hearing about the death of his wife, which points toward a taboo. He choses to be straightforward about what have happened, and as he said, the nature of things does not change even though you can change the words surrounding it. In addition, Peter often talks in the group meetings about how suicide should not be a topic of taboo and that this is only something that can happen if they [people who have been bereaved by suicide] are not afraid of saying it aloud.

Cathryn has another way of looking at her wish to rephrase the act of suicide. When asked about where she rephrased the act of suicide herself, Cathryn answered:

C: Well, I sometimes say that he chose it himself [long break]. Or that he took his own life [I: yes]. I think that suicide, I also think, it is such a weird and criminal word. It is such a criminal word [I: yes]. [short break]. Ehm [short break]. And that, that is. That you kill yourself. You do that in some way, you choose it yourself. (Italicized for emphasis)

So, as opposed to Peter, Cathryn prefers to rephrase the act of suicide because of its criminal connotations. Her son did not commit a crime; he chose to take his own life.

Emma had quite another approach to whether she should tell people about her husband’s suicide. She had been very concerned in the first year after her husband’s suicide. When asked whether this was still a recurrent thought, she said that it sometimes comes up, and then she offered a small narrative:

E: (…) When I meet new, people, for example when I am on a holiday, well, are you married, then I say, no my husband is dead, oh and what did he die of [I: yes]. Then it is hard. Should I like ruin the good mood and should I say it. Or should I, not say anything to avoid ruining the good mood and how will they, do they even react, is it a taboo for them [I: yes]. And can you say it like over a glass of red wine and-, and how.

I: Do you then decide to tell them?

E: It differs a bit. But usually, I say, my husband died suddenly and I do not want to talk about it [I: yes]. And if that is for my sake, or it is to spare others for it, I am a bit unsure about that. (Italicized for emphasis)

Here, Emma clearly has other’s reactions in mind when deciding to tell them about her husband’s suicide or not. Not only did she mention that suicide could be a topic of taboo for them (others), but she also said that she often chooses not to say anything and the cause of this is to her unknown. However, a bit later in the interview, she mentioned that it might be both for other people’s sake as well as her own.

Discussion: Language as a social tool

Considering what have been observed in the group, there seems to be a common experience for multiple, if not all, members of the group of having experienced what they themselves define as being taboo. They frequently tell stories about other people who have avoided them or behaved differently toward them after the suicide, which is consistent with previous research (e.g., Peters et al., 2016). Taboo was an ever-present theme. Moreover, the members of the group use metaphors when they meet, especially the one introduced in the analysis referring to the dilemmatic nature of suicide as consisting of both a perpetrator and a victim. However, the in-depth interviews changed the picture. Suddenly, the members of the group did not feel that they had experienced taboo or that it even existed. Instead, it seemed, they might at best have had an experience that could be interpreted as a “misunderstood consideration” as Karen phrased it. And in Peter’s case, it seemed like the experience of taboo was both present and non-existent at the same time. Emma did not report having experienced taboo but still sometimes felt that she should not tell new acquaintances about her husband, and Cathryn quickly brushed off the question and went on to talk about how one needs to live with the grief for the rest of one’s life. Yet, even though the four interviewees did not report having an experience of taboo, they still used rephrasing and metaphorical rewritings to talk about suicide. Peter was the exception, but he made a self-conscious choice to call things by their real name as a way of breaking the taboo. This concluding discussion aims to situate these findings within societal debates about appropriate language use for talking about suicide.

The language chosen to talk about suicide is a matter of showing compassion and being respectful toward both the bereaved and the dead, and is thus highly normative. For this reason, Beaton, Forster, and Maple (2012) say that we should not use the words “commit suicide” because this refers to the criminality of the action—in particular, “commit” is associated with murder. Suicide may have been seen as a crime in the past in Europe but is no longer. Sommer-Rotenberg (1998) makes the same point and suggests a number of different rephrasings to talk about suicide, all of which are better than the euphemism “died suddenly” (the phrase used by Emma). She herself uses the phrase “took his own life” to talk about her own son’s suicide. In contrast to both Beaton et al. (2012) and Sommer-Rotenberg (1998), the present study found that the grief group and the members interviewed (except Cathryn) use the metaphor of murder, a criminal act, to make sense of and talk about their conflicting emotions. Moreover, Peter consistently said “commits suicide” when referring to his wife as a strategy to break the taboo. Thus, Beaton et al.’s (2012) recommendations of sensitive strategies for talking to the bereaved by suicide appear naïve without actually considering the language the bereaved themselves use. Although Sommer-Rotenberg (1998) is herself bereaved by suicide, she seems to assume her own experience is the same as others, to the point of criticizing other people’s way of navigating their own grief responses. Individuals and groups may be aware of and orient to wider values (such as connotations of language) but clearly make use of them in their own way and may change their strategy depending on the context.

How can we situate the grief group within these wider debates? Walter (1994) suspects that a support group that facilitates conversations about topics such as death may isolate the members of that given group further from the wider community. The grief group studied here often framed themselves in opposition to the wider social meanings about suicide. While the bereaved reported how people tended to avoid them and the topic of suicide as taboo, the grief group promoted talking about it as well as other people’s reactions. It was perhaps because of the emphasis put on contrasting themselves with society at large that this study observed much greater emphasis on the existence of taboo in group meetings than in individual interviews. In short, taboo is talked about in the context of its absence. Douglas (1993) would class this as an “enclave community” in its reversal of values, flat hierarchy, and strong social regulation in meetings. For example, in one meeting, a new member said “suicide was an act of cowardice,” a common public description of it, but was immediately corrected by other more established members as being a brave action. New members are also socialized into the group using the homicide metaphor that helps to express the simultaneous feeling of being sorry for the victim and angry at the perpetrator. Thus, as Holden (2001) writes, a taboo varies according to the formality of the setting or the group that one is in.

In the individual interviews, there was not only a low emphasis on the issue of taboo but also different use of the same metaphors and phrases. Following Werner (1991), there are circumstances in which an action becomes a subject of taboo and must therefore be rephrased or transformed. When Karen rephrases the suicides of her own children as “chose not to live,” there is no doubt about what is referred to, but it emphasizes agency in a different way. In other cases, a rephrasing might be used more as a device to structure and make sense of their own complicated emotions following a suicide, as with the metaphor of homicide. As noted by Ettin (1994), figurative language can “contain and expand” the emotional experience that is being addressed. This both gives a particular account of suicide and provides a model for the grief group itself as well as a means to explain one’s feelings to an outsider. Thus, we need not follow Werner (1919) to the more extreme conclusion that metaphorical rewritings only occur when there a taboo is present. There are many other alternative explanations for the use of metaphors, such as to facilitate one’s own understanding, be socialized into a group or effectively communicate a certain meaning (in this case to the researcher during an interview). Nonetheless, looking at how, when, and the context in which the metaphors and rephrasing are being used, there is support for the existence of a taboo surrounding suicide. And when the first author asked about “suicide” (always using this phrasing), interviewees responded with metaphorical rewritings in all but Peter’s case.

It should now be clear how metaphorical rephrasing and taboo are interrelated, and more broadly, the important part language plays in experience, group affiliation, and coping with bereavement by suicide. Additionally, a tension between the individual members of the group, the group itself, and the wider public creates a varied landscape of communication expression, which is not always consistent. Taking the notion of taboo a step further and beyond metaphorical rewritings, this article also highlighted the important part that language plays when it comes to not only taboo but also group affiliations: how bereaved by suicide experience language and use it, and how other people [outside the group] reflect upon the language used when talking to bereaved by suicide.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was part of a larger project ‘The Culture of Grief’ at Aalborg Universtiy, which has been supported by the Obel foundation.

Author Biographies

Anna Therese Overvad graduated from the program in Cultural Psychology at Aalborg University in 2018. Her research focuses on the cultural (normative) dimensions of grief, particularly in relation to bereavement by suicide. Her research is based on extended ethnographic fieldwork and firsthand accounts for people who have been bereaved by suicide. She is an active member of the Culture of Grief Danish research center, funded by the Obel Foundation and led by professor Svend Brinkmann.

Brady Wagoner is a professor of Psychology and director of the MA and PhD programs in Cultural Psychology at Aalborg University. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and is currently an associate editor of Culture & Psychology and Peace & Conflict. His research focuses on the cultural and constructive dimensions of the mind, particularly in relation to memory, imagination, and social change. He is currently involved in a large research project on “the culture of grief.” His most recent books include The Constructive Mind: Bartlett’s Psychology in Reconstruction (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Street Art of Resistance with Sarah H. Awad (Palgrave, 2017), Handbook of Culture and Memory (Oxford University Press, 2018), and The Psychology of Radical Social Change with Fathali Moghaddam and Jaan Valsiner (Cambridge University Press, 2018). He has received two early career awards from the American Psychological Association (divisions 24 and 26).

References

Anneberg

(2002). Sorgen ved selvmord [The sorrow of suicide] (1st ed.). København, Denmark: Høst & Søn.

Attig

(2004). Meanings of death seen through the lens of grieving. Death Studies, 28(4), 341–360.

Beaton

S. J.

Forster

M. P.

Maple

(2012). The language of suicide. The Psychologist, 25(10), 731.

Breen

L. J.

O’Connor

(2007). The fundamental paradox in the grief literature: A critical reflection. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 55(3), 199–218.

Chapple

Ziebland

Hawton

(2015). Taboo and the different death? Perceptions of those bereaved by suicide or other traumatic death. Sociology of Health & Illness, 37(3), 610–625.

Christensen

S. T.

Wagoner

(2015). Towards a cultural psychology of metaphor: A holistic-development study of metaphor use in an institutional context. Culture and Psychology, 21(4), 515–531.

Cornejo

(2007). Review essay: Conceptualizing metaphors versus embodying the language. Culture & Psychology, 13, 474–487.

Cornejo

Olivares

Rojas

(2013). The physiognomic and the geometrical apprehensions of metaphor. Culture & Psychology, 19, 484–505.

Cvinar

G. J.

(2005). Do suicide survivors suffer social stigma: A review of the literature. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 41(1), 14–21.

10.

Demuth

(2017). Generalization from single cases and the concept of double dialogicality (pp. 1–17). Berlin, Germany: Springer.

11.

Douglas

(1993). In the wilderness: The doctrine of defilement in the book of numbers. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

12.

Emborg Bejder

(2011). Den død, vi ikke taler om [The death we are not talking about]. Kristeligt Dagblad. Retrieved from https://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/liv-sj%C3%A6l/den-d%C3%B8d-vi-ikke-taler-om

13.

Ettin, M. F. (1994). Symbolic representation and the components of a group-as-a-whole model. International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 44, 209–231.

14.

Flick

(2014). An introduction to qualitative research (5th ed.). London, England: SAGE.

15.

Freud

(1917/1984). Mourning and melancholia. In S. Freud (Ed.), On metapsychology (pp. 251–267). London, England: Pelican Freud Library.

16.

Granek

(2010). Grief as pathology: The evolution of grief theory in psychology from Freud to the present. History of Psychology, 13(1), 46–73.

17.

Harvey, J. H. (1998). Perspectives on loss: A sourcebook. Philadelphia: Brunner/Mazel.

18.

Holden

(2001). Taboos: Structure and rebellion (pp. 2–23). London, England: The Institute for Cultural Research.

19.

Jordan

R. J.

McIntosh

L. J.

(2014). Grief after suicide: Understanding the consequences and caring for the survivors (pp. 3–534). New York, NY: Routledge.

20.

Klass

(2006). Continuing conversation about continuing bonds. Death Studies, 30(9), 843–858.

21.

Kofod

E. H.

Brinkmann

(2017). Grief as a normative phenomenon: The diffuse and ambivalent normativity of infant loss and parental grieving in contemporary Western culture. Culture & Psychology, 23(4), 519–533.

22.

Lakoff

Johnson

(1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

23.

Metcalf

Huntington

(1991). Celebrations of death: The anthropology of mortuary ritual. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

24.

Peters

Cunningham

Murphy

Jackson

(2016). ‘ People look down on you when you tell them how he died’: Qualitative insights into stigma as experienced by suicide survivors. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 25, 251–257.

25.

Sommer-Rotenberg

(1998). Suicide and language. Canadian Medical Association, 159(3), 239–240.

26.

Stake, R. E. (2005). Qualitative case studies. In: N. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 443–466). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

27.

Stearns

P. N.

Knapp

(1996). Historical perspectives on grief. In Harré

Parrott

W. G.

(Eds.), The emotions: Social, cultural, and biological dimensions (pp. 132–150). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

28.

Valsiner

(2014). An invitation to cultural psychology. London, England: SAGE.

29.

Walter

(1994). The revival of death. New York, NY: Routledge.

30.

Walter

(2006). What is complicated grief? A social constructionist perspective. OMEGA—Journal of Death and Dying, 52(1), 71–79.

31.

Werner

(1919). Die Ursprünge der Metapher [The origins of metaphor]. Leipzig, Germany: Wilhelm Engelmann.

32.

Young

(2008). Figures of grief: Metaphors from a bereavement writing group. OMEGA—Journal of Death and Dying, 56(4), 359–367.