Cultural Conceptualizations of “Death” in Bakhtiari Dialect of Zazomahroo

Cultural conceptualizations show the ways of thinking and world view of a linguistic community toward the phenomena. The study of the conceptualizations leads to the profound understanding of the relevant cultures, facilitate cross cultural interactions, and remove cultural misunderstandings. This research, using the descriptive – analytical method, tries to study cultural conceptualizations in Zazomahroo Bakhtiari Dialect and describe their cultural origins. Regarding to nomadic and rural lifestyle of the people living in the region and their direct contact to the nature, the natural elements and phenomena provide a basis for cultural conceptualizations. Statistical population is 500 of the death-related phrases, expression, lamentations and proverbs which are used in this dialect. Data have been collected by field study and through interview and inquiry. The results of the studying and analysing of the data show that the origins of the cultural conceptualizations lie in the nomadic and rural lifestyle, people’s beliefs and ideas, the physiological effects of death-related feelings and emotions on body organs and people’s imaginations toward death. This lifestyle leads to the direct contact to the nature; therefore, the violent aspects of the nature phenomena are used as a concrete domain in conceptualizing of abstract concept of “death”. Death cultural conceptualizations such as “north wind, flood, avalanche, thunder and lightning” or “extinguishing of the fire, falling of one’s gravel or collapsing of the tent column” are due to the inspiration of the natural phenomena and rural-nomadic lifestyle.



1. Introduction



Cultural linguistics studies the relationship between the language and culture and their interactions on each other; Language is the subcategory of the culture that reflect the different features of the culture. Cultural conceptualizations are linguistic tools that reflect the abstract concepts of language, by using the cultural elements of the society such as religious traditions, beliefs, lifestyle, and imaginations of speakers. Cultural elements of various societies are different; therefore, the study of the conceptualizations creates opportunities for speakers to understand culture-specific differences and to better realize the different cultures. On the other hand, culture is the invisible heritage of each society and the study of cultural conceptualizations helps the culture to be protected.

Bakhtiari Dialect is one of the dialects of Persian that is spoken in the center and south west of Iran and this dialect has different variants. One of these variants is spoken in Zazomahro region which is located in the south east of Lorestan Province. This is a mountainous region and people have a rural and nomadic lifestyle. This lifestyle provides the use of nature in producing conceptualizations. In this study, some examples of culture-specific conceptualizations have been studied that show the effect of lifestyle and the continuous contact with nature and the effect of the natural elements on human are important factors in reflecting the conceptualizations in language and instantiate the human experiences in language. Therefore, the role of natural elements can be studied in conceptualization of “death” and the relevant of rural and nomadic lifestyle can be determined in cultural conceptualizations. In this research we are trying to find the answer to this question: “how are the conceptualizations of death realized and instantiated in Bakhtiari Dialect”. We can say that because the lifestyle can have effect on language, the conceptualization of death can be instantiated by using the natural elements which have a great role in rural and nomadic lifestyle.



2. Literature Review

Theoretical framework of this research is cultural linguistics. Cultural linguistics has two kinds of framework: theoretical and analytical. The foundation of theoretical framework is cultural cognition and the foundation of analytical framework is “cultural categories, cultural schema and cultural metaphors”. Cultural linguistics uses these tools to show the relationship between language and cultural conceptualizations. Human beings represent their experiments through these conceptualizations and they are different among different cultures.

The present research is analysed through the cultural schema. Cultural schema are conceptual framework which are shared between cultural groups heterogeneously ( Sharifian, 2011,p24). Cultural schemas (and subschemas) capture beliefs, norms, rules, and expectations of behaviour as well as values relating to various aspects and components of experience (sharifian, 2017). Cultural schemas that provide a ground for pragmatic meaning are called cultural pragmatic schema which reflect specific speech acts in different situations. Sharifian (2017) represents a pragmatic set for cultural pragmatic schema including cultural pragmatic schema, speech act/event, pragmeme and pract. They have a hierarchy relationship. Therefore, the correct interpretation of practs needs the knowledge of underlying pragmatic schema, speech acts/ events and pragmemes. Sharifian (2017) represents the following example for pragmeme- pract set:

Pragmeme: [Greeting ti a new employee]

Pract: [ nice to have you with us]

It should be said that cultural pragmatic schema produce speech acts and speech acts produce special pragmemes which are realized as different practs.





3. methodology

This research has been done on the basis of the analytical-descriptive method. The statistical population is the expression, idioms, proverbs and the elegies that are used in this dialect. Data were collected by field study, using interviewing, and attending among people and taking part in different ceremonies. 17 people between 45 and 70 were interviewed, 10 men and 7 women. Different linguistic research methods were used including conceptual-associative analysis, corpus approach, and conceptual text/visual analysis. Data were divided into two general categories, data related to natural elements and data related to human body. Next, these data divided to subcategories. Then, the data that were related to the conceptualizations of death were analysed and interpreted.



4. Results

The findings of the present research show that the rural-nomadic lifestyle, environmental conditions, beliefs, ideas, imaginations and conceptions of people have a role in producing cultural conceptualizations. Due to the role of the nature in the life of the people in this region and their continuous contact with the nature, many of the conceptualizations relevant to the death are inspired by the natural phenomena. Among the natural phenomena, those which have destructive, threatening and dreadful power, have a stronger role in cultural conceptualization. Lightning, flood, wind, storm, snow-slide and fire that have destructive and dreadful effect, are used in cultural conceptualizations in this region. People of this region use these dreadful natural phenomena as a concrete domain to represent the concept of death as an abstract domain and the cultural conceptualizations of death can be represented as “death is the north wind, death is the flood, death is a snow-slide, death is a lightning” or “death is the putting out the fire, death is the falling of the gravel, and death is the collapsing of the column of the black tent”. People’s beliefs on nature and its phenomena also have a role in producing the cultural conceptualizations. For example, they conceptualize the death as “melting the star of a person” because they believe that every person has a star in the sky, when a person dies, their star becomes melted and disappears. The rural and nomadic lifestyle has also a role in producing cultural conceptualization. For example, the conceptualizing “death as going” has a root in the style of their life as nomadic people are travelling all the time to find a good place for feeding their animals. Another conceptualization of the death is “giving one’s life to the other person”. This conceptualization has a root in their religious beliefs, saying that the death is not the end of the life but is changing from one form to the other. Altogether, the lifestyle, nature and its phenomena, people’s beliefs toward the death form a conceptual basis for producing cultural conceptualization of the death in Zazomahroo Region.