TY - JOUR

T1 - ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ deaths

T2 - narratives and professional identities in interviews with hospice managers

AU - Semino, Elena

AU - Demjen, Zsofia

AU - Koller, Veronika

N1 - This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page(http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm). The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Discourse Studies, 16 (5), 2014, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2014 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Discourse Studies page: http://dis.sagepub.com/ on SAGE Journals Online: http://online.sagepub.com/

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - This article explores the formal and functional characteristics of narratives of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ deaths as they were told by thirteen UK-based hospice managers in the course of semi-structured interviews. The interviewees’ responses include a variety of remarkably consistent ‘narratives of successful/frustrated intervention’, which exhibit distinctive formal characteristics in terms of the starting point and core of the action, the choice of personal pronouns and metaphors, and the ways in which positive and negative evaluation is expressed. In functional terms, the hospice managers’ narratives play an important role in representing and constructing their professional views, challenges and identities. Overall, the narratives argue for the role of hospices and professional hospice staff in facilitating a ‘good’ death, and, by presenting a relatively unified view, may potentially preclude alternative perspectives.

AB - This article explores the formal and functional characteristics of narratives of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ deaths as they were told by thirteen UK-based hospice managers in the course of semi-structured interviews. The interviewees’ responses include a variety of remarkably consistent ‘narratives of successful/frustrated intervention’, which exhibit distinctive formal characteristics in terms of the starting point and core of the action, the choice of personal pronouns and metaphors, and the ways in which positive and negative evaluation is expressed. In functional terms, the hospice managers’ narratives play an important role in representing and constructing their professional views, challenges and identities. Overall, the narratives argue for the role of hospices and professional hospice staff in facilitating a ‘good’ death, and, by presenting a relatively unified view, may potentially preclude alternative perspectives.

KW - Death and dying

KW - end of life

KW - narrative

KW - professional identities

KW - tellability

U2 - 10.1177/1461445614538566

DO - 10.1177/1461445614538566

M3 - Journal article

VL - 16

SP - 667

EP - 685

JO - Discourse Studies

JF - Discourse Studies

SN - 1461-4456

IS - 5

ER -