Seale Clive
Department of Human Sciences, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 3PH, UK.
Soc Sci Med. 2004 Mar;58(5):967-74. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2003.10.038.
In this study, newspaper accounts of people who die alone are analysed, drawing on a sample of 90 articles in the anglophone press that appeared in October 1999. Dying alone is represented as a fearful fate and a moral affair, often being the outcome of an undesirable personal character, either of the deceased or of onlookers, or involving the failings of society at large. It is frequently portrayed as occurring to people who are either geographically or socially distant from 'home', so that an imagined community of readers is encouraged to contemplate a death alone as the consequence of personal or societal breakdown. A degree of stigmatisation, sometimes of those who die alone, sometimes of those perceived to have caused this event, was evident. The negative evaluation of death alone parallels that found in some traditional societies where a death far from home is considered 'bad'. Dying alone contrasts significantly with the sociable, 'good', confessional deaths of newspaper columnists and other media celebrities facing terminal illness.
在本研究中，我们分析了关于孤独死亡者的报纸报道，这些报道取材于1999年10月在英语媒体上发表的90篇文章样本。孤独死亡被描绘成一种可怕的命运和道德事件，往往是死者或旁观者不良个人性格的结果，或者涉及整个社会的缺陷。它常常被描述为发生在那些在地理上或社会上远离“家”的人身上，从而促使想象中的读者群体去思考孤独死亡是个人或社会崩溃的后果。一种污名化现象很明显，有时针对孤独死亡者，有时针对那些被认为导致了这一事件的人。对孤独死亡的负面评价与一些传统社会中对远离家乡的死亡被视为“不好”的看法相似。孤独死亡与报纸专栏作家和其他身患绝症的媒体名人那种社交性的、“美好的”、忏悔式的死亡形成了显著对比。
