THE DEATH DEODORANT

OBITUARIES IN KENYA’S PRINT MEDIA

Abstract

“We loved you but God loved you more. Rest in peace” The reality, the certainty, the finality of death, the human helplessness when death strikes make it one of the human experiences shrouded in mystery, silence and fear. This distress associated with death is not made any better by the fact that imagining and making reference to death even when it is a daily occurrence is a near taboo thing. Death’s stillness and ruthlessness, makes it hard to be talked about. Nevertheless, when death occurs, people must be informed. How death is communicated considering that human as social beings are not limited in their abilities to describe their social realities becomes an interesting socio-linguistic study. Against this background this paper attempts an application of “framing” theory to analyze the concept of death in Kenyan obituaries.