An obituary is a text found in newspapers and, increasingly, online which outlines the life and achievements of someone who has recently died.
As with all texts, there are some key linguistic and stylistic features which are common to this form of writing:
Purpose: to inform the reader about someone's life and achievements; to show respect for a person's life and to give a truthful account of their life.
Audience: reader interested in the life of that person - often well known; can be interesting to find out about people you didn't know about; part of the newspaper - towards the back - adult audience - broadsheet reader.
Structure & Discourse: written mode; introductory paragraph with the name, age, date / reason of death, overview of what they were well known for (this can be over a couple of paragraphs before starting the chronological account of a life); predominantly past tense. Present tense used to describe the family left behind e.g he is survived by...../ he leaves a wife and two children....; paragraphs reflect different aspects of the person's life; clear discourse markers to denote a chronological structure e.g then. after that, in 2006; starts with birth and parentage > education> marriage / relationships> key jobs > key interests>reference to the funeral; third person.
Lexis & Semantics: proper nouns with names and places important in the person's life; lexical field of family; lexical field of area person was involved with e.g business, art etc; positive use of lexis; adjectives to describe character and achievements; modified formal - accessible lexis. Not reliant on imagery.
Grammar: declarative in mood - informative in tone; use of embedded clauses to add information about the person; starts sentences in a variety of ways e.g with subordinate clauses; sometimes use of quotation in direct speech; no contracted forms;
Phonology: an obituary in a newspaper might have a headline - alliterative, pun (if appropriate) but phonological features are not a specific feature.
Task 1: Find an example of an obituary and identify as many of the features as you can. You can use a copy I have in class or follow the links here: Peaches Geldof Obituary Sargy Mann Obituary
Task 2: Using a House in Corfu by Emma Tennant from the start of the second paragraph to ...."any sense of a gloomy haunting" (page 285), write an obituary for Emma's father for an English newspaper. He is not named in the text so you can make up a name for him.
Work out key dates, family ties, important places, key events etc from the text.
Task 3: Write a commentary - explain how you structured your piece, the key lexical choices you made and why; what type of mood you were trying to create through your grammar choices etc.
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