Language|Hiding the cause of Kurt Cobain’s death behind a roundabout expression has caused irritation
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The Seattle museum used the term unlived instead of suicide.
Unalived has gone viral on Tiktok and online forums.
There are several reasons for using circular expression, one of which is to soften the tone.
Committing suicide was once a crime defined by law.
Suicide The use of the word suicide evokes mixed feelings in the English-speaking world and especially in social media.
Subject emerged recently in the United States, when a Seattle museum presenting the history of pop music used a rock musician who had committed suicide Kurt Cobain’s in the information, instead of the word suicide, the term unalived.
The new word Unalived has spread in recent years, especially as used by young people on Tiktok and online discussion forums. In addition to suicide, the term can also sometimes mean death more generally.
Circular expression there are several reasons for use.
It has been used to try to moderate the tone of messages and comments and those suffering from mental health problems anxietybut also avoid possible deletion of messages.
On the other hand, the commonly used expression “committed suicide” in the English language has had a more judgmental tone than, for example, the Finnish word “teki suicide”, because the word commit also means guilt.
Committing suicide was once a crime defined by law, and in Britain, for example, suicide was decriminalized only in 1961. In many African and Asian countries, it is still defined as a crime.
In Finland, suicide ceased to be a crime in 1889. Before that, the property of the person who committed suicide could be awarded to the state, so the punishment was directed at the deceased’s relatives.
Nirvana singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain suffered from mental health problems and heroin addiction. He committed suicide in April 1994.
UnalivedThe use of the word is also an example of the transition of expressions used in social media to common language.
Not everyone liked it, and Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture also received so much negative feedback on its sign that nowadays the text is in the form “Kurt Cobain died by suicide”.
In the Finnish language, there are no similar idioms that have come into general use, but a doctor of philosophy who studied the language used online Lasse Hämäläinen The University of Helsinki considers it entirely possible that such things will still be seen on, for example, Tiktok and X.
There are also big differences in discussion communities.
“Because of work, I’ve been reading a lot of the Ylilauta forum, where you really don’t hesitate to use harsh expressions on even sensitive topics.”
Hämäläinen I think it’s interesting that talking about suicide was avoided precisely in the case of Kurt Cobain, because his death has been reported openly as a suicide in the public since the beginning.
“It was unusual from the media’s point of view. Usually, if there is a suspicion of suicide in a death, it is rarely written openly in the media.”