Introduction Language, defined as the phraseology and vocabulary of a particular profession, country, or society, is suggested to encapsulate the knowledge and philosophy developed within a society (Boroditsky, 2011). Thus, from the perspective that language reflects culture and influences thought, this essay will investigate the degree to which language and thought convey the idiosyncrasies of a distinct culture. Reflection on medicalisation in Western culture and religious discourse from the perspective of Hinduism will be utilised to compare and illustrate the extent to which language expresses the cultural meaning of death and dying. In accordance, this essay will analyse the contrasting social discourse of medicine and religion, to exemplify the layers of meaning that have resulted in diverging attitudes experienced with relation to fear and acceptance. Meyerhoff, Camino, and Turner (1987) posit that although biology dictates the fundamentals of individual experience, the ways in which humankind mediate these imperatives through cultural means are inexhaustible. Discourse on death and dying represents one way in which humankind express this sociocultural variation. Thus, while considerable debate persists regarding whether death and dying exist as a biological or spiritual …show more content…
Death and dying presents a problem to this discipline of knowledge, wherein the possibility of the afterlife remains to be a mystery. For this reason, Western culture approaches death with fear of the unknown. This fear promotes research into fields of prolonging life, in comparison to acceptance that death is a natural inevitability. Hinduism was utilised as an exemplar of how religious discourse provides comfort to the phenomenon of death and dying, wherein it was conceptualised as an event to