2。 Literature Review

Previous studies have already looked at the obituary section in the newspaper from various perspectives such as journalism, linguistics and statistics。 Obituary has a long history in Chinese newspapers but was ignored in a long time。 Since 2000, a lot of newspapers have established obituary pages。 Obituary was very short at first; the content of obituary became richer afterwards。 Xiang Daily established obituary page in 2004。 After that more and more newspapers established obituary page, for example the Beijing News and the Nanfang City Daily。 The research article related to the obituary appeared in large amount after 2004 too。 English majors have a tendency to look at this topic from the angle of translation and linguistics, while concerning the problems in Chinese newspaper such as formulism writing, entertaiment-driven content that influence the development of obituary page, it is journalists and researchers who have done a series of studies on the choice of subject matter and writing method so as to smooth the obituary’s development。 

The studies on the obituary in the Western start earlier than in China。 Marilyn Johnson, an American writer, whose first book, The Dead Beat, “explores the world of obituaries—both the journalists who write them and the readers who love them。” The New York Times Book Review called it“[A] fascinating book about the art, history, and subculture of obituary writing”and singled out its chapters on obituary fans and readers as“downright amazing。”More than that, some paper analyzed obituaries in nineteenth- and twentieth- century newspapers for both content and context and seek to chart values emphasized in obituaries surrounding generally agreed-upon turning points in the nation's political and cultural history, times when the nation was becoming more inclusive; some paper focused on the collective memory that obituaries reflect in a given time period such as the eighteenth century in America; some did a comparative analysis on the behind cultural in Canada and the United States or in Great Britain and the United States。 文献综述

Before embarking on my paper, I look at the previous studies at home and abroad and find that few materials are available concerning the the cultural difference behind the obituary pages in the Western and in China。 Therefore, here it is。