總結來說，本研究認為，死亡的研究應開始嘗試探問在不同的時代與社會脈絡中，人們如何討論、想像、建構死亡，面對死亡的態度為何，並挖掘這些思考與意義建立如何反映某時代獨特社會秩序、集體心態及價值觀。本研究藉由探討安寧論述之死亡意義建構，及與社會文化的關係，所強調的是，在任何意義建構過程中，人們賴以生存與思考的社會文化總扮演核心角色。 This thesis concerns about the social construction of death in modern society. In This research, we apply hospice care discourse for a critical case to discuss how it plays an important part in the discourse formation of death in modern society and interprets the relationships between hospice care discourse and our local cultures.
Firstly, this research applies metaphor theory to find out how people figure out the meaning of death form modern medical science discourse to hospice care discourse. We find the metaphoric concepts in modern medical science discourse are mechanical metaphor and military metaphor which think death is dreadful and must be resisted. And the metaphoric concepts in hospice care discourse are natural phenomena metaphor and road/ journey metaphor which imply the ineluctability of death.
Secondly, hospice care discourse from western countries tightly connected to the discourses of modern medical science, religion, family and consumer rights in our society. It shows the intertextuality between hospice discourse and our cultures.
Finally, this research argues that the researches about death must try to ask how people discuss death, face death and construct the meaning of death, to reveal how the construction of meaning reflects the social order and culture values. We argue that in any process of meaning building, the cultures we live by play important roles.
