Relations of alternativeness in the fiction world picture of the detective (on the material of novels by P.Cornwell)

Abstract

The article discusses the role of alternative in modelling the world picture in P. Cornwell’s detective novels «All That Remains», «The Body of Evidence», «Postmortem». Results of the research implying distributional and contextual methods of analysis testify that alternative relations, complicated by incremental meaning of insufficient knowledge and correction serve for reconstruction of the investigation, crime scenes, criminal’s personality and various details, essential for solving the crime. They can occur in the inner represented speech of the main character, the medical examiner Kay Scarpetta and in her dialogues with the investigators. Constructions of alternative semantics, used for explanation, contain specific terms, jargonisms and their definitions, which helps to introduce to the reader the realities of medical examiner’s and investigator’s routine work. Parts of the sentence or separate sentences, connected by the disjunctive conjunctions, contain words relating to criminology and forensic medicine, which contributes to the creation of the atmosphere of the detective novel. The research confirms once again the fact that the use of conjunctions of alternative semantics in definite contextual environment brings about the actualization of certain types of alternative relations which reflect such fragments of individual world picture that seem significant in terms of the content of fiction work.

Keywords

• alternative
• fiction work
• fiction world picture
• language world picture
• human consciousness
• conjunction
• alternative semantics