Genre-thematic and pragmatic peculiarities of detective stories

Abstract

The article studies genre-thematic and communicative-pragmatic peculiarities of modern German detective stories, claims their popularity as mass literature works, specifies the narrative method. The focus is on linguopragmatic analysis of story titles as strong text positions that actualize a number of correlating functions (characterological, attractive, expressive, and emotive). Structurally and semantically various titles can either reflect the content of the story or mislead the reader, thus actualizing the function of defeated expectancy. The article defines structural-semantic features of titles as specific strong signs of a detective text that predetermine the reader’s “action schemes” as regards the comprehension of a whole content. Comparative ant contextological analyses reveal functional peculiarities of titles and thematic key words in the associative space. The genre of a detective is claimed as one of the most prolific genres of mass culture as it efficiently combines mass and elite types of culture in fiction. Strict thematic and stylistic frames of the stories under analysis are predetermined by content and composition stereotypes and aesthetic patterns. All together they provoke “action schemes”, i.e. genre and pragmatic expectations, in the reader’s mind.

Keywords

• pragmatic peculiarities
• detective story
• mass literature
• bestseller
• strong position
• title pragmatics