Precedent Allusions in the Structure of the English Detective Image

Abstract

Detective discourse abounds in linguistic units with cultural value including precedent phenomena that realize different functions and thus, are employed to achieve particular goals. Forensic fiction texts making use of precedent phenomena as efficient tools of encoding meaning are of special interest. The research is done within the framework of the theory of linguacultural types, discursive research and the theory of precedence. The relevance of the article is due to the interest of modern linguistics in the precedent phenomena studied in the functional and cognitive aspects. Significant features of linguacultural type are wide recognition, typicality and precedence. The focus is on English and American detective discourse. The research methods applied in this study were method of continuous sampling, semantic analysis, the methods of discursive and contextual analysis. This study seeks to investigate the precedent features of masculine linguacultural type “private detective”, represented by the fictional private eye Sherlock Holmes, the protagonist of Arthur Conan Doyle. The task is to define the types of the precedent phenomena with the help of which the precedent feature of the cultural type “private detective” are actualizes in the English language detective discourse. The material includes fiction, cinema and cartoon genres. The author systematizes the repertoire of the precedent phenomena of the English detective discourse, singles out types, identifies the source domains. The study concludes that the masculine linguacultural type “private detective” is a precedent one, as its main cognitive attributes are verbalized by means of precedent phenomena in various genres of English-language detective discourse.

Keywords

• cognitive linguistics
• theory of precedence
• detective discourse
• detective genre
• cognitive feature
• precedent phenomena
• precedent character