The dissertation represents the results of the research of communicative strategies and tactics used by the detective character during the investigation of a crime. While in real communication it is extremely difficult to establish the communicative strategies and tactics of the speaker, in the fictional discourse the author's remarks and the characters’ internal speech unveil the pragmatic intentions of the communicators, their communicative intentions, strategies and tactics with the help of contextual interpretive analysis. The present study is focused on the communicative strategies and tactics used by the professional detective and the amateur detective, characters of the English-language fictional detective discourse, in order to obtain the necessary information and solve the crime. The fictional detective discourse is seen as a status-role communication, built as a certain sequence in accordance with the stereotype, depicted by the author in such a way as to keep the reader in suspense until the moment of identifying the murderer’s identity. Detective discourse is characterized by proceduralism (interviewing witnesses and suspects) and logical analysis of facts performed by the detective and his assistant(s). The chronotope of detective discourse is the spatial-temporal coordinates within which the investigation of a crime (usually a murder) takes place from the moment of committing the crime to the moment of its disclosure, localized not only at the scene of the crime, but also at the places where witnesses and suspects are interviewed and, finally, charged.
Modeling of detective discourse characters includes five types of communicative personalities: Detective, Murderer, Assistant Detective, Witness, Victim. The comparison of the verbal behavior of the police detective and the amateur detective shows similar trends in the use of strategies and tactics, which is due to their similar social role status: the police constable Hamish Macbeth does not have access to police resources and relies only on his own intelligence, diligence and desire to solve the crime at all costs. Similar to the amateur detective Agatha Raisin, he interviews witnesses and suspects without having the authority to do so. This fact predetermines the use of the strategy of direct questioning and controlling the course of the conversation only in half of the investigated communicative situations, while in other situations both detectives go for «strategic tricks», using the strategies of emotional and manipulative influence in order to coax witnesses and «fish out» necessary information from them.
Key words: fictional detective discourse, intention, pragmatics, communicative strategy, communicative tactics, character, detective, sleuth, dialogue, social status, gender, manipulation, impact, speech act, prosody, intonation, audit analysis, duration, speech variation, scale, terminal tone, terminal tone, tone frequency.
