东方快车谋杀案悬念的语篇分析.docxVIP

PAGE 8 ABSTRACT 　　Detective fictions are always attractive due to its suspense, and how to create the suspense becomes important skill for authors. Agatha’s work Murder on the Orient Express is also known for its art of suspense. 　　The study focuses on the suspense analysis in discourse of Agatha’s famous work, the Murder on the Orient Express, and the analysis is based on Grice’s Theory of Conversational Implicature. By analyzing how conversations obey or violate the theory, it is learnt that conversations create different types of suspense, and each of the suspense has respective effect in the Murder of the Orient Express. 　　 The study indicated that some conversations violating Maxim of Quantity are designed for providing overall suspense, and they draw readers’ attention and leads readers to go ahead in the book; some conversations violating Maxim of Manner or Relation are set for creating suspense by foreshadowing as well as being revealer to the foreshadow, and they lead readers to predict or guess the following plots; and some conversations violating Maxim of Quality or Relation aim to create reversal effect against the former suspense, they bring surprise to readers and dramatic effect to the whole story; and those obey the Maxims are used for telling truth. Following the discourse analysis of suspense based on the theory, readers can deeper understand how the suspense being created in the book and Agatha’s ingenious design of suspense in the conversation. 　　Keywords: Discourse Analysis, suspense, Grice’s Theory of Conversational Implicature, Murder on Orient Express Chapter One Introduction 1.1 Background of the Thesis 　　Agatha Christies works are characteristic in layout and plot; she is an excellent detective fiction writer whose life is as colorful as what she wrote in his work. In her works, the sign of her own life can always be discovered, like the Murder on the Orient Express used as materials in this thesis, of which the inspiration comes from