Structural characteristics of detective stories

Abstract

This study analyzes and describes the internal structure of detective stories from the linguistic approach. The research results show that: in addition to the common characteristics in the structure of a literary work, a narrative work, the structure of detective stories has some outstanding characteristics: (i) In the surface structure, the opening part is always the event of the investigator character receiving the case, the story always has two plots (while most short stories and novels only have one plot), the details are thrilling, attractive, surprising, the story structure is often quite fixed in three parts: receiving the case - investigating and solving the case - announcing the truth; (ii) In the intermediate structure, the character system is typological: investigator type, victim type, suspect type, perpetrator type...; (iii) In the deep structure, after the thrilling case, the story often aims to convey messages guiding people to humane values.