Référence et identité dans les récits policiers
Reference and identity in mystery novels

Summary/Abstract: Reference is one of the most captivating and complex subjects for those with a passion for linguistics. Not only linguists, but also logicians and even writers (sometimes undesignedly) have explored one or another offset of this subject. It is no wonder that mystery novels are an excellent illustration of the domain of reference, including identity. Mystery novels are built around a (central) question of identity: “Who is the assassin?” The mystery of the novel (as the name of the genre suggests) comes precisely from the unknown identity of the presumed murderer. From here other questions arise: How do we refer to a person we do not know? By what linguistic means? The path from the central question to its final answer is what we can call a referential dialogue, during which the participants to the investigation come along with different hypothesis, waiting to be certified or infirmed. By using concepts of the areas of erotetics, analytic philosophy and pragmatics, our goal is to demonstrate that mystery novels, as a specific literary genre work, from a linguistic point of view, in the same manner.

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