Literature Review

1. Discourse Analysis: Definitions

Zellig Harris, a linguist specializing in sentences, coined the term "discourse analysis" in a
1952 article of the same name. Discourse analysis, as he defines it, "is an approach for the
analysis of linked speech or putting thoughts on paper, so that descriptive linguistics can
go beyond the confines of a single sentence (Harris 1952). Scholars have also attested to
the difficulty of settling on a single, all-encompassing concept of discourse analysis.
Nonetheless, 'the analysis of speech' is a useful shorthand that can be used to ease the
effort to define discourse analysis. And so, we must move on to the next pressing issue:
what is discourse?

Discourse analysis looks at the relationship between language and the situations in which
it is used. Discourse analysis is not just about describing and analyzing how people talk to
each other. It is also interested in how people organize what they write. (McCarthy 1991 :
12)

In its most basic form, discourse is just the act of using language (Brown & Yule 1983;
Cook 1989). As a result, the study of how language is actually used is known as discourse
analysis. When we talk about "language in use," we refer to the expectations, conventions,
and linguistic preferences that place a language within its larger social and historical
context. Another way to define discourse analysis is as the study of how language is
structured at a more abstract level than individual sentences. On occasion, 'text' will be
substituted with 'discourse. Discourse analysis isn't just interested in how language works
formally; it also cares about how language functions in different social and cultural
settings. Thus, discourse analysis investigates the interplay between language (in all its
forms, including writing, speech, and formal discourse) and its various social and cultural
settings. The most important thing is for the reader to feel like they can follow the story.

Discourse, as defined by Cook (1989:6-7), is the "language in use" or "language used to

communicate something felt to be coherent," regardless of whether the actual words used
in the communication match up with a correct sentence or set of correct sentences.
Discourse analysis, in his view, is the pursuit of what provides coherence in discourse. He
argues that the length or complexity of a piece of discourse is irrelevant, and that it might
range from a grunt or simple curse to a novel or a lengthy court case , that it conveys
meaning and is understood by its audience is more important than any adherence to formal
conventions. Discourse analysis is seen in a similar light by Stubbs (1983:1), who defines
it as "a collection of attempts to investigate the arrangement of language and, by extension,
to examine larger linguistic entities, such as conversational exchanges or written text."
We restate our belief that the study of discourse should focus on how language is arranged
to convey meaning to its listeners, whether that meaning is contained inside the clauses of
a sentence or not.
Discourse analysis developed from studies in a variety of fields in the 1960s and 1970s,
including linguistics, semiotics, anthropology, psychology, and sociology. In this section,
we take a look at some of the researchers and their provided impetus to, or contributed to
the growth of, discourse analysis are as follows: Speech-act theory, popularized by J.L.
Austin in How to Do Things with Words (1962), is a branch of sociology that examines
interactions between people. Studying language from a sociological angle was the
contribution of Dell Hymes (1964). Following in Austin's footsteps, John Searle (1969)
expanded and refined his ideas. In the 1970s, M.A.K. Halliday's work offered adequate
context for the examination of the functional approach to language, and his writings have
had a significant impact on the linguistic features of discourses (e.g. Halliday 1961). (e.g.
Halliday 1973). The development of conversational maxims and the birth of social
semiotics may be traced back to the work of H.P. Grice (1975) and Halliday (1978), two
researchers who were pivotal in the study of language as social action. The approach for
describing classroom dialogue was also created by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975).

The research morphed into a prominent theoretical framework for talking about language.
The field of discourse analysis benefited from the work of conversation analysts as well.
The works of Gumperz and Hymes are two examples of those in the ethnomethodological
canon 1972. Goffman (1976, 1979) and Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1990) are also
seminal in the field of conversation analysis (1974). Below is an attempt to provide a more
systematic look into some of the methods to discourse, given that the brief assessment
above demonstrates that the approach to discourse is everything but uniform.

1.1 Approaches to discourse

There are several different contexts in which the phrase "discourse analysis" has been
used. academic fields and institutes to elaborate on their activities and methods. take
action, or else. Many of the Many of these persons have linguistics degrees and self-
identify as some people define themselves primarily as linguists, whereas others do so
disciplines as far-flung and dissimilar as anthropology, communication, cultural
disciplines such as "studies," "psychology," and "education." Because of this, we can
deduce that, under discourse analysis, however most individuals act independently within
their in their own ways, using techniques and strategies that are unique to them.
appropriate to the subject matter they're studying. Nonetheless, the one thing that all
research enthusiasm appears to unite these initiatives. impacts of language and
communication.
As a result, Deborah Schiffrin (1994:5) acknowledges that discourse analysis is both a
wide and poorly defined field within the study of language. She cites as an example of the
causes that The research that forms the basis of our knowledge of discourse comes from a
wide range of fields of study. Another is that models and methods for analyzing discourse
were initially developed in fields like linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy;
however, these have been employed and extended in tackling issues originating in fields
like communication, social psychology, and artificial intelligence. Speech act theory,
interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, pragmatics, conversation
analysis, and variation analysis are only few of the methods for linguistic study of
discourse that Schiffrin covers in her 1994 book, Approaches to Discourse. This section
therefore provides a synopsis of the methods Schiffrin identifies for linguistic analysis of
dialogue. This article tries to familiarize the reader with a variety of linguistic methods for
analyzing dialogue. Therefore, the reader is directed to Schiffrin (1994) and other similar
texts by this exercise (the summary offered below) for further information on these
methods.

1.2 Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical discourse analysis investigates the relationships between language use and its
social and political contexts. The course examines how gender, ethnicity, cultural
difference, ideology, and identity are produced and represented in texts. It also explores
how language builds social interactions and is constructed by them. The textual analysis
portion of a critical analysis may be followed by an explanation and interpretation of the
analysis. It could then proceed to deconstruct and challenge the inspected text(s). This may
involve tracing underlying ideologies from the linguistic aspects of a text, analyzing
specific biases and ideological presuppositions underlying the text, and linking the text to
other texts and to the experiences and opinions of individuals.

The premise of critical discourse analysis is that language use is always social and that
speech "reflects and develops the social environment" (Rogers 2011 : 1). A critical
analysis could examine how certain texts represent themes such as gender, ideology, and
identity. This could begin with an analysis of discourse usage. Moving on to an
explanation and interpretation of the discourse from there. The analysis could then proceed
to analyse and critique the texts, tracing ideologies and assumptions underpinning the use
of speech and tying them to diverse worldviews, experiences, and beliefs (Clark 1995 ).
Principles of critical discourse analysis

Fairclough and Wodak (1997), on the other hand, outline a set of principles for critical
discourse analysis that underpin the majority of research conducted in this field. These
consist of :
  social and political issues are constructed and reflected in discourse
 power relations are negotiated and performed through discourse
 discourse both reflects and reproduces social relations
 ideologies are produced and reflected in the use of discourse.

1.3 Conversation Analysis

An technique to speech known as "conversation analysis" established by a school of

thought called as ethnomethodologists. They are called ethnomethodologists since their
primary goal is to learn what the processes by which individuals take part in and make
sense of social interaction. The Using a variety of methods, ethnomethodologists analyzed
how different groups of people used language in a They weren't intentionally making
samples for language researchers. For them, instances supplied by skilled linguists were
artificial because Unlike natural speech, these statements were not interspersed with other
participants' words. the converse is true; genuine speech was more commonly encountered
in ordinary interactions.

(Mey, 2001:137). Mey adds his argument that, against the conventional wisdom, language
experts agree that there was no jumbled thinking or confusion during the conversation.
irregular. A study of conversational norms revealed the following: a lot more like the rules
that people had made up for other social activities; and they were similar to findings made
by sociologists and anthropology for any type of social connection, far more so than they
resembled the rules of a language. Therefore, it was necessary to come up with a method
that very dissimilar to the traditional transcription methods of linguistics. According to
Schiffrin (1994:232), conversational analysis presents its own working assumptions, its
own methods (including, but not limited to language) and its own theoretical framework.

1.4 Discourse and gender

Early work on the study of gender and discourse looked at how language use and the
biological category of sex related to each other. This is now looking at how language is
used in relation to social categories, or how the socially constructed gender, as a category.
So, as soon as a girl is born and someone says, "It's a girl!" That child learns how to be a
girl in that society and culture, from how she talks to how she walks, smiles, dresses, and
combs her hair (Butler 1993, Livia and Hall 1997).

So, gender is not just the natural and inevitable result of a person's biological sex
(Weatherall 2002 ). It is, rather, "part of the routine, ongoing work of everyday, mundane,
social interaction" (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2003: 5), or "the product of social
practice." Swann (2002, p. 47) also says this about gender:
has come to be seen as very flexible or less clear-cut than it used to be. In line with gender
theory in general, researchers who study the relationship between language and gender
have paid more attention to the fact that both women and men use language in different
ways and that gender is not a fixed trait but something that is "done" in different situations.

Simone de Beauvoir once said, "One is not born a woman; she is made." The idea behind
performativity is that when we say something, we do it or "become" it. For example, a
person learns how to act and "display" being a woman in a certain social setting or social
class. When people talk to each other, they use language and other ways of expressing
themselves to show what kind of person they are. Most of the time, we do this
unconsciously when we "repeat acts" like gestures, movements, and ways of speaking that
show who we are. But these things are not natural and are not part of what makes a person
who they are. They are part of what people learn from each other when they talk.

In the TV show Sex and the City, many of the conversations show how the main
characters do gender through the way they talk. In the next part, Miranda asks Carrie why
she said yes when her boyfriend asked her to marry him. In her answer, Carrie did two
things:
demonstrates and confirms her gendered identity as a woman who has to accept her
boyfriend's marriage proposal because she loves him.

Miranda: I’m going to ask you an unpleasant question now. Why did you ever say yes?
Carrie: Because I love him . . . a man you love kneels in the street, and off ers you a ring.
You say yes. Th at is what you do. (King 2002)

People have also talked about how they talk about men and women when they talk about
how men and women talk and what they do when they talk. Holmes (2004), for example,
looked at how the words woman and lady are used and found that the social meaning of
these words has changed over time. Over the last 30 years, the meaning of these words has
changed. She found, for example, that the word "woman" is no longer considered rude,
even though it is used more often in written British English than in spoken British English.
She also found that lady/ladies can be used as a sign of politeness in a formal setting, but
in a casual setting, it can be used to make fun of something and talk down to (for more on
sexist language, see Mills 2008 and Mills and Mullany 2011). Holmes (2004) says that the
way people use language shows who is in charge and "whose values will prevail."

Both writing and speaking can be used to show who someone is. Richardson's (2000)
study of how male members of a cricket club used derogatory language and sexually
humiliating formulas in their newsletter to talk about women is an example.

Richardson found that the men in her study used their language and the traditional "women
only" discourse of gossip to bond as a group and build their heterosexual masculinity, just
as Cameron (1999) found that fraternity brothers in the US did the same thing when they
talked. As a way to show that they were part of the club, the students who wrote for
Richardson's cricket club newsletter used a language they called "Dross." One member she
talked to said, "It's the one thing that really makes [the Club] different from other Clubs"
(60). In the newsletter, the members also talked about women, sex, and alcohol as a way to
bond with each other. Often, this was done by using formulaic language like There's a
rumor that... to show that what was about to be said was gossip and might not be true.
Richardson says that the newsletter shows how the members' identities are made through
differentiation. That is, the cricket club members described themselves by what they were
not (65). They wrote and spoke in different ways than people in other cricket clubs, they
said. They also said that the club was for heterosexual men only by using derogatory terms
for gay men like "poofter" and "poofs" as out-group names. This made it clear that
members of the club should be heterosexual men and that being a gay man is not a good
enough reason to join the club. This is shown by the following excerpt from the newsletter:

The Cricket Club's 97/98 Presentation Night will be held on April 3 at the MCG, which is
a cricket stadium. Everyone is welcome to come, including players, partners, parents,
patriarchs, presenters, and poofs (sorry, no poofs). (Richardson, 2000, p. 70)
Hall's (1995) study of how telephone sex workers in the United States use language is
another example of how language is used to create gendered identities. Even though this
was the image they were putting out, not all of the sex workers in Hall's study were
heterosexual, nor were they all women. One of them was a Mexican-American man who
was proud of being able to "replicate" the personalities of Asian, Latina, and Black women
by changing his accent, tone, voice quality, and choice of words. Cameron and Kulick
(2003) say that the workers used "gendered styles to build sexual meaning." So, a person's
gender is not something they "have," but something they do. (Cameron 2005a: 49). Gender
(and other identities) are not based on what people (already) are, but on how they talk and
what they do, among other things.

Gender doesn't just exist; it's constantly made, reproduced, and even changed by the way
people act in gendered ways. When people act in gendered ways, they project their own
claimed gender identities, confirm or question other people's identities, and support or
question systems of gender relations and privilege in different ways.

In Sex and the City, the main characters show a lot of signs of a certain kind of gender
identity, such as being independent, successful New York City women of a certain age and
social class, not only in the way they talk but also in the way they act. how they look and
act when they talk to each other, their partners, and their friends. So, what may seem
natural to some people is actually the result of what Butler (1990:33) calls "a set of
repeated acts" and "a repeated stylization of the body." Cameron (1999, p. 444) says that
these gendered identities are then "reaffirmed and publicly displayed by repeatedly doing
certain acts," which are based on historically and socially built cultural norms that define
(this view of) femininity.

Cameron and Kulick (2003, p. 57) say that "the relationship between language and gender
is almost always indirect and mediated by something else." In the first place, the way
people speak is linked to their roles, activities, and personality traits, such as as being a
mom, a gossip, and a humble person (Cameron and Kulick 2003 ). The degree to which
these roles, activities, and personality traits become associated with being gendered in a
particular culture leads to these ways of speaking pointing to, or indexing, a particular
gender in the same way that certain ways of speaking may point to, or index, a person's
social class or ethnic identity (Litosseliti 2006 , Baker 2008 ). The parts of language use
that do this are not all at the same level, like a certain vowel quality, choice of vocabulary
item, grammatical structure, or language variety. This happens on more than one level at
the same time. Part of how people use language may be planned, and part of it may be a
matter of habit. Also, identity is not something that is already set up in fixed social groups.
It is something that comes out of the way people talk in real life (Bucholtz 1999, Bucholtz
and Hall 2005).

2 Gender Novel

In a sense, detective fiction is the same as any other kind of fiction in that it uses gender
stereotypes to show social and moral values. Detective novels are different from other
kinds of fiction because they show how people feel about individualism, relationships,
geography, time, and language in a way that ignores complex sexual and social worries in
favor of gender stereotypes. Now, a new group of detective books written by women is
breaking the rules about who can write them. American and British writers, like Rebecca
O'Rourke, Sara Paretsky, Gillian Slovo, Barbara Wilson, and Mary Wings, question the
social limits of women's lives today by questioning the limits of detective fiction. They
look at how women can have power in environments dominated by men by using the
feminine in a way that doesn't make it less feminine. By elevating an objective demotic
style, as in the works of Mickey Spillane, the detective fiction serves as a narrative pattern
that suppresses psychic desire. Storytelling techniques typical to detective fiction

the systemic features of the feminine psyche are expressed in writings by women. To sum
up, women authors, as women, negotiate the social forms of freedom to reimagine the
societal norms of 'legal' and 'deviant,' both in the city and in their own histories and
relationships.
Women's detective fiction frequently revisits or reimagines the culturally ingrained belief
in the superiority of white people, middle-class white people, and white women. Feminist
writing glorifies the marginal, such as in the lesbian couplings of Barbara Wilson, not to
assert the power of individualism but to turn attention away from man-made norms and
plots, which is why women detectives may share the same marginality as their male peers,
an ambiguous relation to class or status. In the usual hard-boiled male detective story,
female characters are viewed as sexual deviants. Traditional detective fiction uses
character formulae to hide and contain sexual ambiguity, so even if this can be forgiven as
representing an author anxious to escape 'literary' responding to a reader keen to flee social
reality, the fact remains. By regulating his own sexuality and the sexuality of the women
around him, the male investigator strives to maintain order in the city and restore the
shattered rhythms of urban life. When it comes to traditional detective fiction, the goal is
to eliminate suspense and the strange, to tinker with and analyze reality with cold, hard
facts.

2.1 Detective fiction

Detective fiction is a type of crime fiction and mystery literature in which a professional,
amateur, or retired investigator investigates a crime, typically murder. The detective genre
originated at the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the middle of
the nineteenth century and has remained immensely popular, especially in novels. C.
Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot are among the most renowned
detective fiction protagonists. The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children
juvenile novels have also stayed in print for decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detective_fiction

In the early detective fiction, the protagonist was often a very intelligent person, and the
stories almost always centered on the investigator's intelligence, cunning, and ability to
outwit the criminal. Sherlock Holmes is a well-known example of this type of detective
character. There were other detective characters fashioned in some way by Sherlock
Holmes, and a few of them were popular enough to inspire a series of novels. As the genre
of detective fiction progressed, a wider range of characters was incorporated into the
stories. Authors of best-selling crime novels also incorporated modern elements into their
works. Some well-known sleuths, for instance, are skilled computer hackers, while others
rely on cutting-edge forensics equipment. Even more niche detective fiction features
protagonists who work in forensic science. https://www.languagehumanities.org/what-is-
detective-fiction.htm

3. Methodology

At the outset of the research process, two novels featuring female detectives were chosen.
The two 1980s detective novels the author has selected to compare and contrast are
"Indemnity Only" by Paretsky (1982) and "Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case" by
Agatha Christie is a writer (1976). The author chose two novels written by women that
came out more than thirty years apart so that she could compare and contrast them.
 3.1 Background

Agatha Christie, the "Grand Dame of mysteries," was born on September 15, 1880, in
Torquay, England. She lived until 1976. She had a rural upbringing and education, much
like the worlds she later created in her novels. She uprooted her life to pursue music in
Paris. She married Colonel Archibald Christie, who she met during the ball. She decided to
create a mystery novel when her sister dared her to do so. It was to be called The
Mysterious Affair It was planned for release in 1920 at Styles. Christie produced 71 books,
eight plays, over twenty short stories, poetry, and travel writing during the course of her
career. She is most known for writing about detective duo Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple
(http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/LitRC). Author Sara Paretsky "frequently told
reporters that she thought of herself first as a wife and secondly as a writer," despite the
fact that her books have been translated into hundreds of languages. (Through a Female
Perspective, p. xi)
https://go.gale.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&userGroupName=anon%7Efaf79796

Despite having been born in Ames, Iowa in 1947, Sara Paretsky now makes her home in
Chicago, where her investigator, John Warshawski, also resides. When her first novel,
Indemnity Only, was released in 1982, she officially entered the writing world. She's
published ten additional novels since then. All of her books feature the same protagonist—
a private investigator named Victoria Iphegenia (V. I.) Warshawski—and share many of
the conventions of the detective genre. But she brings feminist ideas to an area where
males have traditionally done the writing.
https://go.gale.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&userGroupName=anon%7E7371bad0

4. Data selection and description

The research uses two primary sources: "Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case" by
Agatha Christie and "Indemnity Only" by Sara Gruen and Sara Paretsky. A novel titled
Miss Marple's Last Case: Sleeping Murder was published after her death in 1976.

So, we can only speculate as to when Christie penned it, but we can safely say it was
sometime after the year 2000 during the 1920s and 1930s. That novel ended the Miss
Marple series. Someone identifies as Christie recounting the tale of young Gwenda Reed, a
newlywed New Yorker who has moved to the South to start a new life with her husband.
Zealand to look for a place in England where she and her husband may settle down. In the
end, I settled on a home in. She has an odd attachment to the South Coast town of
Dillmouth. And further, she has vivid memories of living there. She had a distinct memory
of the wallpaper in one of the rooms. Shortly thereafter, Gwenda travels to London to
spend time with her pals, and while there, the group attends a play. Her mind flashes to
Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, where she sees a woman's corpse lying in the street.
location of the Meeting Place At this point, the image of Miss Jane Marple, another cast
member, is introduced to the audience. While Gwenda is having a nervous breakdown, her
mystery-loving husband walks in, as she explains to Miss Marple and Giles Reed. The
public begins to speculate about its nature. Without knowing what happened to the
woman, they consult Miss Marple who tries to help them solve the case.

"Indemnity Only" was Sara Paretsky's debut novel. In 1982, the book finally made its way
into the public eye. Set in the present day, the story opens with the vice president. When
the CEO of Chicago's largest bank disappears, he hires the services of female detective V.
I. Warshawski to track down his missing son. However, that is not the man's genuine
name. He's the head of the notorious International Brotherhood of Knifegrinders, and he's
hired V.I.P. to find his missing daughter. However, she finds the deceased son of her
"customer" before she finds anything else. As she searches for the missing girl,
Warshawski learns a great deal of information regarding the crime. plot in which a union
boss, a mobster, and some odd insurance agents were all complicit. She learned some
unexpected information about her client. Links exist between everything and everyone, but
the nature of these connections is unclear. When shooters are following V. I. Warshawski,
she doesn't give up until she learns the truth even though she and her companions are in
danger and the assailants are ready to fire.

5. Model of Analysis

Three processes of analysis are linked to three dimensions of discourse in Fairclough's

(1989, 1995) paradigm for CDA. Analyzed in this context are these three dimensions in :
1. including verbal, visual or verbal and visual texts).
2. The actions of human people (writing, speaking, designing, and reading, listening,
and watching) that result in the creation and reception of the object.
3. The social and historical contexts within which these activities take place.

Fairclough argues that disentangling these factors necessitates a unique approach to

analysis on each of them.
1. Descriptive text analysis
2. interpretive processing analysis
3. Social gender analysis (explanation).

6. Data Analysis

In Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case, Agatha Christie talks about Miss Marple.
According to Fiarclough (2001), the term "lady" is frequently used as a synonym for
"woman." Christie employs this term. This expression refers to the setting in which the
word is said. " Christie's description of Miss Marple as a "lady" implies that she belongs to
a certain social class and behaves in a particular manner; nevertheless, "lady" is also a
slang term for a woman. superiority in meaning is a mark of excellence. The more serious
books don't have "lady" in the title, but the less serious ones do, as stated by Lakoff. This
is because, according to Lakoff, "the groups of women who have a people who don't have
a serious goal (not just to spend time with each other) cannot use the." "which Christie
does by introducing Miss Marple as a lady, rather than a woman, because she isn't a real
detective. This is her one and only.Fairclough also says that, unlike the word woman, the
word lady doesn't have any traces of a sexual meaning and that it "carries with it overtones
that call to mind the age" of courage." This means that Miss Marple can't do anything
because she's a woman. Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case proves beyond any
doubt that she was wrong.

Like Miss Marple, V. I. Warshawski is addressed as a lady rather than a woman. at various
ages and with various male companions. As Mr. McGraw explains to her, "You aren't
someone who easily gives in. I have no problem with a strong female leader ". At first,
Ralph Devereux refers to her as "a tiny lady" and "a girl." He refers to her as a "beautiful
lady" at the beginning of the novel, but changes to "woman" and "Miss Marple" later on.
But Mr. Thayer compliments me by saying, "I can see you're a conscientious girl."
Warshawski refers to herself as "Joan of Arc" once.

Fairclough's interpretation of the term lady further clarifies McGraw's meaning. He

recognizes her competence in her field, if begrudgingly, but he also treats her like a child.
First, the lady in this phrase. He respects her as a powerful, self-reliant woman, therefore
he lets her make her own decisions. let her know that he will never appreciate her for who
she is and will only ever judge her based on her gender. 21 will differ significantly from
any actions taken by a male equivalent. Conversely, Devereux uses both lady and woman
interchangeably. When they first meet, and only then, he addresses her as "lady." Next, he
refers to her as a "girl," then afterwards a "woman," to emphasize that they were of the
same species. However, it is not always clear what he intends by expressing these things,
thus this equality is not absolute. In her book Gender & Discourse, Tannen (1996) writes
that "the same sign can mean either power or unity, depending on, at least, the
environment" (23). Because his usage of the word "woman" might be interpreted in two
ways, I believe this to be true. If When a woman uses the pronoun "woman," she is
implicitly recognizing that she is legally recognized as having the same rights as a man.
This revelation is also potent because of its honesty. In this context, "woman" is equivalent
to the euphemism "lady," indicating that he is referring to a woman who is more powerful
than she is in order to achieve what he wants from her.
Devereux and Warshawski's use of Sherlock and Miss Marple also shows this underlying
source of ambiguity in power and unity. It can be read both ways, which shows that
authority and community are made up of many different parts. It could bring people
together and make them stronger (24-5). Devereux's use of the names Sherlock and Miss
Marple could be mean or nice, depending on what he wants (power) or how much he
respects her intelligence (solidarity).
But there's no denying that Mr. Thayer's use of "girl" is sexist. In 1975, Lakoff argued that
the term Girl may be used interchangeably with woman. This term removes the sexual
connotation from the word lady and emphasizes the sense of being too young (1975, 25).
Mr. Thayer's word choice, "female," connotes immaturity and youth, and while this may
sound odd, it's actually nice because it evokes feelings of both youth and carelessness —
qualities that V. I. is not known for. She demonstrates this by rejecting Mr. Thayer's offer
of financial compensation to end the probe. Some examples of research methods for
examining detective fiction are provided above. As was demonstrated, slang terms for
females, such as lady and girl, are commonly employed in fiction. Moreover, they conceal
several messages. However, it is worth noting that despite the fact that these two detective
novels were written by women, no euphemisms for "guy" can be found in the text.

Lakoff says in 1975 that it's unlikely that women use "stronger expletives"7. (10) than men
do, and if you look at the limits that society puts on women, you can see that some women
do more than men. Some things are just off limits for women to say. Christie sticks to
these rules in Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case. There's no bad language in the
book. The one-off The only time a swear word is used is when Dr. Haydock says, "There
is a type of criminal" to describe the bad guys, and Giles says, "Well, I'm damned" (177).
But they're men, and Miss Marple only talks about women. Weak cuss words, like "That's
awful, honey" (188). On the other hand, Paretsky uses very strong swear words in
Indemnity Only, such as "goddamn" (49), "bastard" (87), "hell" (152), "screw yourself"
(179), "SOB" (207) and many others. I think that all of Paretsky's characters, and I mean
all of them, use these strong swear words. that Paretsky's characters use swear words to
show how strongly they feel about something. Not only do we use these words more now,
but Miss Marple and V.I. I think it's more likely that this is true than that they are seen as
detectives who look like both men and women (Heilbron, 1991). Sleeping Murder is not as
good as Indemnity Only, nor is Miss Marple's Last Case.

Paretsky gives Warshawski has more "male" characteristics than "female" characteristics.
She gives people promises, talks over them, starts fights, and is very pushy. Even worse, it
seems like he or she is always in charge.

Fairclpugh (2001) says that indirectness has two effects: making people defensive and
getting information out. When I looked at the setting and the way people talked in these
two detective novels, I noticed that Miss Marple likes to do things in a roundabout way,
and that both of the detectives in the Paretsky book use interruption, but it is more of a
focus in that book. Miss Marple uses both defensiveness and report in Sleeping Murder:
Miss Marple's Last Case, depending on who she is talking to. When she talks to Gwenda
and Giles, she usually tries to steer them toward their investigation by being defensive (42-
4).
On the other hand, Warshawski doesn't often talk in a way that isn't clear. As an American,
she prefers the direct approach, which Tannen (1996) says is "logical and in line with
power, while indirectness is like lying and submission." She is right about the first part of
what she said, but not about the second. I don't think Miss Marple is lying because she
uses indirectness so well throughout the book.It's just a strategy that works best for her as a
Victorian spinster, just as V. I.'s best quality is her directness. But interruption is a more
complicated way to use language than indirectness. Coates (1989, p. 94–121) says that
when women talk, interruptions are more likely to be friendly and happen more often than
when men talk. She is wrong about this when it comes to these books. Sleeping Murder:
Miss Marple's Last Case and Indemnity: A Comparative Study Only I couldn't find any
proof that this was true. Both Miss Marple and Warshawski like to interrupt. Miss Marple
usually only does this with people younger than her, like Gwenda and Giles, while V. I.
does it to show that she is the same as other characters, which gives her power. She gets in
the way of both bad guys and police officers, rich and poor.

One sign of this is that she crashed the meeting between McGraw and Thayer (p.39), and
another is that she talked over Masters' secretary to get to him (p.23). The goal of distance
is to "inspire separateness and privacy," the goal of deference is to "avoid imposition," the
goal of camaraderie is to "acknowledge interrelationship," and "clarity is used when the
pure expression of facts is at issue" (140-1). I found that Christie mostly used respect and
friendship, while Paretsky mostly used clear language.

7. Discussion of results

Miss Marple is a typical member of English Victorian society, though she has more
freedom than other women because she is a spinster. On the other hand, V. I. Warshawski
is a product of our time. He used to be a lawyer, but now he works as a private investigator
because he wants to make a difference. We can say for sure that the Victorian era gave us
Miss Marple and that the modern era gave us V.I. At first glance, you might think that
these two women are very different.

It's not so clear when you look at it more closely. In this study, I say that Miss Marple and
V. I. Warshawski are similar in many ways, and that V. I. is just a modern version of Miss
Marple. Both of these detectives have their own ways of figuring out how to solve crimes.
Only at first glance do these look different. Also, some of the words, like "woman" and
"lady," are used to show power, and others, like swear words, are used to show strong
emotions.
As I said before, this analysis talked about two mystery books where the detectives are
women. It is written in the form of an essay, which is one of the most common types of
writing sociolinguists do. In this case, it is a compare and contrast essay. I've talked about
some of the ways to do research on a detective novel, like Propp's methodology and
Todorov's typology. One thing we should keep in mind, though, is that no set of methods
in this kind of research is perfect or works perfectly. There is a lot of room for more
research and data collection in this area.

The workplaces in these two books are similar in some ways. Even though Miss Marple, a
well-mannered and kind woman, doesn't seem to be actively looking for the murderer, she
has her own ways of getting information. By acting like an innocent old gossip, she finds
friends of friends and gets information about what life was like in the small town of
Dillmouth 18 years ago. Considering that Dillmouth is a small town with a very closed
society that hasn't changed much in the last eighteen years, you might think it would be
easy. However, people in closed societies are often reluctant to talk to strangers, as
Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case shows to some extent. The world of friends,
neighbors, and, to some extent, family members turns into a world of strangers with
selfish, aggressive drives that are at odds with the brittle and unconvincing politeness they
show in public. In Indemnity Only, unlike Miss Marple, Warshawski solves the murder
case by going after the people who did it. In order to do this, she runs all over Chicago,
which is a big city and not a small town like Dillmouth. She has her own style, just like
Miss M.

Gathering information, but not as much through gossip as through methodical and hard
work though good connections in the neighborhood and sometimes friends can be seen as
sources of gossip in this book.

8. Conclusion