Stylistic and linguistic creation of suspense in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs

Abstract

The paper seeks to address the most prominent stylistic and linguistic devices used to create suspense in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. The wider conceptual framework for Tarantino’s oeuvre is an analysis of the most prominent stylistic strategies identified in his films, particularly the typically postmodern rearranging of ideas and a multilayered narrative idiosyncrasy. Probably the most stylistically oriented contemporary American director, Tarantino is also an adept screenwriter. His scripts are usually fractured into intricate narrative patterns deploying many nonchronological sequences, but their most distinguished characteristic is an inventive dialogue, imbued with pop-cultural references and racist colloquialisms. From a linguistic point of view, the analysis of dialogues in the two films reveals several linguistic devices used with the effect of building up suspense. The most prominent one refers to repetition of parts of characters’ utterances. Another device is analyzed via objective clauses and direct objects containing obscene expressions, which are identified as a particular type of image-provoking language and as elements of suspense creation. The paper also addresses additional linguistic devices used to create suspense. They refer to the content of dialogues which at times appears uncorrelated with different contexts of the two plots and/or individual characters.