Constructing Suspense and Psychological Tension: A Corpus-Based Stylistic Analysis of Contemporary Crime Thriller Fiction

Abstract

The crime thriller genre engages readers through sustained suspense, psychological depth, and narrative tension, effects that are fundamentally constructed through language. This study examines the stylistic construction of such effects through a corpus-based analysis of twenty-five contemporary crime thrillers in contrast to the BNC Fiction Sub-Corpus. Drawing on the corpus stylistics framework of McIntyre and Walker (2019) and Dutta-Flanders's (2017) model of suspense, the study focuses on such micro-level linguistic characteristics as intensifiers, modal verbs, passive voice, and punctuation. The results indicate that suspense in crime fiction is achieved by a cumulative influence of minor linguistic tactics as opposed to explicit thematic cues. The modal verbs carry the sense of uncertainty and hesitation and open the reader to the space of speculative interpretation. The passive voice denies the agency and the emphasis is on the outcomes of violence and the ambiguity of the narratives is inflated. The intensifiers provide the emotional urgency and the pauses break the sentences and signify the mental instability. These are characteristic of the crime thrillers as they represent a certain tendency of style to concentrate on character perception, emotional disintegration, and suspenseful delay in comparison with general fiction. The study offers a replicable framework for stylistic genre analysis, contributing to the field of literary linguistics by highlighting how crime fiction inscribes tension not just in its content but through the subtle deployment of language.