In gangster movies, mob bosses typically communicate their criminal objectives to henchmen or adversaries in opaque ways. This type of discursive behaviour considerably contributes to the creation of suspense for film audiences, since a startling sense of uncertainty and anticipation is evoked until the intimidatory words eventually culminate in violent actions. This paper adopts a qualitative pragma-stylistic approach based on speech act theory and research on indirectness, aiming to identify stylistic devices in threatening utterances that trigger suspenseful entertainment. The dataset under discussion comprises the three acclaimed feature films Casino (1995), The Departed (2006), and The Irishman (2019) by influential US-American director Martin Scorsese. As will be shown, suspenseful indirectness is created by a number of lexicosemantic cues, including euphemisms, metaphors, general nouns, and epistemic modals. In addition, indirect utterances rely on grammatical techniques such as unresolved pronouns and rhetorical questions. Finally, suspense is triggered by metacommunicative speech acts that support effective mobster communication by referring to the hearers’ comprehension or the speakers’ intention behind their menacing utterances.

中文翻译：

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黑帮电影对话中的悬疑间接性：对斯科塞斯黑帮老大的实用主义风格研究


在黑帮电影中，黑帮老大通常以不透明的方式将他们的犯罪目标传达给心腹或对手。这种类型的话语行为在很大程度上有助于为电影观众制造悬念，因为在恐吓性话语最终以暴力行为达到高潮之前，会唤起一种令人震惊的不确定性和期待感。本文采用基于言语行为理论和间接性研究的定性语用-文体方法，旨在识别引发悬疑娱乐的威胁性话语中的文体手段。正在讨论的数据集包括由有影响力的美国导演马丁·斯科塞斯 （Martin Scorsese） 执导的三部广受好评的故事片《赌场》（1995 年）、《无间行者》（2006 年）和《爱尔兰人》（2019 年）。正如将要展示的，悬疑的间接性是由许多词汇语义线索创造的，包括委婉语、隐喻、一般名词和认识情态。此外，间接话语依赖于语法技术，例如未解决的代词和反问句。最后，悬念是由元交际语音行为触发的，这些行为通过引用听者的理解或说话者威胁性话语背后的意图来支持有效的流氓沟通。