The Evolution of Language and Ideology in Crime Fiction from Its Origins to the Digital Age

This thesis investigates the evolution of language and ideology in crime fiction from its origins in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the contemporary digital age. By tracing the genre’s development through key historical phases—the emergence of early crime narratives, the Golden Age of detective fiction, the rise of American hard-boiled fiction, and the transformation of the genre in late twentieth-century and digital contexts—this study examines how narrative form, linguistic strategies, and ideological functions have shaped and been shaped by shifting social and cultural landscapes. Drawing on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that includes structuralist and poststructuralist narratology (Saussure, Genette, Derrida), Marxist and post-Marxist theories of ideology (Eagleton, Gramsci, Jameson), as well as Foucauldian analyses of surveillance and power, the thesis analyzes representative texts by Wilkie Collins, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, and selected late twentieth-century and digital-era authors. Through close textual analysis and critical synthesis, this work demonstrates how crime fiction’s evolving forms and linguistic patterns both reflect and contest dominant ideologies, contributing to ongoing debates about justice, authority, and social order. Ultimately, the thesis argues that crime fiction functions as a privileged site for the negotiation of meaning, ideology, and identity, revealing the dynamic interplay between narrative innovation and the ideological concerns of its time.