Les silences de Rouletabille ou de l’implicite dans l’inférence romanesque

Abstract

According to Maingueneau (1990: 78), << L'oe uvre litt & eacute;raire est par essence vou & eacute;e & agrave; susciter la qu & ecirc;te des implicites >>. This occurs particularly in Mystery stories, in which the detective discovers the murderer by reasoning. To support his thesis to his audience, he puts into words the mental process that led him to the discovery. His inferential discourse often presents ellipses that the interlocutor (and the reader) is supposed to fill. We will focus our attention on the implicit in the inferential discourse of Rouletabille, reporter -detective, creation of the novelist Gaston Leroux. Our approach to the literary text is part of the field of language sciences, in the broad sense, and touches, among other fields of knowledge, on logic and rhetoric.