Police Investigation, Columbo Style:
Rhetorical Inquiry, Audience Relationships, and the Inverted Mystery
This multi-media talk presents a rhetorical analysis of the unique investigative style of Lieutenant Columbo, the detective played by Peter Falk in, arguably, the most successful television police procedural, Columbo (1968-2003, 69 feature-length episodes). More specifically, the presentation examines the Los Angeles Police Department Lieutenant’s method of rhetorical inquiries, deliberate projection of ignorance and incompetence, narratives that connote lack of sophistication and simple-mindedness, and logical pursuit of inconsistencies among details that are not shared with the audience as internal monologue. Instead, audiences must ascertain the detective’s hypotheses through fragmented bits of clues such as gestures, facial expressions, types of questions, information traps, and limited information on his research of the case. What this study reveals is how spectatorship is complicated by the inverted mystery format, intimate knowledge of an arrogant, wealthy villain, and mystery about the deceptively inept and placating working-class, police detective-hero.
I would need a projector and computer station in order to show a media slide presentation with video clips.
About the presenterChristyne Berzsenyi
Christyne Berzsenyi is an Professor of English in Media Rhetoric and Professional Writing at The Pennsylvania State University, Wilkes-Barre campus. Research interests include discourse analysis of online communications, identity construction, and relationship building within virtual community contexts such as e-dating, anthology hosts, and multi-media promotional texts in terms of establishing spectator-text relationships with inverted crime stories and Megachurch leadership.