Suspenseful indirectness in gangster film dialogue: A pragma-stylistic study of Scorsese’s mob bosses

Abstract

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.

1. Introduction

In Francis Ford Coppola’s seminal gangster film The Godfather (1972), mob boss Vito Corleone notoriously threatens to make one of his adversaries an offer he can’t refuse. In the ensuing decades, it has become a trademark of fictional gangster bosses to verbally announce or initiate acts of violence in similarly indirect or cryptic ways. Since such utterances evoke a grim sense of foreboding, they substantially contribute to the discursive construction of suspense, which serves as a defining and highly appealing characteristic of gangster films. Accordingly, the present paper uses a pragma-stylistic approach (Black, 2006: 19–20; Busse, 2017: 200; Werner and Schubert, 2023: 7) to investigate stylistic devices causing indirectness in speech acts such as threats and orders, which may trigger suspense by establishing a fearsome feeling of anticipation.

Basically, suspense is an emotional reaction of recipients and relies on situations of conflict and uncertainty, which coincide with an expectation of potentially harmful future developments (Lehne and Koelsch, 2015: 2). In fictional narratives, suspense is thus an ‘affective mode’ of viewers (Lehmann, 2020: 45), that is, an experience of emotional arousal which is perceived as enjoyable and entertaining since spectators are not directly in danger but are merely involved through their empathetic identification with the fictional characters. Suspense is commonly caused by utterances that trigger an expectation of dangerous events, which are subsequently delayed until finally a resolution of the predicament is reached (Bennett and Royle, 2016: 270–271).

Gangster films constitute a subgenre of crime films (Larke-Walsh, 2019: 2), featuring protagonists that operate in mafia-like organised crime settings with firmly established structures and hierarchies. The language of mob characters is principally marked by a ‘frequency of threats, implicit or explicit’ (Kozloff, 2000: 209), so that this speech act is predominant in the genre, typically preparing the ground for violence. More specifically, an indirect threat is here considered as a speech act that projects negative consequences for addressees in case they do not comply with the speakers’ demands, while neither the demands nor the consequences are made explicit but need to be inferred (Tompkinson, 2023: 8). Despite horrific action sequences on the screen, intimidating gangsters are also notorious for their ‘talkativeness’ (Kozloff, 2000: 213), which makes the genre a worthwhile subject for pragma-stylistic study. Since the US-American director Martin Scorsese is one of the most influential protagonists in the genre of mob movies (Wilson, 2015: 10), this paper investigates the language of central characters in three of his films over a period of three decades, namely Casino (1995), The Departed (2006), and The Irishman (2019).

In general, indirect utterances convey covert meaning that is not literally expressed but can be identified and interpreted in discourse with the help of textual or contextual signals (Livnat et al., 2020: 4). Following Searle’s original concept of ‘indirect speech acts’ (Searle, 1975: 60), pragmatic approaches have discussed reasons and goals of indirect communication, pointing out, in particular, that directness and indirectness do not constitute an either/or distinction but that indirectness can occur in varying degrees (Thomas, 1995: 124–146). While it has rightfully been argued that one central function of indirectness is politeness (Huang, 2014: 142), the study of gangster film dialogue will demonstrate that indirect communication in fictional movies offers a much wider range of aesthetic effects, including suspenseful entertainment. As regards the structure of the article, theoretical approaches to suspense are outlined (Section 2), followed by an account of indirectness and speech act theory (Section 3). Then the dataset of gangster films and the methodology are delineated (Section 4), laying the ground for the qualitative analysis of suspense based on indirectness in utterances by mob bosses (Section 5). Thus, the present study contributes to literary linguistics by approaching the underresearched concept of suspense in film dialogue in a novel way. In particular, the analysis identifies a number of genre-specific stylistic devices at the levels of lexicon, grammar, and metacommunication that trigger suspense by means of strategic indirectness.

2. Theoretical approaches to suspense

Although film is considered a dominantly visual medium (Jaeckle, 2013: 2), movie dialogue fulfils numerous functions, ranging from the support of narrative progression to character development and the creation of realistic interaction (Kozloff, 2000: 33–34). One particularly significant function is purposeful ‘control of viewer evaluation and emotions’ (Bednarek, 2018: 54), which prepares the ground for audience entertainment and commercial success. Since suspense is an affective response by audiences (Dutta-Flanders, 2017: 2), its creation chiefly contributes to this specific objective. Suspense is evoked in the external communicative system between ‘the collective sender or film production crew and the television or film audience’ (Messerli, 2017: 45), while in the internal system of inter-character dialogue threatening speech acts are perceived as intimidating utterances by the fictional addressees. Accordingly, the film viewers are the recipients of suspense due to their role as ‘overhearers’ (Bubel, 2008: 61) of the scripted dialogue between characters.

Psychologically speaking, suspense relies on dramatic and dangerous plot developments imposed on protagonists with whom audiences can empathise (Lehne and Koelsch, 2015: 2). Previous stylistic research on Scorsese’s mafia movie Goodfellas already emphasised the realistic portrayal of the emotion fear, which is ‘likely to be experienced vicariously by the viewing audience’ (Bousfield and McIntyre, 2011: 105). Moreover, for the sake of emotional identification and sympathy with fictional characters (Langlotz, 2017: 192), viewers must have a ‘positive disposition toward the protagonist’ (Comisky and Bryant, 1982: 57). The more serious the imminent suffering is for the character, the stronger the suspense will be, for great pain makes the outcome emotionally more significant. In addition, the experience of a ‘lack of control’ (Lehne and Koelsch, 2015: 5–6) may likewise boost suspense. This is particularly salient in case the viewers perceive an impending danger that the protagonist is not aware of, as it is common in gangster films, where attacks are typically planned behind the victim’s back. As gangsters usually intimidate and scare their adversaries and victims verbally, this leaves the viewers ‘to watch helplessly as violent events unfold’ (Kozloff, 2000: 210).

As far as threatening indirect speech acts in gangster films are concerned, two factors are particularly salient for the creation of suspense (Carey and Snodgrass, 1999: 147; Harmon, 2012: 465). The first factor is uncertainty, which can be caused by utterances that are equivocal and thus provide room for interpretation. For instance, it might be ambiguous whether a speech act is to be understood simply as information or as a threat. The second factor is anticipation, which means that the speech act raises an expectation of undesirable events to come, while too little information is given about possible developments, including harmful criminal activities (Fill, 2007: 55–57). Threatening speech acts thus belong to the ‘cataphoric text elements’ (Wulff, 1996: 2) that trigger suspense by foreshadowing disastrous events. The suspense is further enhanced if only a limited set of potential solutions to the current problem is feasible, such as life or death, and if the possible outcomes are equally likely to happen (Wenzel, 2001: 23–24).

In addition, indirect utterances by gangsters may be accompanied by metacommunicative comments, which are defined as remarks about the communicative process itself. Such comments serve as additional cues for the presence of subtextual meaning, which is to be inferred by both the character addressees and the viewers. The metacommunicative remarks, which may, for instance, refer to the hearer’s proper understanding of ominous utterances (see Section 5.3), reinforce suspense as they alert the audience that something that is supposedly ‘unspeakable’ should be anticipated.

In contrast to tension, which has a static character and is based on cognitive contrasts such as ‘serious’ versus ‘ironic’, suspense is a dynamic notion and strongly relies on the linear development of storytelling (Wenzel, 2001: 22). Thus, in a narrative sequence, an ‘expectation’ is followed by a suspenseful ‘delay’ until eventually a ‘resolution’ completes the arc of suspense (Bennett and Royle, 2016: 270–271). In a more fine-grained subdivision of suspenseful narratives, it is possible to define five consecutive steps, which bear some resemblance to classical drama (Wenzel, 2001: 31–32): after a trigger phase with suspenseful hints and allusions in the form of speech acts, the second phase aims to create suspense by appealing to the viewers’ emotions. The third phase comprises plot developments that oscillate between positive and catastrophic results. While the fourth phase delays the progress of the plot by means of retardation, the final phase offers the outcome and conclusion.

According to Grice’s (1975) pragmatic theory of the cooperative principle, conversational maxims such as quantity or manner can be flouted, which means that a maxim is ‘blatantly’ disregarded (Grice, 1975: 49). This leads to a conversational implicature, which is a type of unexpressed and context-dependent meaning. For instance, the tautological utterance ‘war is war’ flouts the quantity maxim and thus implicates that horrible events are bound to happen in war (Huang, 2014: 35). While a maxim is disregarded with respect to what is literally said, addressees can infer that the cooperative principle ‘is observed at the level of what is implicated’ (Grice, 1975: 52). In principle, every use of indirectness concerns the manner maxim, since indirectness always comprises ambiguity and obscurity to some extent. Moreover, from a pragma-stylistic vantage point, the process of holding back information in fictional narratives can generally be considered as a flout of the quantity maxim (Grice, 1975: 45), which may implicate unspoken dangers and thus fulfil the function of keeping viewers in suspense (Schubert, 2023: 132–134). An implicature is therefore one particular technique of triggering indirectness besides other pragmatic strategies, as discussed in the following section.

3. Indirectness and speech act theory

A speech act is a type of verbally performed activity that encompasses three more specific acts (Austin, 1975: 94–101): While the locutionary act refers to the literal words and meanings used in a proposition, the illocutionary act covers the addressor’s communicative intention, and the perlocutionary act pertains to the effect of the speech act on the addressee. According to Searle’s (1975) seminal paper, in an indirect speech act the literally expressed (secondary) illocution is to be distinguished from the actually intended (primary) illocution (Searle, 1975: 62). For instance, an utterance like I want you to do it (Searle, 1975: 59) is literally a statement (secondary illocution) but is likely to contextually function as a request (primary illocution). From an inferential perspective, this non-correspondence between form and meaning can be considered as one of many possible contextual and textual cues which ‘attest to the existence of pragmatic indirectness and trigger its interpretation process’ (Livnat et al., 2020: 4).

However, the opposition between directness and indirectness is by no means a binary notion but constitutes a gradience (Huang, 2014: 138; Levinson, 1983: 264–265), since some expressions are more conventional for carrying out a particular illocution than others (Ruytenbeek, 2021: 81–82). Thus, for instance, a directive illocution (Searle, 1976: 11) can be expressed with different degrees of explicitness, ranging from a mere suggestion in the form of a declarative clause to an order in the imperative form. The interpretation of indirectness in communication therefore not only relies on the sentence type (Siemund, 2018: 45) but also on other ‘illocutionary force indicating devices’ (IFIDs) (Searle, 1969: 30). One case in point is prosody, which comprises the tone of voice as well as phonological ‘phenomena such as rhythm, stress or intonation’ (Valenzuela, 2017: 13) and may thus be used by characters, for instance, to convey indirect threats. For instance, the famous catchphrase I’ll be back from James Cameron’s The Terminator can be interpreted as a threat owing to the context and the speaker’s oddly monotonous intonation. For decoding indirectness, recipients rely on the surrounding co-text in the form of preceding conversational turns as well as on the respective discursive context and their world knowledge (Pérez-Hernández, 2021: 44; Thomas, 1995: 133–139). Accordingly, owing to different horizons and levels of understanding, indirect utterances can be interpreted quite differently by fictional characters and audience members.

Apart from the formal linguistic realization of indirectness, it is requisite to consider the contextual functions of indirectness, which may serve as a face-saving strategy in terms of politeness (Huang, 2014: 142; Ruytenbeek, 2021: 141). In such a framework, the degree of indirectness depends on three main contextual parameters (Ruytenbeek, 2021: 153–164; Thomas, 1995: 124–131): First, power and status asymmetries may affect indirectness strategies, since speakers with a higher position have more pragmatic options so that ‘they are more likely to be (successfully) indirect because they know that their addressees will tend to search for an indirect meaning’ (Ruytenbeek, 2021: 153). This clearly happens when mob bosses, whose authority in the hierarchy of criminal organizations endows them with tremendous ‘coercive power’ (Thomas, 1995: 125), subversively incite their henchmen to commit crimes. Second, social distance commonly leads to a greater frequency of indirectness and face-saving strategies than closeness between interactants on grounds of variables such as age or ethnicity. And third, the extent of the imposition is also relevant, as a mob boss’s request for murder, which requires a lot of effort on the part of the henchman, tends to be made with a considerable amount of indirectness in gangster films (see Section 5.1).

However, it would be an oversimplification to associate intentionally indirect communication exclusively with the purpose of politeness. In particular, Thomas (1995: 143–145) convincingly mentions the two additional functions of establishing ‘interestingness’ and ‘increasing the force of one’s message’. While the former plays an important role in the external communicative system of gangster films, the latter is particularly relevant in inter-character dialogue. The creation of interestingness corresponds with the creative use of language, which is characteristic of aesthetic and stylised fictional film dialogue geared towards the entertainment of audiences.

As regards the latter function, indirectness may increase the force of the speaker’s illocution through a higher degree of involvement, because if the addressee ‘has to work at understanding the message, he or she has a greater ‘investment’ in that message’ (Thomas, 1995: 144). Correspondingly, indirectness is beneficial for fictional mob bosses in helping them to boost the effectiveness and impact of their demands. Yet another function of indirect utterances is related to ‘“communication” without commitment’ (Ruytenbeek, 2021: 146), which means that the performance of the speech act may at a later point in time be denied by the original speaker. This can be advantageous in criminal discourse for the sake of avoiding punishment and prosecution, for example in the case of attempted bribery or incitement to murder.

Since the ‘threat’ is a central suspense-generating speech act in gangster films (Kozloff, 2000: 209), it is illuminating to situate it in Searle’s (1976) taxonomy of five illocutionary acts, based on his three criteria of ‘illocutionary point’, ‘psychological states’, and ‘direction of fit’ (1976: 3–4). On the one hand, threats are directives and are thus comparable to orders, since their illocutionary point usually is to make the addressee perform a desired action (Searle, 1976: 11). On the other hand, threats are also commissives, as speakers commit themselves to future punitive actions in case a desired course of action is not taken by the recipient (Searle, 1976: 11–12). Hence, according to the felicity conditions of commissives, threats can chiefly be distinguished from promises by the fact that speakers intentionally envisage negative instead of positive consequences for addressees (Short, 1996: 199). Regarding Searle’s criterion of psychological states, threats combine the ‘wish or desire’ defining directives with the ‘intention’ defining commissives. Finally, the direction of fit in threats is ‘world-to-words’, which is shared by directives and commissives (Searle, 1976: 11). Therefore, since threats simultaneously constitute two illocutionary forces, they serve as tremendously powerful speech acts for mob bosses.

In conclusion, threats are characterised by the features of ‘conditionality’ and ‘futurity’ (Muschalik, 2018: 14–15), since prospective negative sanctions are announced in case the addressee does not comply with the speaker’s demands. The illocution threat thus strongly contributes to suspense creation since conditionality clearly supports uncertainty, while futurity is linked to anticipation (see Section 2). In terms of speech act theory, suspense is a perlocutionary effect (Austin, 1975: 126; Huang, 2014: 130) on the communicative level of film producer and audience. As regards the perlocutionary effect within the fictional world, the addressees of suspense-triggering speech acts may cognitively react with fear or horror, potentially followed by physical actions employed to prevent frightful consequences.

4. Gangster films and methodology

Gangster films, alternatively labelled ‘mafia movies’ (Renga, 2011), can principally be defined as a type of crime thriller ‘centering on the activities of criminals working in organised groups to attain money and power, generally in an urban setting’ (Kozloff, 2000: 202). The villainous characters are thus embedded in a social web of bosses, accomplices, henchmen and victims, so that considerable discursive skills are required in the verbal negotiation of conflicts. When the gangster film initially gains popularity in the 1930s, ‘emphasis throughout these films is specifically on dialogue rather than dramatic action’ (Wilson, 2015: 33). Although physical action has become much more pervasive in mob films during the past decades to attract a mass audience, the suspenseful plot development still chiefly relies on verbal character interaction.

Since the betrayal of the clan is considered the greatest offence within the family-like organizations, ‘[t]he gravest jeopardy portrayed in gangster films is thus not physical violence but a speech act’ (Kozloff, 2000: 217). In case a character acts as a police informant, this is considered the equivalent of high treason, which can be historically contextualised by the fact that mafia structures originally were a way of maintaining the old order after the abolition of feudalism in Sicily. Accordingly, the typical mafioso is highly uncooperative towards law enforcement and hence ‘capable of remaining stoic, defiant, and highly aggressive in the face of adversity and brutality’ (Bousfield and McIntyre, 2011: 110). While westerns are named after their local setting and horror films after their objective of scaring spectators, the genre of the gangster film bears its name because the protagonist is a gangster. Hence, since ‘[t]he gangster as an individual becomes central to the genre itself and its significance’ (Wilson, 2015: 3), it is appropriate to place the pragma-stylistic focus on the main characters and their verbal power play techniques. The gangsters’ speech itself appears like a weapon, potentially reinforced by expletives that demonstrate high emotional involvement and aggression (Kozloff, 2000: 207–208).

Martin Scorsese, along with Francis Ford Coppola, is widely considered as one of the most influential directors in the gangster film genre since the 1970s (Wilson, 2015: 10). In portraying everyday business of the mob and its members, Scorsese employs an almost documentary style including extended dialogic passages and voice-over commentary (Wilson, 2015: 95). Apart from the three films under discussion, he is known for depicting organised crime also in his prominent feature films Mean Streets (1973), Goodfellas (1990), as well as Gangs of New York (2002) (see also Ebert, 2008). The present study is based on three films by Scorsese from the past three decades, covering a longer span of the director’s oeuvre in order to highlight stylistic constants in the depiction of mobsters. All three films received critical acclaim and are among the director’s most celebrated mafia movies, featuring some of Hollywood’s most distinguished actors in leading roles.

Casino (1995), based on a screenplay by Scorsese and writer Nicholas Pileggi, tells the life story of Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein (Robert de Niro), a Jewish American mafioso who manages the Tangiers Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas. Owing to problems with his drug-addicted wife Ginger (Sharon Stone) and his irresponsible and choleric accomplice Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci), Ace eventually loses his position and power. The screenplay for The Departed (2006) was written by author William Monahan, portraying the ruthless Irish-American mob boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), who is informed about law enforcement activities in Boston by the corrupt police officer Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon). However, Costello himself is likewise infiltrated by undercover state trooper Billy Costigan (Leonardo Di Caprio), which finally leads to Costello’s death. The Irishman (2019), based on a screenplay by Steven Zaillian, recounts the story of soft-spoken but determined Italian-American mafia boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), located in Pennsylvania, and the eponymous Irish-American hitman Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro). Their criminal cooperation with the powerful labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) comes to an end when the latter turns against them and is eventually murdered by Sheeran in Detroit.

The methodological approach of the present pragma-stylistic study relies on several consecutive steps: (i) The spoken dialogues of the three gangster movies were orthographically transcribed. (ii) All scenes were singled out in which the three mob bosses Russell Bufalino, Frank Costello, and Ace Rothstein use menacing indirectness in dialogue. (iii) The relevant indirect utterances were pragmatically analysed with respect to their forms and functions in the filmic plot contexts. Whenever nonverbal communication displayed on the screen was indispensable for examining discursive objectives, multimodal features of the films were taken into account as well. (iv) The illocutions represented by the speech acts were examined in the framework of theoretical approaches to suspense (see Section 2), paying particular attention to recurring stylistic devices. (v) In order to demonstrate salient rhetorical strategies of verbally obscure mob bosses, characteristic extracts were selected for an exemplary discussion (see Section 5). These instances were chosen because they feature mob bosses indirectly initiating future violent activities and thus represent key scenes driving the dramatic plot forward.

5. Suspense based on indirectness in gangster discourse

Utterances by gangster bosses tend to contain pragma-stylistic devices that serve as cues for some type of indirect, opaque, and unexpressed meaning. Hence, these techniques are important ingredients in suspenseful ‘gangsterese’ (Kozloff, 2000: 222), establishing the distinctiveness of mobster language by means of stylistic foregrounding (Jeffries and McIntyre, 2025: 33). Such cues are embedded in the verbal co-text as well as in the situational context, which are essential for identifying the illocutionary force of the respective speech acts. As the following subsections will show, the cues can occur in the three linguistic areas of lexical semantics, grammar, and metacommunication.

5.1 Lexical and semantic stylistic devices

One conventional and established semantic device of gangster talk is the euphemism, which means that a potentially offensive expression is replaced by an alternative lexical item which neutralises the negative connotations (Valenzuela, 2017: 104). This technique already occurs in The Godfather, where the ‘euphemistic language of respectability’ (Kozloff, 2000: 226) plays a decisive stylistic role. In Scorsese’s films, mob bosses usually avoid explicit references to intended crimes in similar ways, employing euphemism as a cue for indirectness. For instance, Russell Bufalino uses a directive illocution in telling his henchmen with regard to his enemies that ‘these guys keep coming around, so straighten them out’ (The Irishman, 00:22:40). The expression straighten them out is a euphemism that denotes acts of verbal or physical violence, thus indirectly foreshadowing suspenseful events. A few moments later, he declares that ‘when I ask somebody to take care of something for me, I expect them to take care of it themselves’ (The Irishman, 00:23:09). As far as cinematography is concerned, Bufalino directly addresses the camera during this particular utterance, thereby breaking the fourth wall, which creates the illusion of a close relationship between character and audience and thus contributes to suspense. While Bufalino’s employees appear to immediately understand what he means by the euphemistic phraseologisms straighten them out and take care of, in the external communicative system they trigger a sense of uncertainty and expectation with respect to possible crimes that are about to follow. The subsequent suspense is upheld until the movie plot reveals exactly which acts of violence are performed, in this case murder in a barber shop.

A second semantic device that serves as a cue for meaning beyond the literal message of an illocution is the metaphor. In the framework of conceptual metaphor theory, a metaphor relies on the cognitive mapping of a source domain onto a target domain (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003: 252). For instance, in the metaphorical idiom time is money, the abstract target domain time is conceptualised in terms of the concrete source domain money. This technique appears in gangster talk, for example, when the mafioso teamster Jimmy Hoffa calls the contract killer Frank Sheeran on the phone and indirectly inquires ‘I heard you paint houses’ (The Irishman, 00:46:30), upon which the latter answers in the affirmative and replies ‘I also do my own carpentry’. The collocation paint houses serves as source domain for the target domain of murder, implying massive bloodshed, whereas carpentry realises metonymy since it stands for the act of constructing wooden coffins, so that source and target are here situated in the same cognitive domain of woodwork (Valenzuela, 2017: 190). From a Gricean perspective, the literal meanings of the metaphorical and metonymic expressions flout the quality maxim, while the contextually intended meaning is the implicature. The two characters instantly seem to understand the figurative meanings, whereas the audience is kept in suspenseful uncertainty, which is gradually resolved throughout the movie when Sheeran commits several murders. Another indirect directive illocution aiming at homicidal activities is uttered by Bufalino to a henchman with the words ‘If you can get him a ticket, like, to Australia … You know what I mean. […] You wanna help him get down there?’ (The Irishman, 02:58:18). The toponym Australia and the co-referential phrase down there are metaphorical source domains for the victim’s grave and his disappearance without a trace, thus initiating another arc of suspense. The metacommunicative representative illocution you know what I mean further hints at the fact that some hidden message is implied (see Section 5.3). From the mob bosses’ perspective, such indirectness also offers an additional level of protection in case another character should gather incriminating evidence, for an indirect order to carry out a murder is more difficult to prove in court.

A metaphorical cue may additionally be embedded in a multimodal frame, boosting its suspenseful effect by means of visuals on the screen. This happens, for instance, when Frank Costello conducts a probing conversation with Billy Costigan, whom he rightfully suspects to be an undercover police officer. Costello here declares ‘I smell a rat’ (The Departed, 01:30:35) and a few minutes later sniffs around ostentatiously behind Costigan’s back as an indirect nonverbal continuation of his threatening speech act (The Departed, 01:36:15). The rat obviously serves as a metaphorical source domain for a traitor, which may evoke suspenseful anticipation in attentive viewers who already know about Costigan’s status as a covert investigator and can therefore empathise with his predicament.

The indirectly threatening strategy against Costigan is further metaphorically pursued when Costello tells him ‘you know what I like about restaurants? […] You learn a lot watching things eat’ (The Departed, 01:35:42). Costello’s use of the noun things here dehumanises other restaurant guests, whose eating habits are supposedly observed by the mafia boss. Moreover, during this cryptic utterance, Costello himself violently smashes a fly on the table and eats it off the palm of his hand, so that film dialogue is multimodally supported by camera work. The insect killed by Costello can be interpreted as the source domain that is metaphorically mapped onto Costigan, who serves as the target domain. Accordingly, the fly’s inferiority and vulnerability are figuratively transferred to Costigan, who likewise appears weak and defenceless. As a reaction to this intimidating move, Costigan visibly winces in horror, while suspense is created by the visual metaphor of devouring, since Costello’s consumption of the fly serves as the source domain for the target domain of attacking or killing a person.

A third lexical cue for indirectness is the use of general nouns such as stuff or matter, which are marked by a highly ‘generalized reference’ (Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 274). The wide semantic extension of these nouns leads to vagueness and uncertainty, which form the foundation of suspense. For instance, when Bufalino decides that teamster Hoffa has gone too far in his actions and therefore needs to be eliminated, he addresses the hitman Frank Sheeran with the words ‘Listen, Frank. Things have gotten out of hand with our friend again. And some people are having serious problems with him’ (The Irishman, 02:17:47). Accordingly, nouns such as things, people, and problems give very little and vague information and thereby flout the Gricean maxims of quantity and manner, resulting in the implicature that an inconvenient truth is presently left unsaid. The general nouns are thus significant cues for a high degree of indirectness, yet the criminal intention and indirect request can contextually be inferred by Sheeran. In this way, uncertainty is evoked in the external communicative system, which in turn contributes to suspenseful anticipation. Similarly, in the beginning of The Departed, Frank Costello announces to the young Colin Sullivan that ‘A man makes his own way’ (The Departed, 00:03:56). This declarative clause representing a general truth serves as an indirect directive, in which the general noun way contextually indicates that ruthless and self-centered deeds will be required for a criminal career.

The fourth semantic device generating suspenseful uncertainty manifests itself in the expression of epistemic modality, which is a semantic system pertaining to ‘the question of whether something is likely/certain or unlikely’ (Jeffries and McIntyre, 2025: 93). Even though low degrees of likelihood may be verbalised by mob bosses, the strict hierarchy in organised crime implies urgency and determination. Hence, when Ace Rothstein talks to henchman Andy about the reckless mobster Nicky Santoro with the words ‘Maybe he should get lost for a while, take a vacation. Would that be so bad?’ (Casino, 01:45:51), the modal adverb maybe and the modal auxiliary would do not have their literal meaning but imply a demand that evokes suspense. This is further supported by the modal verb should, which expresses deontic modality since it refers to the advisability of performing the suggested action.

In a key scene in The Irishman, Bufalino tries to persuade Hoffa to stop his resistance to the mafia bosses with the tentative and hesitant statement ‘Listen, some people, not me, but some people … they’re a little concerned. Some people, not me, they think that you might …’. When Hoffa replies ‘I might?’, Bufalino continues ‘You might be demonstrating a failure to show appreciation’ (The Irishman, 02:11:20). Here, the explicitly emphasised modal verb might in Hoffa’s echo question does not actually convey weak epistemic modality but contributes to the indirectness of Bufalino’s speech act, which is not just a polite and non-committal recommendation but a serious threat. This admonition may trigger suspenseful expectation in viewers which is not fully resolved until Hoffa is murdered by Sheeran in the movie’s climactic ending. In The Departed, Frank Costello similarly repeats the modal adverb maybe as a cue when he indirectly outlines what will happen to his opponents in his statement ‘Guineas from the north End, down Providence, tried to tell me what to do. And, uh, something maybe happened to them. Maybe, uh, like that’ (The Departed, 00:04:05). When this utterance is followed by a multimodal camera cut to Costello executing two people on the beach with his gun, the audience is aware that the adverb maybe does not express a mere possibility in terms of weak epistemic modality but suspensefully foreshadows cruelty against adversaries.

This use of epistemic modality is tantamount to irony, which is the fifth semantic strategy of engendering suspenseful indirectness in the three films. From a pragmatic vantage point, irony can be described as a blatant flout of the Gricean quality maxim, with contextual cues hinting at the implicated meaning (Black, 2006: 110). Accordingly, irony is an extreme form of indirectness, since the speaker’s actual attitude is directly opposed to the meaning literally expressed. Thus, in Casino, Ace Rothstein confronts Lester Diamond, the greedy lover of his adulterous wife, throwing dollar bills on the restaurant table with the words ‘Here, take mine, too. Take it, ’cause you already have hers’ (Casino, 01:11:52). The situational context and the belligerent prosody serve as irony cues, so that it is implicated that the addressee will not receive any money at all. Hence, the illocutionary force can clearly be identified as a threat that raises expectations of future aggression. The arc of suspense is here resolved a few minutes later, when Lester is brutally beaten up outside the restaurant by Rothstein’s associates.

5.2 Grammatical stylistic devices

In addition to lexico-semantic devices, suspenseful indirectness is also triggered by grammatical stylistic cues comprising function words and syntactic constructions. The first strategy is the occurrence of personal, demonstrative, or indefinite pronouns whose contextual reference temporarily remains undisclosed. In a key scene leading to the murder of Jimmy Hoffa, Russell Bufalino tells his hitman Sheeran that ‘it’s at a point where you’re gonna have to talk to him and tell him: It’s what it is’ (The Irishman, 02:17:54), upon which Sheeran somewhat incredulously echoes ‘What it is?’. Bufalino then continues with even more pronouns in ‘Yeah, it’s what they want. It’s where it’s gotten. You’re close to him. Maybe he’ll listen to you’. Concerning the personal pronoun in it’s what it is, there is no clear endophoric or exophoric reference specifying its meaning. Moreover, the obvious redundancy in this proposition flouts the Gricean maxim of quantity by providing too little information, which leads to the conversational implicature that an uncomfortable message is to be conveyed. In rhetorical terms, this redundant statement is a tautology, which pragmatically invites recipients to interpret the utterance on the basis of their pre-existing world knowledge and the given situational context. Thus, owing to the threatening discursive context and the menacing prosody, the addressee in inter-character communication can draw the appropriate inference that the utterance is an indirect directive illocution, urging Sheeran to carry out his duty as hitman in case Hoffa does not comply with the mob bosses’ commands. The indirectness thus appears as part of the gangsters’ in-group talk, which is the distinct discourse type employed by this particular social and occupational group. Since indirectness corresponds with the mafia’s unwritten laws, insiders are expected to decode such obscure statements. In the external communicative system, the cryptic code indirectly triggers an expectation of violence against Hoffa, which generates suspense, for the audience is aware that Sheeran also has a confidential relationship with the teamster. Conclusively, this results in a serious conflict of interest for Sheeran, leading to an extended and heavily delayed arc of suspense that is not resolved until Hoffa is finally shot by the Irishman.

In other scenes, pronouns may analogously serve as a code for homicide, for instance when Bufalino complains about Hoffa’s associate Allen Dorfman. When Sheeran subsequently inquires ‘So what do you want me to do?’ (The Irishman, 01:33:10), Bufalino briefly hesitates and replies ‘No, not that. Not that’. Here the demonstrative pronoun that excludes murder but similarly opens the suspenseful question of what other mafia measures will be taken. Hence, the boss’s indirectness is also a strategy of exercising power in the mobster hierarchy since it demonstrates that he does not need to be more specific for his orders to be comprehended and carried out. On some occasions, it is even sufficient for Bufalino to demand murder in a multimodal manner by means of nonverbal communication, employing merely a meaningful glance (The Irishman, 01:43:34) or a skeptical raising of his eyebrows (The Irishman, 02:56:36).

In The Departed, a pivotal and particularly suspenseful dialogue occurs when Frank Costello interrogates Billy Costigan in order to ascertain whether he is a traitor. When the latter makes a provocative comment, mob boss Costello drops something and reaches under the table, where he uncovers a handgun. He pretends to be surprised about its presence, points it at Costigan and inquires ‘You got something you wanna … ask me?’ (The Departed, 01:32:55). In combination with the multimodal display of the weapon, the indefinite pronoun something triggers the indirect illocutionary force of a threat, admonishing Costigan to carefully choose his next words. For audiences this results in an expectation of potentially mortal danger for an amiable and upright character, which causes suspense upheld until the end of the conversation, when the gangster decides to give his employee another chance.

A second grammatical cue is the rhetorical question, which is used by mob bosses to assert their dominance and to intimidate others. For example, when Frank Costello is dissatisfied with the way his informant Colin Sullivan brusquely demands more details from him, he echoes ‘Get you? Give you? Who the fuck do you work for?’ (The Departed, 01:12:22). Owing to the mismatch between the wh-interrogative form and the declarative content, this indirect speech act serves as an emphatic threat not to undermine the hierarchy in organised crime. In the external communicative system, the illocution triggers a suspenseful anticipation of Sullivan’s reaction and further confrontation in the subsequent dialogue.

In Casino, Ace Rothstein’s divorce from his drug-addicted wife Ginger is followed by a custody dispute. In front of the divorce lawyer, he demands from her ‘Look in my eyes. You know me. Do you see anything in these eyes that makes you think I would ever let someone in your condition take my child away from me? Do you?’ (Casino, 01:54:38). This literal yes/no-interrogative is clearly to be decoded as a hostile indirect speech act with the illocutionary force of a threat. As regards the commissive force of this threat, the speaker’s potential future action is not specified in detail, which triggers uncanny uncertainty. Thus, while the effect of this rhetorical question on the wife is intimidation, it contributes to suspense in the external communicative system with regard to prospective developments in the ensuing divorce war, which actually extends over a considerable part of the film. Concerning the visible reaction of Rothstein’s wife, her face is cinematographically portrayed in a close-up shot following her husband’s menacing question. Her defiant facial expression likewise raises suspenseful questions about her own future plans in the custody battle.

Third, suspenseful indirectness can be triggered by declarative sentences that do not serve as representative illocutions but constitute the illocutionary force of threats or requests. For instance, when Jimmy Hoffa does not comply with the mob bosses’ demands, Bufalino generously lets him know ‘I’m trying to help you, Jimmy’ (The Irishman, 02:12:34) in the form of a declarative sentence. The fact that the latter replies ‘I know you are. But nobody threatens Hoffa’ is a clear indication that the indirect threat has been appropriately decrypted by the addressee, whereas the desired perlocution of compliance has not been achieved. This open conflict between the two powerful wise guys leads to suspenseful anticipation for the viewers and constitutes the main arc of suspense in the entire movie. In The Departed, when the corrupt police officer Colin Sullivan meets Frank Costello for a covert business talk in a porn movie theatre, the latter tells him ‘I hope you’re not turning into one of them sob sisters [sic] wants to get caught’ (The Departed, 01:24:50). Supported by the future-oriented verb hope, this declarative sentence indirectly serves as a threat not to betray the speaker’s trust, which is a suspenseful premonition of potentially harmful subsequent developments.

In Casino, one particularly violent scene shows Ace Rothstein ordering his henchman to smash the hand of a cheat with a mallet in a back room. When the deceiver’s accomplice sees what has happened to his associate, Rothstein lets him know ‘I’m gonna give you a choice: You can either have the money and the hammer or you can walk out of here’ (Casino, 00:36:55). In this declarative sentence, the ostensible choice is actually a threat to leave the establishment and never to return, for the first option would mean severe injury. In the external communicative system, suspense is based on the anticipation of the cheat’s reaction and possible further sanctions of the casino manager. Finally, if mob bosses talk to their subordinates, requests are likewise commonly made indirectly by means of declarative sentences. For instance, Bufalino informs contract killer Sheeran about one of his adversaries that ‘I hate that Dorfman. He’s such a pain-in-the-ass fucking Jew’ (The Irishman, 01:33:10). This declarative sentence serves as an indirect speech act requesting that measures should be taken to intimidate Dorfman. In view of the criminal communicative situation, suspense may be caused by the uncertainty about which kind of violent punishment for the opponent is about to follow.

5.3 Metacommunicative speech acts

As far as suspense-generating metacommunicative speech acts by gangsters are concerned, their first function is to promote the hearers’ comprehension process by explicitly asking about their understanding. For instance, when Bufalino collects an envelope with money from a shop owner but is dissatisfied with the latter’s performance, he tells him ‘you got a nice shop here […], but your kid is a real sfigato [that is, ‘moron’], you understand? […] Nobody’s gonna want to shop here anymore. If it’s not good for you, it’s not good for me, you understand what I’m saying’ (The Irishman, 00:41:50). The double metacommunicative reference in interrogative form with the verb understand draws attention to the fact that an indirect threat is conveyed without spelling it out explicitly. Owing to his superior position in the criminal hierarchy, the mob boss can rely on the shop owner trying to grasp the indirect meaning. The apparent compliment on the addressee’s nice shop supports the threat because it indicates that the addressee has something valuable to lose. Since attentive viewers are aware of Bufalino’s nefarious business, they may anticipate punitive measures without knowing the exact nature and time of the sanctions, which forms a fruitful basis for suspense.

Similarly, after a casino employee has proved to be incompetent in handling guests adequately, the manager Rothstein rebukes him with the utterance ‘Listen to me very carefully. There are three ways of doing things around here: the right way, the wrong way, and the way that I do it. Do you understand?’ (Casino, 00:55:30). Metacommunication here surfaces twice with reference to the reception process, starting with the imperative listen, which aims to secure the addressee’s attention. The second instance is the interrogative do you understand?, which demands a confirmation of the addressee’s comprehension. Rothstein’s explanation is rather opaque, for it introduces three possible future courses of action, only one of which is considered eligible by the speaker. It is thus conveyed that the manager’s approach is beyond the binary categories of right and wrong, so that employees are obliged to comply with his idiosyncratic dictates. The metacommunicative understand requires the staff member to accept this procedure, which underlines that this form of enforcing feedback not only secures understanding but also functions as a power move. On this basis, suspense is triggered for viewers, as further dubious practices and negative consequences for the employee are to be expected.

In one salient scene in The Irishman, which shows Bufalino talking to hitman Sheeran about Hoffa, the mob boss metacommunicatively addresses comprehension processes by saying ‘He doesn’t have to understand everything. You know what I’m talking about. Sometimes it’s better’ (The Irishman, 01:05:34). In other words, it is not intended to provide Hoffa with unlimited information, which indirectly signals to Sheeran that Bufalino does not completely confide in Hoffa. This lack of trust, here indirectly suggested in the metacommunicative comment you know what I’m talking about, suspensefully foreshadows a catastrophic clash between the two bosses, which indeed concludes the conflict in the movie’s finale.

Second, metacommunication may refer not to the hearer’s comprehension process but to the speaker’s intention. Thus, for example, when hitman Sheeran acts as Bufalino’s messenger in threatening Hoffa, Sheeran elucidates that ‘He means what he’s saying’ (The Irishman, 02:19:18), thereby emphasising Bufalino’s determination. Hoffa immediately replies ‘Well, I mean what I’m saying’ (The Irishman, 02:19:20), in turn underlining his own communicative intention. In this way, Bufalino’s cryptic utterance it is what it is (see Section 5.2) gains additional momentum, since a menacing objective behind it is now indirectly conveyed. However, the perlocution realised in Hoffa’s response is not as desired, which results in a suspenseful antagonism finally leading to Hoffa’s death. In Casino, when Rothstein’s public behaviour enrages a mob boss, the boss’s henchman Andy tells Rothstein ‘The old man said maybe your friend should give in. When the old man says “maybe”, that’s like a papal bull’ (Casino, 01:45:25). This is a highly significant metalinguistic interpretation of the modal adverb maybe (see Section 5.1), indicating that absolute authority in the guise of indirectness is indeed a conventional technique of gangsterese. The comparison with the papal bull underlines that the indirect directive equals an official decree that must be followed under any circumstances, founded on the boss’s supreme power in the mob hierarchy. Now that the viewers are aware of the seriousness of the threat, suspense is enhanced by the expectation of drastic punitive actions.

Third, metacommunication may refer neither to the speaker’s intention nor to the hearer’s comprehension but to the act of talking itself, as supposedly performed by a traitor. Accordingly, in her study of gangster films, Kozloff points out that ‘this genre is virtually obsessed with the issue of talk’ (2000: 217), which is underlined by the use of metalanguage, since talking is implicitly equated with potential betrayal and disloyalty. For instance, Bufalino lets Sheeran know about Hoffa that ‘He likes to talk, don’t he?’, which is confirmed by Sheeran with the statement ‘Yeah. Thought I was talking to General Patton’ (The Irishman, 00:48:50). The comparison with US general Patton emphasises Hoffa’s loquacity, since this officer is collectively remembered for his passionate motivational speeches to soldiers during World War II. By highlighting Hoffa’s propensity for garrulousness, Bufalino indirectly reveals his distrust, which already foreshadows the conflict between himself and the teamster and thus engenders suspenseful anticipation. When mobster Costello in The Departed suspiciously interrogates Costigan, he utters a comparable accusation with the words ‘I’m sure by now you know I got an informer in my outfit’ (The Departed, 01:31:00). The deverbal noun informer here metalinguistically refers to the act of verbal betrayal, thus implying that the addressee may be the mole. Since the storyline previously revealed to the viewers that this is actually the case, Costello’s utterance triggers suspense based on an anticipation of mortal danger for the likeable character Costigan.

6. Conclusions

The analyses have shown that utterances by mob bosses may indirectly refer to future violence in inter-character dialogue, which fulfils the function of generating suspense for the viewers as overhearers. In the internal communication system, the protagonists’ indirect utterances constitute two main illocutionary forces, depending on the respective addressees: There are indirect orders to subordinates such as hitmen and other henchmen as well as indirect threats to victims, adversaries, wayward accomplices, and potential traitors. In the external communicative system, these speech acts lead to uncertainty regarding the mobsters’ malicious intentions and to the anticipation of dramatic consequences, which form the foundation for suspenseful entertainment. The thrill is kept up for audiences until the resolution of the arcs of suspense, which is typically delayed to increase the effect.

The indirectness in mob bosses’ utterances towards other fictional characters fulfils three main discursive functions in inter-character communication. First, the kingpins exercise power through opacity, displaying their awareness that they do not need to be more specific for subordinates to understand an order. Second, the mobsters promote and perpetuate secretive in-group communication based on the understood conventions of mafia discourse. And third, the bosses take precautions against possible betrayal, since indirectness allows them to communicate without explicit commitment, so that they could later deny criminal intentions and potentially evade prosecution. If viewers submit to this cryptic code of gangsterese, they are emotionally drawn into the mob world and to some extent become discursive accomplices and confidant(e)s, which results in additional involvement and empathy.

Although indirectness by film gangsters occurs in diverse creative manifestations, it shows some genre-specific conventionalization. Hence, it is possible to identify specific pragma-stylistic devices that function as cues for the occurrence of subtextual meaning, thus triggering suspense in the external communicative system. As far as lexical and semantic techniques are concerned, (i) euphemisms are employed for murder and other crimes, allowing mobsters to maintain a reputable appearance; (ii) metaphors provide images for death and betrayal, figuratively illustrating acts of aggression; (iii) general nouns have a vague meaning that strongly contributes to suspenseful uncertainty; (iv) epistemic modality, expressed by verbs and adverbs, conveys urgency and necessity behind a mock-polite façade; and (v) irony manifests radical indirectness, as the opposite of the literal meaning is aggressively communicated. In addition, relevant grammatical stylistic devices comprise (i) personal, demonstrative, and indefinite pronouns with contextually ambiguous reference, working as an in-group code for homicidal plans; (ii) rhetorical questions as indirect speech acts with the illocutionary force of threats; and (iii) declarative sentences that indirectly function as threats or requests demanding certain courses of action. Finally, metacommunicative speech acts fulfil three main functions: (i) addressing the hearers’ comprehension process by explicitly questioning their understanding, thereby highlighting the addressees’ obligation to comply; (ii) indirectly referring to the speakers’ intention, thus drawing attention to their hidden agenda and authoritative power; and (iii) mentioning the act of talking with regard to supposed treason and betrayal, which implies severe allegations and raises an expectation of drastic countermeasures.

As regards suspense triggered by enigmatic gangsterese, it would be feasible for future stylistic studies to widen the angle in manifold ways. One potential trajectory could be to examine more closely multimodal cues in film discourse contributing to suspense, including cinematography, the foreboding musical score, and the eerie soundtrack. The visual plane of film is particularly relevant, as it comprises nonverbal communication of mob bosses, such as facial expressions and other features of body language. From the perspective of supra-segmental phonology, it would furthermore be enlightening to investigate the gangsters’ prosody, which has a strong emotional effect on recipients as well. Finally, a comparative study of suspense could take into account gangster talk in films by other distinguished directors like Brian de Palma or Michael Mann. Hopefully, the present linguistic examination of suspense has underlined the fact that pragma-stylistics and film studies can tremendously benefit from close mutual cooperation.