Rationalizing the Irrational: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of The Tell-Tale Heart

This paper is an attempt to demonstrate the usefulness of psychoanalysis particularly psycholinguistics in the investigation of crimes on the crime scenes by using data from the short story The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe. Psycholinguistics as methodology establishes the link between the production of language and the underlying cognitive processes (Harely, 2005, p. 13) and Poe’s short story presents the best example to comprehend how some specific linguistic clues help to know the real cognitive processes under work. Psychology deals with the facts determining human phenomena and language is one of these phenomena. The protagonist of The Tell-Tale Heart is a victim of social isolation. He lives in complete isolation that has exerted a negative influence on his personality. In a fit of madness, he kills an old man in the dead hours of night just because one of his eyes resembles that of a vulture-a pale blue eye. He tries to create logic not only in the act of killing but also in the process of killing. Police arrive to investigate and the young man finally admits his crime. The psycholinguistic analysis of the language and actions used by the young man and the killer before and after the murder helps in finding out the crime of the murderer. The paper concludes that psycholinguistics can be the best tool in the investigation of crimes on the crime scene.