LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 12 : 9 September 2012
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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M. S. Thirumalai
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The Decoding Skill of Sherlock Holmes in Detection

A. Kayalvizhi, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Scholar

A Legendary Detective

Sherlock Holmes is a legendary detective who is well known for his skills such as observation, inference, and logical reasoning. His profession as a crime investigator makes demands on him to be competent so as to identify and catch the criminals. His competency is the outcome of his brilliant reasoning power that leads him in his quest for truth and pursuit of offenders.

The Criminal Trade and Codes

The trade of the criminal society involves illegal activities. So, they try to take all care to keep them away from the hold of law. This cautiousness alerts them to be secretive at times of communicating with their fellow gangsters, and the formation of secret codes is the product of such effort. The detective, whose work is to unravel every secret of the criminals, must have the capability to decipher their codes.

Sherlock Holmes, using his proficient reasoning power, never fails to see through the criminals’ enigmatic messages. His confidence to succeed in such affairs is well expressed when he says, “What one man can invent another can discover.” (Doyle 365)

Definition of Decoding

Dictionaries generally define decoding as the process “to extract meaning from spoken or written symbols.” It is “a process to translate (data or a message) from a code into the original language or form” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/decoding?s=t.). Closely related to decoding is the process of deduction. It is generally described as “a process of reasoning in which a conclusion follows necessarily from the premises presented, so that the conclusion cannot be false if the premises are true” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/deduction?s=t).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

A. Kayalvizhi, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Scholar
Assistant Professor of English
Salem Sowdeswari College
Salem 636010
Tamilnadu
India
kayalsiva1979@gmail.com
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