DIE KOMMUNIKATIVE FUNKTION VON TIERMETAPHERN ALS ERZEUGER DES HUMORS IN DEN DEUTSCHEN ÜBERSETZUNGEN EINIGER POIROT-ROMANE/ THE COMMUNICATIVE FUNCTION OF ANIMAL METAPHORS AS GENERATORS OF HUMOR IN THE GERMAN TRANSLATIONS OF POIROT-NOVELS

Many of Agatha Christie’s crime novels contain nursery rhymes that serve as a guide to the content of the entire story. HerculePoirot and Miss Jane Marple, Agatha Christie’s most famous detectives, can often reveal the culprit in the novel with the help of a parallel between these nursery rhymes and real life. These nursery rhymes are not always easy to decipher in the context of the story, because they work, among others, with such tropes, which are stylistically classified as animal metaphors. These can help the readers to decipher the secret of the novel. It is always a challenge for researchers to interpret these animal metaphors and determine their role in the text. This article sets out to examine the communicative function of these animal metaphors in the German translation of some of Poirot’s novels and to determine how these animal metaphors contribute to the specific humor of Agatha Christie. The purpose of this research is not only a simple determination of the function of metaphors in each text, but also an attempt at interdisciplinary analysis that links linguistics and literary studies and interprets them as a philological whole.