Agatha Christie’s grey cells mystery

Agatha Christie’s grey cells mystery

The mystery behind Agatha Christie’s enduring popularity may have been solved by three leading universities collaborating on a study of more than 80 of her crime novels.
Despite her worldwide sales of two billion, critics such as the crime writer P D James pan her writing style and “cardboard cut-out” characters. But the study by neuro-linguists at the universities of London, Birmingham and Warwick shows that she peppered her prose with phrases that act as a trigger to raise levels of serotonin and endorphins, the chemical messengers in the brain that induce pleasure and satisfaction.
“Christie’s language patterns stimulate higher than usual activity in the brain,” said Dr Roland Kapferer. “The release of these neurological opiates makes Christie’s writing literally unputdownable.”
The study — The Agatha Project — involved loading Christie’s novels onto a computer and analysing her words, phrases and sentences.
One finding was that she used a very limited vocabulary. “It means that readers aren’t distracted and so they concentrate more on the clues and the plots,” said Dr. Danielsson.
Despite the grisly theme of her novels, researchers say that much of her vocabulary is pleasing and gentle.
Favourite words or phrases, repeatedly used, help to stimulate the pleasure-inducing side of the brain. They include she, yes, girl, kind, smiled and suddenly. Common phrases include “can you keep an eye on this”, “more or less”, “a day or two” and “something like that”.
However, Mathew Prichard, Christie’s grandson, was sceptical of the research. “It’s not really a mystery. She was simply a writer of great plots,” he said.

Glossary:
Unputdownable:so interesting or exciting that you do not want to stop reading it.
from The Sunday Times December 18, 2005

Question 1 Indicate whether these sentences are true or false. Justify your answers with evidence from the text:
a) Critics dislike only the way Agatha Christie wrote.
b) The less variety of vocabulary, the more you focus on the story.
c) Her vocabulary has nothing to do with the kind of plots she wrote.
d) Agatha Christie’s family agrees with the result of the study.

Question 2 Answer these questions in your own words:
a) What is the main conclusion of the study?
b) How does the repetition of words and phrases affect us as readers?

Question 3 Find a word or phrase in the text that means the same as:
a) Main par 1. b) something that produces an immediate result par 2. c) series of related events par. 5

Question 4 Rewrite the following sentences without changing the meaning
a) The mystery of her enduring popularity may have been solved by three leading universities.
Three...
b) Despite the grisly theme of her novels, researchers say that much of her vocabulary is pleasing and gentle.
Although...
c) “It means that readers aren’t distracted and so they concentrate more on the clues and the plots,” said Dr. Danielsson.
Dr. Danielson said that it...

Question 5 Write a short essay (120-150 words) on the following topic:
What do you prefer  - a good book or a good movie?


Self-Access Group. CEP Santander