Captured on tape: professional hearing and competing entextualizations in the criminal justice system

Abstract

A growing body of discourse-analytic studies demonstrates that within the legal system, spoken language that undergoes entextualization is transformed in a variety of sociopolitically consequential ways. Through the analysis of a legal case involving the institutional entextualization of incriminating language-an FBI summary log of wiretapped telephone calls between suspected drug dealers-the article argues that practices of professional hearing and transcription on behalf of institutions of law enforcement systematically work to the disadvantage of suspects and defendants. At the same time, discourse analysts who intervene in the justice system as linguistic experts o¤er competing representations of suspects' and defendants' language rooted in their own practices of professional hearing and their own institutional goals. Legal entextualizations, whether weighted in favor of or against defendants, present dialogically constructed representations of discourse as monologic and objective facts in order to foster an ideology of institutional neutrality. This process allows legal institutions to ''create their own reality'' by regimenting talk through textual representation in order to promote their own authority and interests.

Hunting for “Racists”: Tape Fetishism and the Intertextual Enactment and Reproduction of the Dominant Understanding of Racism in US Society

“…:351, citing Ashmore and Reed 2000). Moreover, insofar as the activity involves the perceptual act of hearing, it relies upon a type of “professional hearing,” similar to the professional hearing Bucholtz () discusses in her analysis of law enforcement entextualization practices, or the related forms of “professional vision” that Goodwin () discusses in his analysis of the Rodney King video. But here, the professional hearing is derived from the expertise of the audio engineers consulted by the journalists.…”

“…The analytic focus on intertextuality in this paper draws from the widely shared view among sociocultural linguists that intertextual practices “yield social formations” (Agha :4) and facilitate the discursive exercise of power (Briggs and Bauman ). In line with this perspective, scholarship has examined the production of intertextual authority in reported speech (Matoesian ) and the politics of entextualization (Bucholtz , ) and recontextualization (Hodges ). Related scholarship has also focused on the ideological role of the media used in these processes; in particular “tape fetishism” (Ashmore et al.…”

“…The analytic focus on intertextuality in this paper draws from the widely shared view among sociocultural linguists that intertextual practices "yield social formations" (Agha 2005:4) and facilitate the discursive exercise of power (Briggs and Bauman 1992). In line with this perspective, scholarship has examined the production of intertextual authority in reported speech (Matoesian 2000) and the politics of entextualization (Bucholtz 2000(Bucholtz , 2009 and recontextualization (Hodges 2008). Related scholarship has also focused on the ideological role of the media used in these processes; in particular "tape fetishism" (Ashmore et al 2004), whereby audiotapes are "reified and fetishized as an objective source of knowledge" (Matoesian 2013:649), and the "professional hearing" practices that position experts as authoritative transmitters of previously spoken words (Bucholtz 2009;Matoesian 2000).…”

‘Wanna still nine hard?’: Exploring Mechanisms of Police Bias in the Translation and Interpretation of Wiretap Conversations

“…For law enforcement, successful entextualization requires what forensic linguists call "professional hearing" (Bucholtz 2009), a process by which the authorized 'ears' of wiretap monitoring in wire rooms must decide which conversations to intercept, and then among those intercepted, listen to recordings, and finally apply (criminal) meaning to what was said. Professional hearing is what is practiced by the monitors and translators staffing wire rooms.…”

“…The traditional role of wiretapping as a fundamental surveillance technology is clearly acknowledged, but the literal analysis of wiretap data has been minimal in the broader literature on surveillance and undercover police work (Redden 2000;Marx 1988; see Marx 2004 for comprehensive bibliography). There are, however, at least two bodies of work that can shed light on the transformation of intercepted conversations into criminal evidence: ideas about the wiretap entextualization process (Bucholtz 2009), and linguistic analyses of conversational strategies used by police or their agents to create crime or its appearance in undercover surveillance operations (Shuy 2008).…”