The dynamics of power and resistance in police interview discourse

Abstract

This is a study of police interviewing using an integrated approach, drawing on conversation analysis (CA), critical discourse analysis (CDA) and pragmatics. The study focuses on the balance of power and control, finding that in particular the institutional status of the participants, the discursive roles assigned to them by the context, and their relative knowledge, are significant factors affecting the dynamics of the discourse. Four discursive features are identified as particularly significant, and a detailed analysis of the complex interplay of these features shows that power and control are constantly under negotiation, and are always open to challenge and resistance. Further it is shown that discursive dominance is not necessarily advantageous to participants, due to the specific goals and purposes of the police interview context. A wider consideration of the context illustrates the contribution that linguistics can make to the use of police interview data as evidence in the UK criminal justice system.

Point of view in free indirect thought and in community interpreting

“…This 'disregard' of such elements is also not uncommon in monolingual settings; in fact, the same happens during the transformation of interview data through the judicial process as the tape of the original interaction is converted to a written transcript by police clerks(Haworth, 2006).…”

On Pragmatic Identity Construction of Prosecutors in Criminal Courtroom Discourse

“…Discourse produces specific meanings and constructs social consensus by means of selecting linguistic and other semiotic materials, which is obviously embodied in the legal domain. Most domestic and overseas relevant researches state that the language practice (for example, the police interview, the courtroom discourse) in both law enforcement and judicial context is an important part in the whole legal practice [6] . Thereby, it is necessary to emphasize the function of discourse in its construction of legal authoritative identity in the contexts of legislation, law enforcement and judicature while probing into the legal authority of social meaning system.…”

“…[1] This research tendency on the view of identity is also one of the hot issues in the pragmatics [2,3,4] . The main features include: (1) an identity is a dynamic process; (2) an identity occurs in a concrete and specific interactive occasion; (3) communication can produce multiple identities,not an individual or changelessly sole identity; (4) identities are formed along with the whole process and contextualization of communication; (5) identities requires being constructed via discourse; (6) identities are participants' resources, emphasizing whether identities are used, when and how they are used. [5] It is the communication character of an identity，not its social or psychological one that should be investigated to study identity construction from the perspective of pragmatics.…”

19. Legal discourse: processes of making evidence in specialised legal corpora

“…Rock 2007;Ainsworth 2008), police interviews (e.g. Ainsworth 1993;Haworth 2006;Komter 2006;Johnson 2008;Jones 2008;Leo 2008) and coerced and false confessions (Drizin and Leo 2004;Berk-Seligson 2009), lawyer consultations (Scheffer 2006), asylum interviewing (Maryns 2004), mediation (Stewart andMaxwell 2010), civil, criminal andhistorical trials (e.g. Ehrlich 2001;Matoesian 2001;Cotterill 2003;Archer 2005;Heffer 2005;Shuy 2006Shuy , 2008 and appeals (Tracy 2011) 1 .…”