The Discourse of Police Interviews 9780226647821

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The Discourse of Police Interviews

The Discourse of Police Interviews

edited by mar i anne mason and fr ances rock the universit y of chicago press

chicago and london

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2020 by Frances Rock and Marianne Mason All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2020 Printed in the United States of America 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20

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isbn-13: 978- 0-226- 64765-4 (cloth) isbn-13: 978- 0-226- 64779-1 (paper) isbn-13: 978- 0-226- 64782-1 (e-book) doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226647821.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mason, Marianne, editor. | Rock, Frances, 1974– editor. Title: The discourse of police interviews / edited by Marianne Mason and Frances Rock. Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2020. | Includes index. Identifiers: lccn 2019018462 | isbn 9780226647654 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226647791 (pbk. : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226647821 (e-book) Subjects: lcsh: Police questioning. | Reid technique. | Interviewing in law enforcement. | Criminal investigation—Language. | Forensic linguistics. Classification: lcc hv8073.3.ds7 2019 | ddc 363.25/4—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019018462 This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Contents List of Conventions ix chapter 1.

Introduction 1 Marianne Mason

SECT ION I .

The Discourse of Reid and PEACE

chapter 2.

When Police Interview Victims of Sexual Assault: Comparing Written Guidance to Interactional Practice 21 Elizabeth Stokoe, Charles Antaki, Emma Richardson, and Sara Willott

chapter 3.

Obtaining Valid Discourse from Suspects PEACE-fully: What Role for Rapport and Empathy? 42 Ray Bull and Bianca Baker

chapter 4.

The Guilt-Presumptive Nature of Custodial Interrogations in the United States: The Use of Confrontation, Appeals to Self-Interest, and Sympathy/ Minimization in the Reid Technique 65 Marianne Mason

chapter 5.

The Discourse Structure of Blame Mitigation in a Police Interrogation 85 Philip Gaines

contents

vi SECT ION I I .

Police Interview Dynamics and Negotiation

chapter 6.

Now the Rest of the Story: The Collaborative Production of Confession Narratives in Police Interrogations 113 Gary C. David and James Trainum

chapter 7.

Patterns of Cooperation between Police Interviewers with Suspected Sex Offenders 136 Tatiana Tkacukova and Gavin E. Oxburgh

chapter 8.

Supporting Competing Narratives: A Membership Categorization Analysis of Identity Work in Police-Detainee Talk 156 David Yoong and Ayeshah Syed

SECT ION I I I .

Discursive Transformations in Bilingual Police Interviews

chapter 9.

Narrative Construction in Interpreted Police Interviews 179 Ikuko Nakane

chapter 10. Interactional Management in a Simulated Police Interview: Interpreters’ Strategies 200 Sandra Hale, Jane Goodman-Delahunty, and Natalie Martschuk chapter 11. Non-Native Speakers, Miranda Rights, and Custodial Interrogation 227 Bethany K. Dumas SECT ION I V.

The Discursive Journey and Institutional Applications of Police Interviews

chapter 12. “Tell Me in Your Own Words . . .”: Reconciling Institutional Salience and Witness- Compatible Language in Police Interviews with Women Reporting Rape 249 Nicci MacLeod

contents

vii

chapter 13. “Are You Saying You Were Stabbed . . . ?”: Multimodality, Embodied Action, and Dramatized Formulations in “Fixing” the Facts in Police Interviews with Suspects 268 Alison Johnson chapter 14. Functions of Transmodal Metalanguage for Collaborative Writing in Police-Witness Interviews 299 Frances Rock chapter 15. Reconstructing Suspects’ Stories in Various Police Record Styles 329 Tessa (T. C.) van Charldorp chapter 16. Police Records in Court: The Narrative Fore- and Backgrounding of Information by Judges in Inquisitorial Criminal Court 349 Fleur van der Houwen Index

367

Conventions

F

igures and tables are numbered according to chapter number and therein sequentially (e.g., fig. 13.1). Data excerpts and examples are numbered in the chapters, following the chapter number and beginning at “1” for each chapter (e.g., 1.1, 2.1, etc.). Because transcription approaches for conversational data differ, the excerpts in some of the chapters of the volume vary from narrow to broad. The following abbreviations for participants in data excerpts are used in the majority of the chapters: Abbreviation

Participant(s)

D

Detective

F/M

Female/male interviewee

I/D

Indirect/direct speech

I

Interpreter

IE/Int

Interviewee (naive/lay)

Int#

Interview number

J

Judge

O

Officer

P

Police

PI/IR

Police interviewer

conventions

x

RS

Reported speech

SOL

Solicitor

S/Sus

Suspect

W

Witness

The following transcription conventions have been used (adapted from Jefferson 2004): Symbol

Description

(.)

Micropause—a pause of no significant length

(0.7)

Timed pause—long enough to indicate a time

[]

Square brackets showing where speech overlaps

>
sexual preference or anything like thatHere’s

89

your stuff [back sirI understand
P continues his monologue for 35 seconds (left out of transcription) at the police station you said that