Police Interviews are a fascinating form of social interaction, and one in which a power and control dynamic is instantly apparent. As one part of forensic linguistics, the study of language dynamics between an investigating police officer and a member of the public provides an important opportunity to study this type of interaction, and power dynamics in social interactions more generally. There are various approaches to analyzing such interview, two of which are Conversation Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis. Using these approaches, and bearing in mind the context and ongoing importance of interview data, such interactions can provide linguistic researchers with an insight into a niche interaction.
The term “forensic linguistics” encapsulates all realms in which law and language meet. There are four main areas: Language and Law, Language in the Legal Process, Language as Evidence, and Research/Training (IFAL, 2016). Language in the Legal Process includes, among other niches, police interviews. For many years, linguistic researchers have honed in on interviews carried out on behalf of institutions, as significant situations of social interaction. Of all such institutional interviews, police interviews as part of criminal investigations have perhaps the most noteworthy results. This signifies an especially interesting and vital subcategory of linguistics, as such interviews are a socially important site of direct interaction between the police institution and the members of public who they serve to protect and control.
Certain dynamics are common to the interview between police and individual, as part of a criminal investigation. According to Kate Haworth (2006): “key aspects of interest are issues of power and dominance, [and] question types and questioning strategies” Clearly the investigating police officer has a job to do: namely to extract information from the individual with whom they are conducting the interview. This will inevitably lead to certain dynamics of control and power. However, control and power can be seen as subjective, and it is also possible that a power dynamic could shift back and forth between officer and individual, throughout the interview. An experienced officer, however, will be aware of this and will be trained to keep the control as much as possible.
As the police officer is the dominant participant of the interview, they tend to use certain techniques in order to maintain the position of power. The police officer therefore initiates the conversation and sets the agenda. Furthermore, he or she will control the topic of conversation. While the conversation is taking place, the officer will often interrupt or overlap when the interviewee is speaking. They tend to use this technique of interrupting if they are not satisfied with what the interviewee is saying. If the interviewee is cooperating, the officer is more likely to return to conversational turn-taking. If an officer wishes to exert dominance over the interviewee, they are likely to keep sentences short where possible; short sentences can be very powerful. Furthermore, officers tend to instruct rather than ask, for example they might say “tell me about Monday night,” rather than “can you please tell me about Monday night?” Other linguistic techniques is the use of cooperative speech. For example, if the interviewee is angry and aggressive, the office may overlap their ranting with a simple “relax” in order to diffuse the anger.
In analyzing the dynamics of a police interview, one of several approaches could be taken. Two common approaches are the Conversation Analysis and the Critical Discourse Analysis. Conversation Analysis (CA) is a research method that emerged from ethnomethodology. It looks into the social organization of conversation. Conversely, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an interdisciplinary method to the analysis of conversation that sees language as a kind of social practice. Researchers using CDA tend to claim that (non-linguistic) social practice and linguistic practice make up each other, and such researchers concentrate on studying how power interactions are set up and compounded through the use of language. It appears that both of these approaches could potentially be very useful in analyzing the dynamic of power and control within police interviews. The Conversation Analysis could provide an insight into the organization of the interview, namely the method in which the police officer is using to guide the interview and build up to the critical questions. Critical Discourse Analysis can provide a more direct insight into the power dynamic between the two people. As mentioned above, while the police officer will strive to be in control at all times, it cannot be ignored that the individual actually holds a great deal of power, simply because they own the information that the officer wishes to extract.
There are numerous well-known techniques used in police interviewers, including the Peace Method and the Reid Method. The Peace Method involves the officer using active listening skills in order to encourage the interviewee to talk openly. Questions are short and void of any jargon, and questions with multiple parts are avoided altogether, in order to avoid stress and also because direct, simple questions are more likely to illicit direct and simply answers. In this technique, leading questions are only used as a last resort. The Reid technique, in contrast, is more aggressive. The interviewer begins by explaining why it is obvious that the suspect is guilty. The investigator may then use sympathetic language, preferably similar to the linguistic patters that the interviewee might use, in suggesting a possibly justification for what they have done. If the suspect tries to deny their guilt at this stage, the police officer will cut them off by interrupting them with a short word or sentence, and then continue with what they were saying in a more sympathetic and kind manner.
Conversation Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis can help linguistic researchers to study this unique type of interaction; however, it is important that they are aware of the context of such conversations and the dynamics of power and control that are set up even before the conversation begins. Police interviews are arguable one of the most interesting and rich forms of social interaction available to study, partly because of the complex dynamics, both intentional and unintentional, between the two people.
Reference List
Haworth, K. (2006) “The dynamics of power and resistance in police interview discourse.” Sage Journals. [Accessed: 10 January 2017] Available at: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0957926506068430
Haworth, K. (2009) “An Analysis of Police Interview Discourse and its Roles in the Judicial Process.” [Accessed: 10 January 2017] Available at https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/387140.pdf
IFAL. (2016) Forensic Linguistics. [Accessed: 10 January 2017] Available at http://www.iafl.org/forensic.php
