Antaki2017
| Antaki2017 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Antaki2017 |
| Author(s) | Charles Antaki, Elizabeth Stokoe |
| Title | When police treat straightforward answers as uncooperative |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Police interviews, Suspects, Witnesses, Cooperative principle, Institutional talk |
| Publisher | |
| Year | 2017 |
| Language | English |
| City | |
| Month | |
| Journal | Journal of Pragmatics |
| Volume | 117 |
| Number | |
| Pages | 1–15 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.pragma.2017.05.012 |
| ISBN | |
| Organization | |
| Institution | |
| School | |
| Type | |
| Edition | |
| Series | |
| Howpublished | |
| Book title | |
| Chapter | |
Abstract
In formal police interviews, interviewers may have institutionally mandated reasons for following up even apparently fully co-operative answers with questions that imply that the interviewee is in fact (knowingly or unknowingly) being uncooperative. From a sample of over 100 UK interviews with suspects arrested for minor offences, and 19 interviews with witnesses alleging sexual assault, we identify and analyse follow-up questions which do not presume that interviewees’ apparently ‘normal’ answers respect the Gricean maxims of quantity, quality, relevance or manner. We identify three institutional motivations working to over-ride the normal communicative contract: to ‘get the facts straight’; to prepare for later challenges; and pursue a description of events that more evidently categorises the alleged perpetrators’ behaviour as criminal.
Notes
