‘From where we're sat …’: Negotiating narrative transformation through interaction in police interviews with suspects

Abstract

This paper examines narratives told in police interviews through a case-study approach with three interviews from a small corpus of twenty. The interviews are conducted by different police interviewers in different parts of England. Narratives given by suspects in initial storytelling episodes are examined along with negotiating activity that develops from this start point. We see how lay narratives are transformed into institutionalized and evidential ones and how content is reshaped through negotiation that challenges and transforms narrative material. Negotiations over role, responsibility, resistance, participation, and assessment of evidential value of story elements occur. This activity sometimes recontextualizes (Sarangi 1998; Linell and Sarangi 1998; Iedema and Wodak 1999) and transforms the start-point narrative, giving it evidential value; that is, value in relation to institutional and generic goals of establishing the facts of an alleged crime, for use in any future trial. Transformation is therefore seen as a negotiated (re)construction and recontextualization of narrative detail, part of the (re)productive work of institutional talk that produces an altered reality and responsibility that orients to the institututional rather than individual perspective.

The (In)Authenticity of Simulated Talk: Comparing Role-Played and Actual Interaction and the Implications for Communication Training

“…Openings comprise a series of activities (e.g., identifying co-present parties), that are prescribed by the UK Police And Criminal Evidence Act (PACE, 1984). Although there is a body of conversation analytic and linguistic work on police interviewing (e.g., Johnson, 2008;Kidwell & González-Martínez, 2010;Komter, 2003;LeBaron & Streek, 1997;Watson, 1978), little of this work attends to parts of the interview before suspects formulate their testimony and officers ask questions. Here, police officers must, by law, meet criteria set out in PACE " Code E" (2008: 202).…”

“…Both sets of interviews were recorded in the same way and were governed by the same legal regulations; the simulations were designed by interview trainers to be authentic. The analysis focused on the openings of interviews in which six legally-prescribed Items from the Police And Criminal Evidence Act (PACE, 1984;2008) were formulated, including identifying co-present parties and informing suspects of their legal rights.…”

Interviewing: Practice, Ideology, Genre, and Intertextuality

“…These genres include job interviews (Button 1992, Glenn 2010, Gumperz 1982, Roberts 2013, Scheuer 2001, Sniad 2007, medical and psychiatric interviews (Bergmann 1992, Frankel 1990, Maynard & Heritage 2005, social work interviews (Carr 2010(Carr , 2011, job counseling (Erickson & Schultz 1982, Gumperz 1982, asylum interviews (Blommaert 2001, Maryns 2006, Jacquemet 2008, Kjelsvik 2014, police interrogation (Haworth 2006, Johnson 2008 This enumeration shows the potentially limitless types of interviewing, each conducted to produce different types of knowledge. I note two recurrent approaches to this diversity of interviewing norms and practices: "lumping" and "splitting."…”

18. Pragmatics and medical discourse

“…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. Focusing on work produced since the start of the millennium, the following areas have received attention: Miranda rights and cautioning suspects (e.g.…”