`You Punched Him, didn't You?': Versions of Violence in Accusatory Interviews

Abstract

This paper explores the management in police-suspect interviews of accusations of violent involvement. Eleven officially taperecorded interviews between police and suspects were transcribed and analysed and a basic grammar of violent accusations was identified. Different ways in which accusations are warranted and contested are discussed and instantiated. It is suggested that the interview participants use two discourses of violence: disorderly and justificatory. The paper explores their localized deployment and raises issues concerning their wider ideological implications.

‘I’m not gonna hit a lady’: Conversation analysis, membership categorization and men’s denials of violence towards women

“…The majority of research reviewed above involves researchers interviewing men who have admitted the violent or sexual assault of a woman, often their partner (e.g., Adams, Towns & Gavey, 1995;Anderson & Umberson, 2001;Boonzaier, 2008;Bostock, Plumpton & Pratt, 2009;Cavanagh, Dobash, Dobash et al, 2001;Eisikovits, Goldblatt, & Winstok, 1999;McKenedy, 2006;Pogrebin, Stretesky, Unnithan et al, 2006;Wood, 2004). While participants are often drawn from the prison population, or domestic violence programmes, very few analyse, say, the encounters between men and the professionals that deal with them (notable exceptions include Auburn & Lea, 2003;Auburn, Drake & Willig, 1995;Schrock & Padavic, 2007).…”

Understanding male interpersonal violence: A discourse analytic approach to accounts of violence on the door

“…Myers' findings 'indicate that both action and attribution contexts shape attributions by affecting the salience of evidence and of victim and defendant characteristics such as prior record and race ' (1980: 105). This is of particular significance when one considers that much of the discourse-based research into the various attributional processes has examined talk produced within a legal (argumentative) context (e.g., Auburn et al 1995). It would therefore seem appropriate to examine accounts produced in a nonargumentative context for their attributional content.…”

Dialogical Views on Partner Abuser Treatment: Balancing Confrontation and Support

“…The issues examined include abusers' ways of legitimizing and explaining their violent behavior (Adams et al 1995;Auburn et al 1995), their denial of the use of violence (Stamp and Sabourin 1995), and their willingness to shift the responsibility for violence onto the victim (Goodrum et al 2001). Also included are the constructions of alternative masculine identities (Scully and Marolla 1993), and of non-violent self-images (Edley and Wetherell 1997).…”