Police Interviews

Communication challenges and solutions

Editor

Luna Filipović | University of East Anglia

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027209368 | EUR 85.00 | USD 128.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027259066 | EUR 85.00 | USD 128.00

This collection breaks new ground in police communication research. It involves the first instance of the same dataset being analysed from different theoretical and methodological perspectives as well as providing original and detailed insights into both monolingual and bilingual UK police interviews and US police interrogations of suspects. The topics include the role of metacommunication and its appropriate vs. inappropriate use in evidence elicitation, assessment of mitigation vs. aggravation strategies in questioning, identification of right vs. wrong empathy and the importance of getting it right, effects on complexity in police speak on quantity and quality of information obtained, and the multiple challenges that affect interpreter-mediated exchanges in this highly sensitive communicative context. All levels of linguistic meaning are covered, words, constructions, sentences, discourse, and contextualised within psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic knowledge about inferencing, emotion, and social interaction. This holistic approach helps us explain where, when and why communicative conflicts arise in this sensitive context and propose concrete practical solutions to resolve them. This volume will be useful and relevant to both academics, students and researchers, and to professionals in the domains of language and the law. Originally published as special issue of Pragmatics and Society 10:1 (2019).

[Benjamins Current Topics, 118] 2021. v, 151 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.118

Table of Contents

Police interviews: Communication challenges and solutions

Luna Filipović | pp. 1–8

Evidence-gathering in police interviews: Communication problems and possible solutions

Luna Filipović | pp. 9–31

“You keep telling us different things, what do we believe?”: Meta-communication and meta-representation in police interviews

Andreas Musolff | pp. 33–49

“Would it be fair to say that you actively sought out material?”: Mitigation and aggravation in police investigative interviews

Carlos de Pablos-Ortega | pp. 51–72

Translating accurately or sounding natural? The interpreters’ challenges due to semantic typology and the interpreting process

Alberto Hijazo-Gascón | pp. 73–94

Rapport-building in suspects’ police interviews: The role of empathy and face

Gabrina Pounds | pp. 95–120

Striving for impartiality: Conflicts of role, trust and emotion in interpreter-assisted police interviews

Lauren Wilson and Dave Walsh | pp. 121–149

Subject index | pp. 150–151

“Interviewing by police officers (and other agencies) is a topic of crucial importance around the world. How best to conduct such interviews in an effective yet ethical manner is of widespread concern, including to the United Nations which has accepted that a substantial guidance document on this topic be produced. The present volume is a significant contribution to this topic, with a commendable focus not only on the conducting of interviews but on the meaning of what is communicated.”

Ray Bull, University of Leicester

“This is a valuable and timely collection focussing on communication problems and the use of interpreters in police interview contexts. It provides a considerable addition to the growing literature which brings perspectives from linguistic investigative interviewing research. In this collection linguistic research can be seen to supplement and sometimes problematise the work of psychologists in this area – focussing on the communicative context and pragmatic approaches brings a richness of linguistic methods and findings. This combined with analyses of a multilingual and multi-jurisdictional dataset make a unique contribution to investigative interviewing research.”

Tim Grant, Aston University

“Police-suspect interviews in a unique institutional context and discourse framework is a topic of crucial importance around the world. Adopting both quantitative and qualitative approaches, this volume makes a major contribution to the study on the complexities of communicative situations in police interviews as well as interpreter-assisted police interviews, bridging a research gap between police interviews and pragmatics in legal genres. The volume is also a valuable addition to the field of applied pragmatic analysis of legal genres in the social and cultural context and the study of communication of police interviews in particular. With expertise and actionable knowledge in both research and practice, it will appeal to scholars and practitioners who take an interest in linguistic and pragmatic analysis of legal communication and legal translation, thereby improving professional practice and training.”

Ning Ye, Zhejiang Police College, in Journal of Pragmatics 191 (2022).

Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Order by:

Filipović, Luna

2021. Confession to Make: Inadvertent Confessions and Admissions in United Kingdom and United States Police Contexts. Frontiers in Psychology 12

Filipović, Luna

2022. The tale of two countries. Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting 24:2 ► pp. 254 ff.

Giles, Howie

2022. Recent New Book Alerts, 2020-2022. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 41:2 ► pp. 232 ff.

Mora-Rodriguez, Michael

2024. Multilingual police interaction: a conversation analysis of crime control in border checks. Multilingua 43:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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