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Article published In:
Narrative Inquiry
Vol. 28:1 (2018) ► pp.1–29

Evaluating evaluation

Interactional positioning and embodied narration in police interviews

| University of Illinois at Chicago

This study examines a participant’s narrative in a focus group interview dealing with the evaluation of criminal justice policy – the impact of community policing training. However, rather than look at the narrative solely in the speech of the interviewee, I analyze the integration of speech and embodied conduct like gesture, gaze, and posture in the production and negotiation of professional identities. I demonstrate the applied merits of a multimodal approach to criminal justice evaluation in the mapping between denotational text and interactional positioning, a mapping that inheres in embodied stance and broader sociocultural context.

Keywords: embodied conduct, interactional positioning, gesture, focus group interviews, criminal justice evaluation, community policing
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Evaluating criminal justice programs through focus group interviews
  • Embodied conduct in focus group narratives
  • Ethnographic overview and data
  • Data example 1
  • Lines 01–14 Embodied role shift: Moving toward an enactment of experience
  • Lines 15–18 If you’re a Chicago agency and don’t get cooperation from you
  • Lines 19–30 Hypothetical reported speech: Multimodal quotation
  • Mapping denotational text onto interactional positioning
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.17005.gil
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