Article published In:
Narrative InquiryVol. 28:1 (2018) ► pp.1–29
Evaluating evaluation
Interactional positioning and embodied narration in police interviews
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
References (52)
Abbott, A. (1988). The system of professions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Texas: University of Texas Press.
Bamberg, M., & Georgakopoulou, A. (2008). Small stories as a new perspective in narrative and identity analysis. Text and Talk, 28(3), 377–396.
Briggs, C. (1986). Learning how to ask: A sociolinguistic appraisal of the role of the interview in social science research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Carter, R., & McCarthy, M. (2006). Cambridge grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chappell, A., & Lanza-Kaduce, L. (2010). Police academy socialization: Understanding the lessons learned in a paramilitary-bureaucratic organization. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 39 (2), 187–214.
De Fina, A., & Georgakpoulou, A. (2012). Analyzing narrative: Discourse and sociolinguistic perspectives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
de Jorio, A. (2000). Gesture in Naples and gesture in classical antiquity. (A. Kendon, Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (Original work published in 1832)
Deppermann, A. (2015). Positioning. In A. De Fina & A. Georgakopoulou (Eds.), The handbook of narrative analysis (pp. 369–387). NY: John Wiley & Sons.
DuBois, B. (1989). Pseudoquotation in current English communication; “Hey, she didn’t really say it.” Language in Society. 181, 343–359.
Fuller, J. (2003). Use of the discourse marker like in interviews. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7(3), 365–377.
Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Goldin-Meadow, S. (2014). Language and the manual modality: The communicative resilience of the human species. In N. Enfield, P. Kockelman & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 78–101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goodwin, C. (1981). Conversational organization: Interaction between speakers and hearers. New York: Academic Press.
(2000). Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 321, 1489–1522.
(2009). Embodied hearers and speakers constructing talk and action in interaction. Cognitive Studies, 16(1), 51–64.
Goodwin, C., & Goodwin, M. (2004). Participation. In A. Duranti (Ed.), A Companion to linguistic anthropology (pp. 222–244). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Hanks, W. (2006). Joint commitment and common ground in a ritual event. In N. Enfield & S. Levinson (Eds.), Roots of sociality (pp. 299–328). New York: Berg.
Haviland, J. (2015). Hey! Topics in Cognitive Science, 71, 124–149.
Jaffe, A. (2009). Introduction: The sociolinguistics of stance. In A. Jaffe (Ed)., Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives (pp. 3–28). New York: Oxford University Press.
Jakobson, R. (1960). Closing statement. In T. Sebeok (Ed.), Style in language (pp. 398–429). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Kasper, G. (2013). Conversation analysis and interview studies. In The encyclopedia of applied linguistics. New York: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Kita, S. (2003). Pointing: A foundational building block of human communication. In S. Kita (Ed.), Pointing: Where language, culture and cognition meet (pp. 85–108). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Kendon, A. (2000). Language and gesture: Unity or duality. In D. McNeill (Ed.), Language and gesture (pp. 47–63). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(2004). Gesture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lawson, C. (2014). Situating police in a late modern society. The ontology of police identity. Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles, 87(4), pp. 270–276.
Matoesian, G. (2001). Law and the language of identity: Discourse in the William Kennedy Smith rape trial. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
(2005). Struck by speech revisited: Embodied stance in jurisdictional discourse. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 9(2), 167–194.
(2012). Gesture’s community: Social organization in multimodal conduct. Language in Society, 41(3), 365–391.
Matoesian, G., & Coldren, J. (2002). Language and bodily conduct in focus group evaluations of legal policy. Discourse and Society, 13(4), 469–493.
Matoesian, G., & Gilbert, K. (2016). Multifunctionality of beat gestures and material conduct. Gesture, 15(1), 79–114.
McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Miller, J. (2009). Like and other discourse markers. In P. Peters, P. Collins & A. Smith (Eds.), Comparative studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and beyond (pp. 317–337). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Morgan, D. (1998). The focus group guidebook. London: Sage.
Myers, G. (1999). Unspoken speech: Hypothetical reported discourse and the rhetoric of everyday talk. Text, 19(4), 571–590.
(2004). Matters of opinion: Talking about public issues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Puchta, C., & Potter, J. (2004). Focus group practice. London: Sage Publications.
Rosenbaum, D. (2002). Evaluating multi-agency anti-crime partnerships: Theory, design, and measurement issues. In N. Tilley (Ed.), Evaluation for crime prevention: Crime Prevention Studies, 141, 171–225.
Sauer, B. (2003). The rhetoric of risk: Technical documentation in hazardous environments. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Scheibman, J. (2004). Inclusive and exclusive patterning of the English first person plural: Evidence from conversation. In M. Achard & S. Kemmer (Eds.), Language, culture and mind (pp. 377–396). Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Schiffrin, D. (1987). Discourse markers. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sidnell, J. (2006). Coordinating gesture, talk, and gaze in reenactments. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 391, 377–409.
Silverstein, M. (1998). The improvisational performance of culture in realtime discursive practice. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), Creativity in performance (pp. 265–312). Greenwich, CT: Ablex
(2014). Denotation and the pragmatics of language. In N. Enfield, P. Kockelman and J. Sidnell (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 128–157). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Streeck, J. (2008). Gesture in political communication: A case study of the democratic presidential candidates during the 2004 primary campaign. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 41(2), 154–186.
Tilley, N. (2002). Introduction: Evaluation for crime prevention. Crime Prevention Studies, 141, 1–10.
Tilley, N. & Clarke, A. (2006). Evaluation in criminal justice. In I. Shaw, J. Greene and M. Mark (Eds.), The Sage handbook of evaluation (pp. 512–535). London: Sage.
Travers, M. (2005). Evaluation research and criminal justice: Beyond a political critique. The Australian and New Zeland Journal of Criminology, 38(1), 39–58.
Wilkinson, S. (2004). Focus group research. In D. Silverman (Ed.), Qualitative research: Theory, method, and practice (pp. 177–199). London: Sage Publications.
(2006). Analysing interaction in focus groups. In P. Drew, G. Raymond & D. Weinberg (Eds.), Talk and interaction in social research methods (pp. 50–62). London: Sage Publications.
Wortham, S. (2001). Narratives in action: A strategy for research and analysis. New York, NY: Teachers Colleges Press.
Wortham, S., & Reyes, A. (2015). Discourse analysis beyond the speech event. New York, NY: Routledge.
Cited by (4)
Cited by four other publications
de Vries, Clarissa, Fien Andries & Katharina Meissl
2024. Mocking enactments: a case study of multimodal stance-stacking. Frontiers in Psychology 15 
Andries, Fien, Katharina Meissl, Clarissa de Vries, Kurt Feyaerts, Bert Oben, Paul Sambre, Myriam Vermeerbergen & Geert Brône
2023. Multimodal stance-taking in interaction—A systematic literature review. Frontiers in Communication 8
Wieslander, Malin & Håkan Löfgren
Gilbert, Kristin Enola
2020. Kinesics and Gesture. In The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, ► pp. 1 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 december 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.