Both research and police guidelines acknowledge the value of rapport-building in police interview with suspects
(ISs) and provide some insight into how ‘rapport’ may be defined and built in this context. Rapport is, however, difficult to
operationalise and assess in practice, other than for the routine legal clarification offered to suspects at the beginning of the
interview. This paper takes an original discourse-pragmatic and ethnographic approach to investigating the forms that rapport
takes in a sample of authentic ISs, with particular reference to two dimensions, empathy and face. The article discusses the value
and suitability of the identified empathic and ‘face’-relevant expressions with respect to current interview aims and practice.
The discussion highlights the underlying bi-functionality of rapport in ISs, demonstrating how the two functions may be reconciled in police interview training and practice.
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Cited by
Cited by 9 other publications
Baker-Eck, Bianca & Ray Bull
2022. Effects of empathy and question types on suspects’ provision of information in investigative interviews. International Journal of Police Science & Management 24:4 ► pp. 406 ff.
Congram, Derek, Maria Mikellide & Matthew Vennemeyer
2022. Improving Witness Interviewing for the Investigation of Disappeared Persons Due to Armed Conflict. Forensic Sciences Research 7:3 ► pp. 334 ff.
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.
Filipović, Luna
2022. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Miscommunication in UK Police Interviews and US Police Interrogations. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology 37:2 ► pp. 297 ff.
2023. Motivational interviewing in child sexual abuse investigations: Approaches shown to increase suspect engagement and information gathering during police interviews. International Journal of Police Science & Management 25:4 ► pp. 341 ff.
López Samaniego, Anna
2022. Repeticiones y (re)formulaciones dialógicas en el interrogatorio judicial: reparación heteroiniciada, registro y comprensión empática de la perspectiva ajena. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación 89 ► pp. 247 ff.
Maguire, Edward R. & Howard Giles
2022. Public Expressions of Empathy and Sympathy by U.S. Criminal Justice Officials After Controversial Police Killings of African-Americans. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 41:1 ► pp. 49 ff.
Rehnberg, Hanna Sofia
2023. Positioning of applicants in asylum interviews: Case officers as recontextualising agents. Language in Society► pp. 1 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 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.