Publications

Publication details [#61353]

Cerović, Marijana. 2016. When suspects ask questions: Rhetorical questions as a challenging device. Journal of Pragmatics 105 : 18–38.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
Elsevier

Annotation

This paper examines how suspects’ rhetorical questions emerge in the argumentative sequential setting of police interrogations as answers to the detectives’ primary harming turns. They resist the detectives by means of the suspects’ initial access to what they are being charged of and are perceived as potent assertions of reverse polarity which supply a defiance. The majority of suspects’ rhetorical questions are handled as challenges and are counter-contended by the detectives.