Resisting the legitimacy of the question: Self-evident answers to questions about sources of knowledge in police interviews with child witnesses

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guusje Jol ◽  
Wyke Stommel
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Information Seeking ◽  
The Self ◽  
Child Witnesses ◽  
Inference System ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Police Interviews ◽  
Everyday Interaction ◽  
Explicit Request

AbstractThis paper discusses questions about sources of knowledge in Dutch police interviews with child witnesses. Police officers are instructed to ask these questions in order to allow participants in the criminal procedure to assess the reliability of the testimony. In everyday interaction, asking “how someone knows” implies that what was said earlier is not taken for granted. Therefore, questions about sources of knowledge in police interviews are potentially delicate. This paper aims to show that (a) questions about sources of knowledge are related to a specialized institutional inference system and (b) children sometimes treat those questions as causing a dilemma between the need to provide an answer and the unusual character of the question. Drawing on insights from conversation analysis, the analysis focuses on occasions when children present their answer about the source of their knowledge as self-evident. These responses suggest that the question is not genuine and legitimate. At the same time, children still try to provide a relevant answer. The self-evident answers thus deal with the explicit request for a source of knowledge and, from their perspective, the unnecessary character of the question. Police officers generally ignore the self-evident aspect of the answers in their uptakes. Yet, when they do orient to it, they justify their questions as genuine information seeking questions. Police officers thus treat sources of knowledge as something they did not know, whereas sources of knowledge often can be inferred in everyday language use. We suggest that taking this unknowing stance conveys to the child and to the tape that the police officers are not presuming specific sources of knowledge.

scholarly journals Establishing Intellectually Impaired Victims’ Understanding about ‘Truth’ and ‘Lies’: Police Interview Guidance and Practice in Cases of Sexual Assault

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 773-792
Author(s):  
Emma Richardson ◽  
Elizabeth Stokoe ◽  
Charles Antaki
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Police Interviews ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Assault Victims ◽  
Real Practice ◽  
Vulnerable Adults

Abstract Effective police interviews are central to the justice process for sexual assault victims, but little is known about either actual communication between police officers and witnesses or the alignment between guidance and real practice. This study investigated how police officers, in formal interviews, follow ‘best evidence’ guidance to obtain victims’ demonstrable understandings of ‘truth and lies’. We conducted qualitative conversation analysis of 20 evidentiary interviews between police officers and victims who were ‘vulnerable’ adults or children. Analysis revealed that interviewers initiated conversation about truth and lies inappropriately in three ways: (i) by eliciting confirmations rather than demonstrations of understanding; (ii) by eliciting multiple demonstrations and confirmations of understanding, or (iii) by re-introducing ‘truth and lies’ conversations at incorrect points in the interview. Both (ii) and (iii) imply prior or forthcoming dishonesty on the part of the victim. In the context of encouraging victims to report sexual assault and achieve justice, the article reveals potential communicative barriers in which victims—or their evidence—may be discredited right at the start of the process.

“I’ve got a girlfriend”

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 154-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Stokoe
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Social Worker ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Police Interviews ◽  
Full Turn ◽  
Clear Cases

This paper investigates when, how and for what interactional function, police officers disclose something about their personal lives to the suspects they interview. Anonymized recordings of 120 interviews between different police officers and suspects in a constabulary area of the British police service were transcribed and analysed using conversation analysis. The analysis revealed that ‘clear’ cases of self-disclosure (SDs) had two main functions: (1) When positioned as full turn responses within a suspect’s narrative telling, SDs were designed to affiliate with suspects, in contrast to ‘continuer’ turns that aligned with the telling. A similar affiliative action was accomplished by SDs positioned as sequence-launching first-pair parts of adjacency pairs. Affiliative SDs coalesced around categorial phenomena by displaying shared knowledge of categorial items in suspects’ prior turns, and by temporarily suspending ‘officer’ and ‘suspect’ category memberships and making other identities relevant (e.g., ‘heterosexual man’; ‘social worker’). (2) When positioned as second-pair part responses to suspects’ questions, SDs blocked suspects’ attempts to halt the routine pattern in police interviews of question-answer sequences, and sometimes functioned to pursue admissions from suspects. As such, these SDs had a clearer institutional function than the affiliative SDs. Four further possible types of SD were also considered for their admission-pursuing function. Overall, the paper challenges psychological and narrative analytic approaches to self-disclosure, grounding the analysis of such phenomena in the potent reality of everyday life, rather than in researcher-elicited, self-reported narrative accounts.

How Children Appropriate Themes they Find in Media Products

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-96
Author(s):  
Michael Charlton
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Picture Books ◽  
The Self ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Everyday Interaction ◽  
Observation Protocols

Norman Holland theorizes that people seek themes in media which affect them personally and are congruent with topics in their own life's situation. Yet while doing so, individuals try to make sure that they are not confronted with issues that they do not wish to deal with or are emotionally draining. Michail Bakhtin makes similar assertions in his Theory of Appropriation through his research on the influence that language has on the ideas of being to be true to oneself (“ownness”) and to becoming a stranger to oneself (“otherness”). An empirical study of these hypotheses is supported through a collection of 80 observation protocols of pre-schoolers made during their everyday interaction with different forms of media (picture books, cassette tapes, made for TV-movies). Both claim that the connection between personal life topics and media themes as well as the self-preserving reception process, were confirmed in this study.

scholarly journals Evidence-gathering in police interviews

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luna Filipović
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Investigative Interviewing ◽  
Police Interviews ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Highly Sensitive ◽  
Communication Difficulties ◽  
Evidence Gathering ◽  
Police Interrogations ◽  
The Many

Abstract In this paper I discuss the many complexities that police officers have to deal with in their communication with suspects. Investigative interviewing is a very complex communicative situation in itself, with a number of different psychological and sociological variables at play during each interview. In addition, suspect interviews bring about an additional dimension of complexity, which is driven by the fact that a basic principle of conversation, cooperation (Grice 1975) is often not respected and is sometimes severely and purposefully violated, for example when suspects are guilty and want to obscure that very fact or when they believe that their situation would worsen if they cooperated with the police. A further layer of complexity is added when the interviews are carried out via an interpreter, where the fact that the officer and the suspect speak different languages during the interview creates additional barriers to straightforward communication. In the present paper, I identify a number of points at which communication difficulties are encountered in this highly sensitive legal context. For this purpose, I analyse authentic interview datasets provided by two UK police constabularies, and also make comparisons with examples from transcripts of authentic US police interrogations. In addition, I highlight the issues that arise when professional interpretation is not available and when bilingual police officers assume the dual role of investigator-interpreter. Finally, I suggest possible solutions that can help remove the hurdles standing in the way of efficient and accurate gathering of communication evidence.

Plantation comic modes

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Tynes Cowan
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Position ◽  
The Self ◽  
Antebellum South ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Comprehensive View ◽  
Plantation Life ◽  
Everyday Interaction ◽  
Big House ◽  
American Humor

AbstractThis essay attempts to synthesize disparate sources regarding African-American humor in the antebellum South into a comprehensive view of comic modes on the plantation. In part, the essay addresses the question of slave compliance with white demands that the slave be funny on demand. Such compliance provided slaveholders with evidence that their slaves were not only content in their social position but also happy. I try to navigate through the various arguments related to the Sambo stereotype by examining slave humor in various realms of the plantation: from the big house to the quarter to the field; and from everyday interaction to special occasions such as the annual corn shucking festival. By identifying various domains of plantation life, each with its own particular mode of humor, I am able to draw a picture of the role humor played in negotiation identities on the plantation. These negotiations allowed both white and black members of the plantation community to create and maintain images of the Self.

Seeking and sharing information dialogically

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 530-549
Author(s):  
Reijo Savolainen
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Information Seeking ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Asynchronous Discussion ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Information Interaction ◽  
Discussion Threads ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Do It Yourself ◽  
Discussion Topic

Purpose Drawing on the ideas of conversation analysis (CA), the purpose of this paper is to elaborate the picture of dialogical information seeking and sharing. To this end, information seeking and sharing are approached as interactive online talk occurring in an asynchronous discussion forum. Design/methodology/approach The conceptual framework is based on the elaboration of Schegloff’s model for sequence organisation in spoken conversation. As a result, ten categories constitutive of asynchronous online talk were identified. It was further examined how online talk of this type is structured by expanded question – answers adjacency pairs and how such pairs are constitutive of dialogical information seeking and sharing. This question was explored by scrutinising 20 discussion threads downloaded from a do-it-yourself related online forum. Findings Four ideal typical patterns of asynchronous online talk were identified. Answering the question is a basic pattern of online talk, based on the provision of responses to an individual request. Specifying the answer, broadening the discussion topic and challenging the answer represent more sophisticated patterns incorporating post-expansions of diverse kind. Research limitations/implications As the study focusses on four patterns constitutive of online talk occurring in a particular domain, the findings cannot be generalised to depict the phenomena of dialogical information interaction as a whole. Further research is needed to scrutiny the particular features of asynchronous online talk in the context of dialogical information interaction. Originality/value The paper pioneers by examining the potential of CA in the micro-level study of dialogical information seeking and sharing structured by expanded adjacency pairs. The findings also identify the limitations of the conversation analytic methodology in the study of asynchronous online discourse.

scholarly journals The Myth of an 'Invisible Mediator': An Australian Case Study of English-Japanese Police Interpreting

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ikuko Nakane
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Professional Ethics ◽  
Police Interviews ◽  
Mediated Discourse ◽  
Australian Case ◽  
Ethics Guidelines ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Japanese English ◽  
Interaction Management

Recent studies have challenged the assumption that the interpreter is an ‘invisible’ mediator and have demonstrated a departure from the ‘conduit’ role often assigned to interpreters in their professional ethics guidelines (e.g. Russell 2000, Wadensjö 1998, 2004; Yoshida 2007). In this paper, I address the issue of interpreter’s role as an invisible mediator through an examination of interactional ‘repairs’, one of the key aspects of interaction management mechanisms in the tradition of Conversation Analysis. The context of interpreting is Australian Federal Police interviews mediated by Japanese-English interpreters. While some repair sequences in interpreter-mediated police interviews followed common patterns of monolingual police interviews, there were also some features of repairs specific to interpreter-mediated discourse. In particular, due to the interpreting of each turn, in some cases, it is not always possible to ascertain whether it was the primary speaker’s turn or the interpreted version that was the source of ‘trouble’ leading to an interactional repair. The paper demonstrates interpreters’ vulnerability to being identified as the ‘troublemaker’ in repair sequences and consequential face-saving strategies. These strategies included modifying the primary speaker’s utterances or providing explanations for why a need to repair was perceived or why a repair sequence failed to rectify a problem. It is demonstrated that in engaging in these types of problem solving activities, interpreters at times shift roles, sometimes pushing the boundaries of their professional ethics. The paper argues that, while interpreters are often viewed as operating within a third ‘invisible’ space between interlocutors, this invisibility needs to be questioned. It is suggested that the expectation of a completely invisible, or neutral, third space is unrealistic, and that interpreters as cultural and linguistic mediators, and as social beings, continuously negotiate their identity with their clients while interpreting.

The effect of socio-demographic characteristics on the information-seeking behaviors of police officers

2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 350-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Idris Guclu ◽  
Ali Can
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Information Seeking ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Information Sources ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Information Seeking Behavior ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Seeking Behavior ◽  
Information Seeking Behaviors

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to determine the information-seeking behaviors of police officers who work in police stations in the context of staying current. Leckie et al.’s (1996) model of the information-seeking behavior of professionals is tested. Design/methodology/approach – A quantitative research design was employed for data collection. The sample includes 642 cases. It is both descriptive and exploratory. Findings – Police officers first rely upon their personal knowledge and experience, then their colleagues and then official documents. On the other hand, they rarely consulted informants, libraries, journals, books, and attendance at conferences as information sources. There were significant differences in the information sources used by police officers based on their gender in the context of staying current. Lastly, the results of this study indicated that service years in policing and the roles in police station were significantly correlated with the information sources used by police officers regarding staying current. Originality/value – This study, being the first, provides a huge theoretical base for future studies. It contributes to the discipline of information science by validating a theoretical model in a different context. In addition, it contributes to public safety by understanding the frontline police officers’ information needs and information-seeking behavior.

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