Coerced Confessions: The Discourse of Bilingual Police Interrogations

Susan Berk-Seligson

Published by De Gruyter Mouton 2009

Coerced Confessions

The Discourse of Bilingual Police Interrogations

Susan Berk-Seligson

Volume 25 in the series Language, Power and Social Process [LPSP]

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110213492

Overview
Contents

About this book

The book presents a discourse analysis of police interrogations involving U.S. Hispanic suspects accused of crimes. The study is unique in that it concentrates on interrogations involving suspects whose first language is not English and police officers who have a rudimentary knowledge of Spanish. It examines the pitfalls of using police officers as interpreters at custodial interrogations.
Using an interactional sociolinguistic discourse analytical approach, the book offers a microlinguistic examination of interrogations involving persons accused of murder, child molestation, and kidnapping. Communication difficulties are shown to arise from suspects' limited proficiency in English and police officers' equally limited proficiency in Spanish, coupled with the unwillingness of these officers to remain in interpreter footing. The volume demonstrates how pidginization and asymmetrical communicative accommodation can emerge in such situations of highly unequal power relations. It also demonstrates how cultural factors such as acquiescence to interlocutors of greater authority and higher socioeconomic status can lead persons of certain Latin American backgrounds to engage in "gratuitous concurrence", answering "yes" to police questions even when it is clear that that these yes-tokens are not truly affirmative responses to those questions. In addition, the book provides evidence of the kinds of abuse that can result from police interrogations that are not electronically recorded.
Coerced Confessions reviews appellate cases involving police interpreters spanning a thirty-four-year period, and concludes that the Miranda rights are placed in jeopardy when a police officer is assigned the role of interpreter at a custodial interrogation.

Author information

Susan Berk-Seligson, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA.

Topics

Frontmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	i
Contents Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Chapter 1. Introduction: language and institutional power Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 2. Interpreting for the police: issues in pre-trial phases of the judicial process Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
Chapter 3. The Miranda warnings and linguistic coercion: the role of footing in the interrogation of a limited-English-speaking murder suspect Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	38
Chapter 4. Coercion and its limits: admitting to murder but resisting an accusation of attempted rape Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
Chapter 5. Does every yeah mean ‘yes’ in a police interrogation? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
Chapter 6. Pidginization and asymmetrical communicative accommodation in a child molestation case Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	142
Chapter 7. Confessing in the absence of recording: linguistic and extralinguistic evidence of coercion in a police interrogation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Chapter 8. Conclusions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
Backmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	218

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
Audience: Students and Researchers in Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis, Forensic Linguistics, Ethnic Studies, Legal Studies
Pages
- Front matter: 12
- Main content: 261
Keywords: Sociolinguistics; Discourse Analysis; Language and the Law

eBook

Published: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 9783110213492

Hardcover

Published: May 20, 2009
ISBN: 9783110213485