Chapter 5. The Discourse Structure of Blame Mitigation in a Police Interrogation

Forensic linguistics, or the study of language and the law, is a growing field of scholarly and public interest. Yet books on the subject have predominantly been introductions to the field or aimed at summarizing its applications, often with a focus on a single aspect of the legal system. The Discourse of Police Interviews aims to further the discussion by focusing exclusively on how police interviews are constructed and used to investigate and prosecute crimes.

The first book to focus exclusively on police interview dialogue, The Discourse of Police Interviews examines leading debates, approaches, and topics in contemporary police interview research. Among other topics, the book explores the sociolegal, psychological, and discursive framework of popular police interview techniques employed in the United States and the United Kingdom, such as PEACE and Reid, and the discursive practices of institutional representatives like police officers and interpreters that can influence the construction and quality of linguistic evidence. Together, the contributions situate the police interview as part of a complex, and multistage, criminal justice process. Despite the role of discourse in potentially shaping legal outcomes, the use of linguistic analysis to understand the legal process is yet to be fully and uniformly embraced, and the book will be of interest to both scholars and practitioners in a variety of fields, such as linguistic anthropology, interpreting studies, criminology, law, and sociology.