The Language of Police Interviews

Abstract

The language of police interviews provides a rich resource for linguistic researchers. They are important sites of institutional interaction with a significant social, societal, and legal function. Key aspects of interest are issues of power and dominance, question types and questioning strategies, the creation of records of interview interaction for later use in the judicial process, historical miscarriages of justice connected with the falsification of interview records, interviews with vulnerable groups such as children or speakers of different languages, and the communication of rights.