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Audience design in the police interview: The interactional and judicial consequences of audience orientation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2013

Kate Haworth
Kate Haworth*
Affiliation:
School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET, UKk.haworth@aston.ac.uk
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Abstract

Police-suspect interviews in England and Wales are a multi-audience, multi-purpose, transcontextual mode of discourse. They are conducted as part of the initial investigation into a crime, but are subsequently recontextualized through the judicial process, ultimately being presented in court as evidence against the interviewee. The communicative challenges posed by multiple future audiences are investigated by applying Bell's (1984) audience design model to the police interview, and the resulting “poor fit” demonstrates why this context is discursively counterintuitive to participants. Further, data analysis indicates that interviewer and interviewee, although ostensibly addressing each other, may orientate to different audiences, with potentially serious consequences. As well as providing new insight into police-suspect interview interaction, this article seeks to extend understanding of the influence of audience on interaction at the discourse level, and to contribute to the development of theoretical models for contexts with multiple or asynchronous audiences. (Audience design, audience orientation, police interviews, forensic linguistics)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , February 2013 , pp. 45 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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