Functions of transmodal metalanguage for collaborative writing in police - witness interviews

Rock, Frances ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1684-9354 2020. Functions of transmodal metalanguage for collaborative writing in police - witness interviews. Mason, Marianne and Rock, Frances, eds. The Discourse of Police Interviews, Chicago, USA: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 299-328.

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Abstract

The chapter focuses on witness statements that are usually created through a literacy event in which an extended conversation between a police officer and a witness is used as the basis for a written text that comes to represent the witness later in the legal process. Typically, in these witness interviews, the police officer will write down the statement for the witness rather than, for example, helping the witness to write his or her own statement. This chapter examines how, in police interviews with witnesses, the textual transformation process involved can be made explicit by metalanguage. This metalanguage allows police officers to very clearly display their decisions about what to write when they scribe for witnesses. The chapter reviews the use of metalanguage using a case study that was part of a small linguistic ethnographic project focusing on a group of police interviewers. The case study is of one officer whose literacy practices in interviews were somewhat distinctive in consistently making text- production processes explicit to witnesses. Metalanguage was a key component of establishing this explicitness.

Item Type:	Book Section
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) K Law > KD England and Wales P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Publisher:	The University of Chicago Press
ISBN:	9780226647791
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	21 March 2024
Last Modified:	09 Apr 2024 16:01
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/167423

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