The Interactional Costs of “Neutrality” in Police Interviews with Child Witnesses

IF 3 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Research on Language and Social Interaction Pub Date : 2021-07-03 DOI:10.1080/08351813.2021.1939532

G.A.H. Jol, Wyke J P Stommel

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引用次数: 2

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper concerns the interactional dilemma between displaying affiliation and doing being neutral. This dilemma is highly salient in police interviews with child witnesses where interviewing guidelines encourage police officers to take a neutral stance to avoid steering children’s stories. In this article, we use conversation analysis to analyze childrens’ volunteered accounts of their own role during the alleged offense, e.g., how they resisted. Such accounts make relevant affiliative uptakes such as approval, disagreement, or reassurance that may be seen as nonneutral. Hence, these accounts raise interactional dilemmas for police officers: Should they do what is interactionally relevant or follow the guidelines? Our analysis shows how police officers display and deal with this dilemma and that children may add to it by pursuing something more than neutralistic uptakes. The upshot of this analysis is that attempting to be neutral in interaction may cause apparently undesirable interactional difficulties. The data are from the Netherlands.

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警察与儿童证人访谈中“中立”的互动成本

摘要本文关注的是在表现从属关系和做中立行为之间的互动困境。这种困境在警方对儿童证人的采访中非常突出，采访指南鼓励警察采取中立立场，避免引导儿童故事。在这篇文章中，我们使用对话分析来分析孩子们对自己在指控的犯罪中所扮演角色的自愿描述，例如他们是如何反抗的。此类账户会做出相关的附属行为，如批准、不同意或保证，这些行为可能被视为非中立。因此，这些描述给警察带来了互动困境：他们应该做与互动相关的事情还是遵循指导方针？我们的分析表明，警察是如何表现和处理这种困境的，孩子们可能会通过追求中立的行为来加剧这种困境。这一分析的结果是，试图在互动中保持中立可能会导致明显不可取的互动困难。数据来自荷兰。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Research on Language and Social Interaction Multiple-

CiteScore

7.30

自引率

7.40%

发文量

期刊介绍： The journal publishes the highest quality empirical and theoretical research bearing on language as it is used in interaction. Researchers in communication, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, linguistic anthropology and ethnography are likely to be the most active contributors, but we welcome submission of articles from the broad range of interaction researchers. Published papers will normally involve the close analysis of naturally-occurring interaction. The journal is also open to theoretical essays, and to quantitative studies where these are tied closely to the results of naturalistic observation.