Cover not available

Article published In: Police interviews: Communication challenges and solutions
Edited by Luna Filipović
[Pragmatics and Society 10:1] 2019
► pp. 32–48

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

“You keep telling us different things, what do we believe?”

Meta-communication and meta-representation in police interviews

 | University of East Anglia
Published online: 28 May 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.00014.mus
Abstract
Quotation and reflective interpretation of previous statements are common features in police interviews. Of particular importance is the uncovering of apparent contradictions between earlier and current responses in interviews of suspects. Conflicting statements can be used by officers as triggers to elicit new responses that explain inconsistencies. In linguistic pragmatics, such reflective commenting on utterances is categorised as metacommunication, i.e. ‘communication about communication’, which includes metarepresentation, i.e. second-order representation of another representation through some form of quotation. Such instances of metacommunication are key instances of negotiating the communicative interests of its chief participants, which in suspect interviews consist on the one hand in the interviewers’ purpose of establishing grounds for a potential criminal charge and, on the other hand, the interviewee’s interest in avoiding such a charge. This article analyses exemplary cases of metacommunication in multilingual police interviews from the perspective of quotation pragmatics. The results suggest that police interview training should pay special attention to this area in order to optimise cognitive results.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Metacommunication and metarepresentation in interviews of suspects
  • 2.The importance of being quoted: Cautions, quotations and metacommunicative argument loops
  • 3.The importance of being earnestly allowed to reinterpret one’s own quotes
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (32)
References
Ainsworth, Janet. 2012. “The Meaning of Silence in the right to remain silent.” In The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law, ed. by Peter Tiersma and Lawrence Solan, 287–298. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arendholz, Jenny, Wolfram Bublitz and Monika Kirner-Ludwig (eds). 2015. The Pragmatics of Quoting Now and Then. Berlin: de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brendel, Elke, Markus Steinbach and Jörg Meibauer (eds.). 2011. Understanding Quotation. Linguistic and Philosophical Analyses. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bublitz, Wolfram. 2015. “Introducing Quoting as a Ubiquitous Meta-Communicative Act.” In The Pragmatics of Quoting Now and Then, ed. by Jenny Arendholz, Wolfram Bublitz and Monika Kirner-Ludwig, 1–26. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
College of Policing 2017. Investigative Interviewing. [URL] (accessed 04/12/2017)
Cotterill, Janet. 2004. “‘Just One More Time …’: Aspects of Intertextuality in the Trials of O. J. Simpson.” In Language in the legal process, ed. by Janet Cotterill, 147–161. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. “You do not have to say anything…: Instructing the jury on the defendant’s right to silence in the English criminal justice system.” Multilingua: Special issue on Silence in Institutional and Intercultural Contexts 24(1/2): 7–24. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Coulthard, Malcolm. 1977. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. “Whose Voice Is It? Invented and Concealed Dialogue in Written Records of Verbal Evidence Produced by the Police.” In Language in the legal process, ed. by Janet Cotterill, 19–34. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dando, Coral, Rachel Wilcock and Rebecca Milne. 2009. “The Cognitive interview: novice police officers’ witness/victim interviewing practices.” Psychology, Crime and Law 15(8): 679–696. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbons, John. 2003. Forensic Linguistics: an introduction to language in the justice system. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
gov.uk. 2017a. Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) codes of practice; updated 25 October 2017; [URL] (accessed 04/12/2017)
gov.uk. 2017b. Being arrested: your rights; [URL] (accessed 04/12/2017)
Grice, Herbert Paul. 1989. “Logic and Conversation.” In: Herbert Paul Grice. 1989. Studies in the Way of Words, 22–40. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hübler, Axel and Wolfram Bublitz. 2007. “Introducing metapragmatics in use.” In Metapragmatics in Use, ed. by Wolfram Bublitz and Axel Hübler, 1–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2013. “Embedding police interviews in the prosecution case in the Shipman trial.” In Legal-Lay Communication. Textual Travels in the Law, ed. by C. Heffer, F. Rock, and J. Conley, 147–167. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnson, Alison. 2014. “‘Dr Shipman told you that…’ The organising and synthesising power of quotation in judicial summing-up.” Language and Communication 36 (1): 53–67. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matoesian, Greg. 2000. “Intertextual authority in reported speech: Production media in the Kennedy Smith rape trial.” Journal of Pragmatics 321: 879–914. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Newbury, Philipp and Alison Johnson. 2006. “Suspects’ resistance to constraining and coercive questioning strategies in the police interview.” The International Journal of Speech Language and the Law 13 (2): 213–240.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oxburgh, Gavin E., Trond Myklebust and Tim Grant. 2010. “The question of question types in police interviews: A review of the literature from a psychological and linguistic perspective.” The International Journal of Speech Language and the Law 17 (1): 45–66. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Poggi, Francesca and Alessandro Capone (eds.). 2016. Pragmatics and Law: Philosophical Perspectives. New York: Springer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(eds.). 2017. Pragmatics and Law: Practical and Theoretical Perspectives. New York: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rock, Frances. 2012. “The caution in England and Wales.” In The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law, ed. by Peter Tiersma and Lawrence Solan, 313–325. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. 2001. “Discourse Markers: Language, Meaning and Context.” In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton, 55–75. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scollon, Ronald, Suzanne Wong Scollon, and Rodney H. Jones. 2012. Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
TACIT 2018. Translation and Communication in Training. Norwich: University of East Anglia. [URL]
Vredeveldt, Annelies, Peter J. van Koppen and Pär Anders Granhag. 2014. “The Inconsistent Suspect: A systematic review of different Types of consistency in truth tellers and liars.” In Investigative Interviewing, ed. by Ray Bull, 183–208. New York: Springer Science. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Walsh, David and Ray Bull. 2012. “Examining rapport in investigative interviews with suspects: Does its building and maintenance work?” Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology 271: 73–84. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. “Interviewing suspects: examining the association between skills, questioning, evidence disclosure, and interview outcomes.” Psychology, Crime & Law 21 (7): 661–680. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre. 2000. “Metarepresentation in Linguistic Communication.” In Metaprepresentations: a multidisciplinary perspective, ed. by Dan Sperber, 411–448. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Elder, Chi-Hé & Luna Filipović
2025. “I never said that”. Pragmatics and Society 16:2 ► pp. 174 ff. DOI logo
Song, Chuting & Xinren Chen
2024. Veteran Chinese traffic police officers’ positive rapport management in discourse: A case study. Journal of Pragmatics 230 ► pp. 142 ff. DOI logo
Filipović, Luna
2021. Confession to Make: Inadvertent Confessions and Admissions in United Kingdom and United States Police Contexts. Frontiers in Psychology 12 DOI logo
Filipović, Luna
2022. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Miscommunication in UK Police Interviews and US Police Interrogations. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology 37:2 ► pp. 297 ff. DOI logo
Filipović, Luna
2022. Language and Culture as Sources of Inequality in US Police Interrogations. Applied Linguistics 43:6 ► pp. 1073 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue