Suspect''s Statement - Talk and Text in the Criminal Process

Explores how suspect statements are elicited in police interrogations, written down and transformed into a document that is cited in court.

List of contents

1. Introduction; 2. The police interrogation: the talk, the typing and the text; 3. The police report: the document, the text and the talk; 4. The trial: documents in action; 5. The career of a suspect's statement; 6. Conclusion and discussion.

About the author

Martha Komter is research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Amsterdam. Her research interests include interaction in institutional settings, such as job interviews, courtroom interaction and police interrogations. She has published widely on these themes, and is author of Conflict and Cooperation in Job Interviews: A Study of Talk, Tasks, and Ideas (1991) and Dilemma's in the Courtroom: A Study of Trials of Violent Crime in the Netherlands (1998).

Summary

Aimed at linguists and sociologists working on discourse and conversation analysis, as well as scholars of law, this book examines how a suspect's statement is elicited and written down, how it systematically differs from how the statement was spoken, and how it is quoted in court.

Product details

• Authors: Martha Komter, Martha (Vrije Universiteit Komter
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.01.2019
• EAN: 9781107059481
• ISBN: 978-1-107-05948-1
• No. of pages: 218
• Series: Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics; Studies in Interactional Socio; Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics; Studies in Interactional Socio
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; Social sciences, law, business > Law > Criminal law, criminal procedural law, criminology; Criminal law & procedure, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General, Sociolinguistics, Crime and criminology, Crime & criminology, Courts & procedure, Legal systems: courts and procedures, Criminal law: procedure and offences