Komter2012a
| Komter2012a | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Komter2012a |
| Author(s) | Martha L. Komter |
| Title | The career of a suspect’s statement: Talk, text, context |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Justice, Text, Courtroom Interaction, Police |
| Publisher | |
| Year | 2012 |
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| Journal | Discourse Studies |
| Volume | 44 |
| Number | 6 |
| Pages | 731–752 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1177/1461445612457486 |
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Abstract
The aim of this article is to show how a suspect’s statement travels through two stages of the criminal law process: the police interrogation and the trial, exhibited by two modes of production: talk and writing. I first discuss how the suspect’s statement is elicited and written down by the police in the police report; next I consider how the police report is made to form part of a legally adequate case-file; and finally I investigate the ways in which the judge quotes and refers to the police report in his questioning of the suspect during the trial. This step-by-step inspection of the trajectory of the suspect’s statement shows processes of de- and recontextualization. The suspect’s statement is written down so as to enable it to be taken out of one context (the police interrogation) and inserted into another (the trial). This means that old meanings are removed from the suspect’s statement and new meanings are added. In the courtroom, however, the judge treats the suspect’s written statement as his own individual production, irrespective of the interactional environment in which it was elicited. The suspect’s statement is taken out of one context, inserted into another context and treated as independent of context.
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