Stokoe2009
| Stokoe2009 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | INCOLLECTION |
| Key | Stokoe2009 |
| Author(s) | Elisabeth H. Stokoe, Derek Edwards |
| Title | Asking ostensibly silly questions in police–suspect interrogations |
| Editor(s) | Alice F. Freed, Susan Ehrlich |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, silly questions, police-suspect interrogations |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Year | 2009 |
| Language | |
| City | Oxford |
| Month | |
| Journal | |
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| Number | |
| Pages | 108–132 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195306897.003.0006 |
| ISBN | |
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| Institution | |
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| Howpublished | |
| Book title | “Why Do You Ask?”: The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse |
| Chapter | |
Abstract
This chapter, written by Elizabeth Stokoe and Derek Edwards, considers the occurrence in police‐suspect interrogations of what the authors term “silly questions.” A “silly question” is one that has an answer that both the police officer (i.e., the questioner) and the suspect (i.e., the answerer) already know and is asked in order “to establish for the record” something of the suspect's reported state of mind when engaged in the arrestable activity. In their analysis, Stokoe and Edwards examine the epistemic stance of the questioners and conclude that in using a silly question, the questioner adopts a “knowing” stance toward the information being requested and that these silly questions perform a bureaucratic function. The authors conclude that the institutional representatives ask questions not to obtain new information but rather to fulfill an institutionally mandated task that requires them to elicit information that they already know.
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