ABSTRACT
Police can “detain” you, without arresting you, if they think you have committed an “infraction” such as speeding, or that you can provide information relevant to a criminal investigation. They can ask you anything they want. Generally you have to answer (truthfully!) what your name is, but nowhere in the U.S. do you have to answer much more than that, if anything at all. The police might want to search you or your car. If they don’t have a search warrant (as they almost never do, in a detainment), they need to get your permission. The police know all this. Few detainees do. The police use smart conversational moves to try to get you to answer questions or consent to a search. In this chapter, we’ll look at the linguistics of police-detainee conversation. In this connection Schneckloth v. Bustamonte (1973) is analyzed in some depth. The primary area of linguistics useful in this context is pragmatics, in particular speech act theory, which is introduced in this chapter. Close attention is paid to felicity conditions for requesting, commanding, and consenting. This chapter also provides a case-based history of how confessions have been obtained after arrest, a preliminary to Chapter Three’s analysis of the Miranda warning. Cases discussed in detail include, in addition to Schneckloth, Bram v. United States (1897) and Brown v. Mississippi (1936). Also receiving attention are Spano v. New York (1959), Rogers v. Richmond (1961), Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), Escobedo v. Illinois (1964), and Malloy v. Hogan (1964).
