ABSTRACT
Interrogation becomes the taking of liberties when attempts to protect one’s privacy from the prying attention of others only arouse suspicion: one must have something to hide, is the inference, if one seeks to evade the question. Since the concealed clause after tell in the cognitive correlate of interrogation, being interrogative, alludes to the answer to a question, interrogators are presumed to intend that their respondents tell them only what is correct. The imperative theory thus attempts to reduce interrogation to its imperatival correlate, whose cognitive correlate in turn is just the cognitive correlate of interrogation. The sort of commands interrogators on imperative analyses are supposed to issue to potential respondents are either intrinsically absurd or constitute abuses of assertion or statement-making. In examining testimony an interrogator will hope to bring out the respondent’s individual perspective on or interpretation of what is being testified to by comparing this testimony with other testimony or what is otherwise known of the affair.
