ABSTRACT

Imagine a police interview. What is the main thing going on? Whether your imagined interview was between men, women or was mixed sex; involved adults or a child; a witness, victim or a suspect; a group or only two individuals; whether it was conducted monolingually or through an interpreter; whether it was in a cramped police interview room or a state-of-the-art rape crisis unit, it probably had one key feature: instant, interpersonal interaction between a police officer and lay person. Sure enough, the Code of Practice which regulates detention in England and Wales (Code C) defines interview as ‘the questioning of a person regarding their involvement or suspected involvement in a criminal offence or offences’ (Home Office 2008: 37). So, your imagined police interview probably centred on two main participants, one seeking to elicit information from the other. At the very least, your interview participants, however numerous they are, are probably orienting to talk, even if the interviewee might be trying to avoid doing it. Other chapters of this book have shown the influence of the talk of participants with particular characteristics (Aldridge), the implications of spoken descriptions (Benneworth) and the potential of spoken questions in forming consensus (Holt and Johnson). Talk is obviously crucial to interviews but it is not the only or, I argue, the most important linguistic activity which shapes them. Let’s look a little more closely at the interview you had imagined. The other linguistic activities that you might have called to mind are reading and writing. This chapter will focus on the place of reading and writing in police interviews, showing how these activities figure, how they are oriented to and how influential they are on the structures, practices and outcomes of police interviews.