ABSTRACT
Ethnographies of police work traditionally rely on methods such as field observation, recorded in fieldnotes, and interviews. This chapter introduces a linguistic ethnographic approach, which offers a valuable contribution to the study of policing. Conceptualised early on as a tool to ‘tie ethnography down’ and ‘open linguistics up’ (Rampton et al. 2004), linguistic ethnography combines an epistemological stance of ethnography with detailed linguistic analysis. It is often seen as an umbrella term uniting work concerned with researching language in social life. This chapter offers an overview of linguistic approaches to policing in general before discussing interactions in the context of community policing. It does so by looking at an analysis of a spontaneous interaction between a Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) and a member of the public. Drawing on Goffman’s dramaturgical model and using Sarangi’s (2010) distinction between discourse roles and activity roles as a theoretical framework, the analysis shows how a question-and-answer format as well as the strategic use of pronouns provide an interpretative tool for the discussion of constantly shifting roles in a community policing context.
