Pragmatics and the Intuitions of Law Enforcement Officers

1
Pragmatics and the Intuitions of Law Enforcement
Officers

• International Pragmatics Association Annual
  Conference, 2005
• Riva del Garda, Italy

2
Introduction

• If you are ever arrested in the US, remember
  that what you say may not be as important as how
  you say it.
• Cho (200111).

3
Theories

• Co-Operative Principle (Grice, 1975)
• Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1986)
• Politeness Principle (Brown and Levinson, 1987)
• Derivational Thinking (M.J. Hardman, 1996)
• Norm Resistance Theory (Austin Turk, 1966)

4
Co-operative Principle

•  
• make your conversational contribution such as
  is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by
  the accepted purpose or direction of the talk
  exchange in which you are engaged.
• Grice (199978)
•  

5
Co-operative Maxims

• Quantity make your contribution as informative
  as is required
• Quality make your contribution one that is true
• Relation be relevant
• Manner be clear, unambiguous, brief, and
  orderly
• Grice (197545-46)

6
Quality

• Quality make your contribution one that is true
• Do not say what you believe to be false
• Do not say that for which you lack adequate
  evidence

COPS HATE LIARS sic. (Florida Police Officer
Ray Wisher, 199938)
7
Principle of Relevance

• Principle of relevance
• Every act of ostensive communication
  communicates the presumption of its own optimal
  relevance.
• Sperber and Wilson (1986158)

8
Politeness Principle

• Leechs (1983) maxims
• Tact maxim
• Generosity maxim
• Approbation maxim
• Modesty maxim
• Agreement maxim
• Sympathy maxim
• (see also Brown and Levinson, 1987)

9
Hierarchy of Importance for the Conversational
Maxims and the Politeness Principle

• 1) quality
• 2) politeness
• 3) relevance
• 4) manner
• 5) quantity

10
Derivational Thinking (DT)

• Linguistic Postulates
• number (use of singular/plural structures)
• sex-based gender (with the masculine form as the
  root and the feminine derived from the masculine)
• ranking comparative/absolute (e.g. better, best)
• e.g. Hardman (1996)

11
Norm Resistance Theory

• law is a consensus-coercion balance maintained
  by the authorities
• Turk (1966607)

12
Variants of Authority-subject Values

• Subjects and authorities both act congruently
  with their cultural norms

• Little/no agreement between the verbal and
  behaviour of authorities and subjects and the
  cultural norms they hold

• Congruence is present for the authorities with
  regard to adhering to their cultural norms, but
  incongruence exists for the subjects

• Incongruence between official norms and
  behaviour among the authorities will reduce the
  chance of overt conflict because it deserves
  discretion, (Turk, 1966, p. 608)

13
Organization and Sophistication

• Organization
• Levels of support for actions within a group, and
  how far this is integrated into the group
  dynamics.
• Turk assumes police have complex organization,
  whereas subject organization may vary according
  to their social circle.
• Sophistication
• Knowledge of others, which may be used to
  manipulate them.
• Turk again assumes that authorities have high
  levels of sophistication, whereas the levels of
  subjects may vary.

14
Other Pragmatic Theories

• Conversation Analysis (CA)
• For example, Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks
  (1977)
• See Heydon, 2005 for an example of CA used within
  a law enforcement setting

15
The Future

• Aims
• Prevent physical/verbal conflict caused by
  communicative frustration

• Training law enforcement officers
• Create a few simple, user-friendly categories
  that front line officers can access and utilise
  without effort

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The End

• Thank you
• for listening!