Identity Construction In Chinese Police-Suspect Investigative Interviews

The reciprocal relationship between language and identity has aroused as much interest among researchers in anthropology,sociology,linguistics,psychology,literature as in linguistics.Previous studies on discursive construction of identity indicate that identity is not pre-limited to relatively stable social identities or individual identities,but encompasses pragmatic identities constructed in local interactional contexts.As a typical institutional discourse,Chinese investigative interview constructs identities of both police officers and suspects and displays the power relations between them.The earlier studies on Chinese investigative interview,however,attach too much importance to participants’ institutional identity,while ignoring the complexity and multifacetedness of identities constructed in local conversational contexts.Also,the previous researches fail to make a general micro analysis of discursive practices and explore the relationship between predetermined identity and those constructed in the interaction.Therefore,it is significant to carry on a study of identity construction in Chinese police-suspect investigative interview.Focusing on identity construction in Chinese investigative interview,this study scrutinizes various discursive practices that contribute to participants’ identity construction with the aim to differentiate and analyze complex and multiple identities constructed by police officers and suspects in the process of investigative interview.It also makes analysis of disaffiliation when participants construct their identities,in an attempt to interpret various factors that may influence identity construction of both parties.With the permission of relevant agencies,the author collected 100 interviews from three local police stations.The data were transcribed using Jefferson’s system for conversation analysis and the total number of transcription words amounts to 170,000,This study mainly employs conversation analysis to make a qualitative analysis of transcribed data.Conversational analytic study does not involve speculation about power,but investigates how people display and construct their identity in the interaction.The research on identity construction of both police officers and suspects is carried out respectively from three levels:lexical choice,turn design and sequence organization.It focuses on how communicators construct identities through various discursive practices and explores the process and mechanism of identity construction in investigative interviews.Major findings of this study are presented below.Firstly,in specific interviewing process,police officers not only project and construct powerful identities,but also intentionally construct their less powerful interactional identities,such as helper,interlocutor,and listener.At the level of lexical choice,police officers use recipient-exclusive self-reference pronouns,proper names,or legalese to exhibit their power in the interaction.Through the use of specific person pronouns or address terms,however,police officers could shorten the distance between them and suspects and build a relatively equal relationship with the suspects.In specific contexts,police officers may change or adjust their use of legal talk according to suspects’ responses so as to make the whole interview smoothly proceed,projecting their less powerful identities in local interaction.At the level of turn design,police officers choose and employ multiple types of sentences to construct their powerful or less powerful identities.At the level of sequence organization,police officers’powerful identity is mainly manifested and built by means of managing turns,interrupting suspects’ turns,initiating topics or controlling the sequential progress.In some cases,however,police officers interrupt or intervene to help the suspects recall the details of events,projecting identity as helpers.By using backchannels,police officers highlight their identity as listeners instead of questioners,shortening the distance between them and suspects and this is conducive to suspects’ confession.Secondly,suspects in the investigative interviews also build multifaceted identities,such as confessors,justifiers or resistants.Their multiple identities are mainly projected through making affiliative or disaffiliative responses to police officers’ questions.At the level of lexical choice,suspects’ use of self-reference expressions,address terms and hedge expressions helps construct their identity as storytellers or confessors.Their identity as confessor is embodied in their narration of crime,normally belonging to affiliative responses.Suspects’ affiliative responses indicate their deference and respect to police officers.At the level of turn design,suspects’ use of direct speech and different expressions to normalize,blame victims or mitigate constructs their identity as justifiers.At the level of sequence organization,suspects may exhibit their own power over the interaction.It is quite often that suspects make disaffiliative responses in the interview,displaying their resistance to police officers’ initiation of topics.They may construct and highlight their identity as resistants through keeping silent,claiming inability to answer questions,showing denial or providing irrelevant information.They even use rhetorical questions to show their high epistemic status on crime events.Thirdly,disaffiliation is often conveyed when police officers and suspects construct their identities in the interview.Incriminating information involved in police officers’ questions may initiate suspects’ disaffiliative responses.To feedback these disaffiliation,police officers may challenge suspects’ disaffiliative responses or shift to other topics;indicating the negation or negotiation of suspects’ construction of identities.Police officers’ feedback again may meet challenges from suspects.In a circulatory way,police officers and suspects could construct and negotiate their identities in local interactional contexts.Fourthly,the study attempts to put forward a model for identity construction in Chinese investigative interviews.Identities constructed by police officers and suspects are not consistent with their predetermined institutional identities.Predetermined institutional identities may exert influence on their discursive practices,but is not the sole factor to affect their multiple identity construction.Identities projected and established through police officers’ and suspects’ discursive practices include other identities emergent in specific interactional contexts.Multiple factors such as institutional settings,communicative objectives,interlocutors,epistemics and interpersonal relationship may exert influence on participants’ identity construction.Both parties may choose or adjust their expressions according to local interactional contexts.Their linguistic choice in the interaction will affect the establishment of interpersonal relationship between them and ultimately achieve construction of both parties’ identities.This study explores identity construction in Chinese police-suspect investigative interview.It is found that both police officers’ and suspects’ identities extend well beyond the normative expectation of them and are closely related with relationship establishment in the local contexts.There is a close relationship among participants’ linguistic choice,the establishment of interpersonal relationship and identity construction.In the course of investigative interview,police officers can weaken their powerful identity through multiple linguistic means,and mitigate the conflict between them and suspects so as to realize"dialogic investigative interview" in the harmonious society.At the end of this dissertation,limitations and future prospects of the research are presented.