Communicating rights : the language of arrest and detention / Frances Rock.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rock, Frances, 1974-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Criminal justice, Administration of--United States.

Criminal justice, Administration of.

United States.

Police training--United States.

Police training.

Police questioning--United States.

Police questioning.

Confession (Law)--United States.

Confession (Law).

Right to counsel--United States.

Right to counsel.

Physical Description:

xviii, 359 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Summary:

People explain things to each other every day using both writing and speech. Communicating Rights examines the creativity which underpins everyday explanation and its power to influence lives. The rights communication in question occurs in police custody, where explanations shape crucial decisions. Data examined illustrate that when speakers and writers transform texts for others through explanation they work hard to convey meaning. They try to simplify words and grammar and consider the other's perspective and communicative needs. However, although explaining rights seems to be concerned with simply relaying facts it does much more. This apparently tightly regulated, goal-oriented talk is used by both police officers and detainees to reassure, persuade, distract, challenge, empathise, learn, influence confidence, present identity, prospect intentions, show affiliation, make suggestions and bring formality. The book shows that analysts, institutions or indeed anyone who explains to others might usefully recognise that their explanations do more than simply convey facts.

Contents:

Terminology and Key to Transcription Conventions xiv

Part I Rights and Research: Orientation and Theory

1.1 Law, lay people and language 3

1.2 The focus of this book 5

1.3 Explaining rights: Using legal language? 8

2 Beyond Language as Transmission 14

2.2 Senders, texts and receivers? 15

2.3 A sociolinguistic approach to comprehension and comprehensibility 19

2.5 Is it possible to say the same thing twice? 24

2.6 Why paraphrase? The functions of transformation 25

2.7 Transformation and polyvocality 26

2.8 Transformation and intertextual chains 28

2.9 Transformation, organisations and power 29

Part II Writing Rights

3 Introducing Written Rights Communication 33

3.2 The Notice's legal background 35

3.3 The Notice's textual background 36

3.4 Multilingualism 39

3.5 The revision texts 39

3.6 Detainees 43

3.7 Beginning revision 45

4 Working with Syntax and Lexis in Writing 49

4.2 Evaluating syntactic revision 51

4.3 Evaluating lexico-semantic revision 65

4.4 Close 70

5 Working with Organisation in Writing 72

5.2 Discourse organisation within the section 72

5.3 Discourse organisation between sections 77

5.4 Intertextuality 85

6 Working with Context: Rights Texts in Custody 89

6.2 The Sergeant's aspirations 89

6.3 Characterising the Sergeant's text: Orienting to detainees 92

6.4 Was the Sergeant revision "objectively" successful? 96

6.5 What happened to the Sergeant version in practice? 98

6.6 Partial readers 100

6.7 Close 107

7 Off the Page: Detainees' Reading Practices 108

7.1 Introduction: Examining reading by examining readers 108

7.2 Non-readers 108

7.4 Close 133

Part III Speaking Rights

8 Introducing Spoken Rights Communication 137

8.2 The caution's legal background 139

8.3 The caution's textual background 142

8.4 Multilingualism 145

8.5 Introducing data 147

8.6 The label caution 150

8.7 The official wording 154

8.8 The cautioning exchange 158

8.9 Assumptions underlying cautioning procedure 161

8.10 Working with meaning 163

9 Working with Lexis in Speech 166

9.2 Metonymy and polysemy in court 167

9.3 Different situations, different cautions: Questioned 169

9.4 Defining something 175

9.5 Explaining negation 177

9.6 Close 178

10 Working with Organisation in Speech 180

10.2 Re-sequencing in principle 181

10.3 Re-sequencing in practice 182

10.4 Structural metalanguage 185

10.5 The official paraphrase question 191

10.6 Disparate practices within one force 200

11 Checking Comprehension 205

11.2 The value of comprehension checking 206

11.3 Mitigating comprehension checking 210

11.4 Using comprehension checking 215

12 Beyond Explanation: Using Cautioning 222

12.2 Scaffolding the performance of social activities 223

12.3 Scaffolding human affiliation 230

Part IV Righting Rights

13 Description, Action and Uptake 245

13.2 Description 246

13.3 Application? 249

13.4 Uptake 252.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 319-334) and index.

ISBN:

0230013317

9780230013315

OCLC:

173659499

Online:

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