Police officers’ management of suspects’ I don’t know responses in Chinese investigative interviews

Bibliographic Data

ID7201485
AuthorsYao Yun (Shandong Normal University), Yun Yao (0000-0002-7141-9752, Shandong Normal University), Naihai Zhai (0009-0007-1880-2430, Shandong Normal University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume27
Issue3
Pages477-497
Publication date2024-10-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDiscourse Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1461-4456 • E-ISSN: 1461-7080
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14614456241285899
OpenAlexW4403515906
LanguageEN
References cited36

In question-answer sequences, I don’t know -responses (IDK-responses) are often considered to be dispreferred. How police officers handle these dispreferred responses in Chinese investigative interviews remains unclear. By adopting the method of conversation analysis, this study examines suspects’ IDK-responses and police officers’ management of these responses. It is found that suspects usually design their IDK-responses in two formats: stand-alone IDK and mitigated IDK. Changing topics, initiating repairs, reformatting questions and displaying explicit disbelief are those strategies frequently employed by police officers to manage suspects’ IDK-responses. These strategies do not necessarily elicit new information from the suspects. But except changing topics, the other three types of management formats can all provide suspects with opportunities to alter their original claims of insufficient knowledge. Suspects may produce accounts or further utterances to mitigate their prior IDK-responses or provide new answers to questions posed by police officers

Criminology · Political science · Public relations · Deception detection and forensic psychology · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Psychology

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