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 Kerry Linfoot-Ham, University of Florida

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 (2001:11).

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 (1999:78)

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 (1975:45-46)

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, 1999:38)

7. Principle of Relevance Principle of relevance: “Every act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance.” Sperber and Wilson (1986:158)

8. Politeness Principle • Leech’s (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 (1966:607)

12. Variants of Authority-subject Values 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) Subjects and authorities both act congruently with their cultural norms

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

16. The End Thank you for listening!