The ‘preparatory’ and ‘argumentation’ stages of police interrogation: A linguistic analysis of a criminal investigation

•The ‘preparatory’ and ‘argumentation’ stages of interrogation are discursive features of police-suspect exchanges.•Police interrogation in the US includes ‘confrontation,’ ‘appeals to self-interest,’ and ‘sympathy/minimization’.•Managing the suspect’s denials is a key component of police interrogation.•The goals of police interrogation are often incompatible with the suspect’s perceived right not to provide a confession.

This paper examines from a conversation analysis perspective how police officers manage police-suspect exchanges during the ‘argumentation stage’ of police interrogation while using the accuser's police interview as a basis for formulating questions during the ‘preparatory stage’. Analyzing the audio recorded police interrogation of a suspect and the investigative interview of his accuser, this paper shows how the ‘preparatory stage’ of police interrogation plays a key role in constructing the discourse themes of confrontation and self-interest that seem to shape police-suspect exchanges in United States custodial settings. The results of the paper suggest that police officers often use turn-taking and topic management strategies, such as those embedded in the popular Reid method of interrogation, to pressure the suspect into cooperating with the police.