analysingthestrategiesandtechniquesofcriminalinterrogationdiscourse_yangfengxian杨凤仙

1 ANALYSING THE STRATEGIES AND TECHNIQUES OF CRIMINAL INTERROGATION DISCOURSE YANG Fengxian The College of Humanities analysis of the properties of silence between turns, i.e. Turn Silence in interrogations and skills for coping with it using the Relevance Theory; interpretation of interrogation discourse using Cooperative Principle, and explanation of the function of implicating interrogation and its intimidating effect. [Keywords] Interrogation discourse; pragmatic presupposition; Cooperative Principle; Turn Silence; implication Introduction Interrogation is psychological combat between the interrogator and the interrogatee, with language being the primary weapon. The interrogator will use every possible strategy and within the law to collect evidences and seek the truth of the case. Meanwhile, the suspect will hide the truth as much as possible and reveal as little as possible about the crime. To a large extent, the success of interrogations depends on the language used by the interrogator. So, the interrogator will use every , including language, to achieve the aim of interrogation. s may include influencing the suspect emotionally and psychologically, or making the suspect confess by cleverly using language.PRAGMATIC PRESUPPOSITION AS AN IMPORTANT STRATEGY IN INTERROGATION Presupposition, also known as premise, is a term in logic. It refers to prerequisites needed during the reasoning process in order to make a judgement. In the later period of the 20th century, linguists, especially those who were interested in pragmatics, undertook extensive research in topics concerning presupposition. According to the research, pragmatic presupposition refers to general background knowledge shared by both speakers in a dialogue. Zhang, 2008 179, tr. the author Or, as Yule 1996 25 pointed out, it is ‘something the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance.’ The unique function of pragmatic presupposition makes it favourable to interrogators. There are two situations where pragmatic presupposition is deployed. The interrogator might use explicit pragmatic presupposition to make the suspect confess actively; alternatively, he or she might use implicit pragmatic presupposition to mislead the suspect, and thus confess passively. An example of explicit presupposition would be ‘He told us everything Why dont you’ Of course, ‘He said everything’ would be a presumed reality by the interrogator, which aims at deceiving the suspect. An example of implicit presupposition would be ‘Do you remember what happened when you hit those people while