Police Questions Revision Submitted version ACCEPTED Dec 2018.pdf (441.88 kB)
Police call-takers' first substantive question projects the outcome of the call
journal contribution
posted on 2019-01-22, 14:58 authored by Alexandra Kent, Charles AntakiPolice call-takers need to gather as much data as is needed, as quickly as possible, to
determine whether and what action should be taken. On analysing 514 calls to a UK centre
handling emergency (999) and non-emergency (101) calls, we find that the call-taker’s first
substantive question already carries a diagnosis of the merits of the caller's case, and an
implication of the call's likely outcome. Such questions come principally in four formats. On
a gradient of increasing scepticism, these are: requests for the caller's location (which are
treated as indicating that police action will be taken); open-ended requests for further
information (treated as neutral); queries of the relevance of the incident or legitimacy of the
caller, and reformulations of the caller's reason for calling (both projecting upcoming refusal
of police action). We discuss the implications of this gradient for understanding how the calltakers manage their institutional goals. Data are in British English.
History
School
- Social Sciences and Humanities
Department
- Communication and Media
Published in
Applied LinguisticsVolume
41Issue
5Pages
640 - 661Citation
KENT, A. and ANTAKI, C., 2020. Police call-takers' first substantive question projects the outcome of the call. Applied Linguistics, 41 (5), pp.640-661.Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP) © The AuthorsVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Applied Linguistics following peer review. The version of record KENT, A. and ANTAKI, C., 2019. Police call-takers' first substantive question projects the outcome of the call. Applied Linguistics, 41 (5), pp.640-661 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amz002.Acceptance date
2018-12-12Publication date
2019-03-11ISSN
0142-6001eISSN
1477-450XPublisher version
Language
- en