The first issue of Register and Context was published on the 2nd of April 2008. For submission of papers to our next issue, please consult our Call for papers.
Editor's Welcome
Our General Editor, Khanh-Duc Kuttig, welcomes all readers of Register and Context to our first issue.
Linguistic Features of Police Culture and the Coercive Impact of Police Officer Swearing in Police-Citizen Street Interactions
by Janet Ainsworth
Not infrequently, police officers will use taboo language – swearing, cursing, and similar kinds of obscene and insulting language – the course of their encounters with criminal suspects. This linguistic practice is characteristic of the norms, values, and behaviors of police culture, which is preoccupied with issues of control, dominance, and the performance of masculinity. Because of its congruence with other aspects of the occupational culture of patrol policing, swearing has specific delineated roles within that culture in its illocutionary force and predictable effects on criminal suspects in its perlocutionary impacts. Swearing – particularly by those in authority – is a powerful signal of role-transgression, and as such, signals the possibility of other forms of role-transgression as well, including the potential police use of physical force against the suspect. This meta-pragmatic analysis suggests that police swearing should be contextually relevant in determining such legal questions as whether the suspect voluntarily consented to a search or validly waived her right not to answer police questions. American caselaw currently gives inadequate attention to this problem.
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