A busca vs. o resguardo de informações acerca dos crimes em interrogatórios policiais : um olhar sob a perspectiva da fala-em-interação

Abstract

Questioning and answering are trivial activities in people's lives, either in mundane or institutional talk-in-interaction. This dissertation analyzes sequences of questions and answers, as well as its consequences, in interactional and institutional events constituted by questioning and answering practices: police interrogations. The objective is to investigate, supported by the theoretical and methodological framework of Conversation Analysis (SACKS; SCHEGLOFF; JEFFERSON, 1974), how pursuit vs. preservation of information concerning crimes under investigation occur in police interrogations of three Police stations in Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil. More specifically, it proposes to analyze and describe the following interactional implications: (1) question formats used by police agents in the pursuit of information concerning crimes; and (2) resources through which interrogated individuals preserve information related to crimes under investigation. The corpus of this study is composed of audio and/or video recordings of ten police interrogations from three Civilian Police stations, collected between April, 2017 and January, 2018. Regarding pursuit of crime facts, the analysis shows that information about crimes is obtained by police agents when they use less open or closed questions, as well as when they switch from open to closed-question sequences. This information precedes justifications and/or additional information, which not only can be substantial for the investigation process, but also can be used in favor of the innocence of the individual being interrogated. Concerning preservation of information related to crimes under investigation, the analysis demonstrates that it can be: (1) carried out by interrogated individuals in their responsive turns; and (2) enabled by police agents due to the question formats they choose. Interrogated individuals preserve crime facts when resisting to provide information requested by police agents and when supplying nonconforming responses concerning answers that are made relevant by the question format, performing actions such as lack of knowledge, forgetfulness and unawareness declarations, among others. Police agents enable information related to crimes to be protected by interrogated individuals when they choose question formats which include cognition verbs, such as “to know” and “to remember”, which makes possible, thus, that interrogated people, in their answers, declare ignorance and/or lack of memory without demonstrating resistance or nonconformity towards the question being answered. Based on these results, the study reflects on the interface between linguistic and legal sciences, as well as on contributions that this linguistic and interactional study has to offer to the investigated context and to the Conversation Analysis framework.