Georgina Heydon, The language of police interviewing: A
critical analysis. Houndmills & New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005. xii + 229. Hb $69.95.
This book presents a critical analysis of police interviewing in
Australia. The author investigates the role of the police in the
police–suspect interview in relation to both the negotiation of
power relations between participants and the fulfillment of institutional
requirements. Combining the analytical tools provided by interactional
sociolinguistics and Conversation Analysis (CA), Heydon investigates
recordings of police questioning of adult suspects. These findings are
compared to findings of a previous study (Heydon 1997), in which Heydon investigated recordings of the
training of police for interviewing children. Critical Discourse Analysis
(CDA) is used to interpret the results of the descriptive analysis.