<!-- image -->

## 'It was probably that guy?' - The functions of reconstructive speech acts in investigative training interviews

Winnie Collin Roskilde University wcollin@ruc.dk

## Abstract *

Th is paper explores the pragmatic and interactional functions of reconstructive speech  acts  in  mock  police  interviews,  based  on  a  model  of  argumentative dialogue.  Th e  aim  of  the  paper  is  to  illustrate  how  the  reconstructions apparently contribute to both the interaction between the police offi cer and the mock suspect in the interview activity and to the interaction in the training activity, i.e. between the participants attending the training course. Drawing on functional  pragmatics  and  grammar,  the  analysis  seeks  to  examine  how reconstructions  on  the  one  hand  function  in  the  socially  non-cooperative interaction in the mock interview, questioning the truth value of propositions and trustworthiness of the suspect, and, on the other hand seem to fulfi  l a supportive purpose in the training activity.

Keywords: Investigative interviewing, training activities, reconstructive speech acts, pragmatics, semantics, questions, forensic linguistics

## 1. Introduction

Taking its point of departure in speech act theory and functional grammar, this  study  focuses  on reconstructive speech acts '  (see  section  3)  questioning and evaluating functions across diff  erent activity types embedded in simulated police interviews.

Police interviews with witnesses and suspects are one of the main sources for information during criminal investigation. In Denmark, such investigative interviewing is  inspired  by  the  British  PEACE-model 1 and  principles  from cognitive interviewing (Fischer and Geiselman 2010) and follows four stages: Preparation , free account , questioning and closure (Bitsch and Modin 2016:82, Gibbons  2003:145-146).  Th e  excerpts  in  this  paper  are  from  the  stage  of questioning, in which the interviewer 'in the following order (…) will tend to use a lower question type if a higher one does not work (a) open questions (b) either/Or multiple choice questions (c) Specifi  c but not leading questions (d) leading questions' (Gibbons 2003:145-146). Th e aim of the investigative interview  is  to  clarify  the  circumstances  of  the  event  under  investigation and as  objectively  and  accurately  as  possible,  elicit  'correct  information  in an  unbiased  and  open-minded  manner  compared  to  a  question-answer approach' (Hviid 2017:30).

Since  2005,  the  Danish  police  has  conducted  investigative  interviews based on the Danish interview model. Furthermore, interview training is a substantial part of the education and ongoing training of police offi cers. Part of the training is conducted as simulated investigative interviews with police offi cers  playing  the  roles  of  witnesses,  suspects,  and  interviewer.  How  the participants of such training interviews handle the shift  ing communicative roles,  and  how  they  make  sense  of  the  contributions  to  this  complex  kind of interaction, has not yet been studied in a Danish context. Similar aspects of  this  kind  of  complex  communication  have  been  the  focus  of  other studies,  though,  among  others  Linell  and  Th unqvist's  study  of  simulated job  interviews.  Linell  and  Th unqvist  (2003:413)  describe  how  participants involved in communication that involves teaching are oft  en 'inquiring about what is going on, and rehearsing, evaluating, and making meta-comments on activities and happenings' . Th us, Linell and Th unqvist (2003:431) notes, the participants move in and out of framings 2 and 'build their utterances to fi  t a specifi  c activity context, or to fi  t several such contexts at the same time, and they enact role identities associated with these activities' .

In the data of the present study, the participants also seem to orient to diff  erent  framings  and  the activity  types (Levinson  1992)  embedded in the interview training-situation. Most of the time, though, evaluation and metacomments are phrased as utterances that can count as contributions to both the  training  activity  and  the  interview  activity.  Th e  excerpts  presented  in this  paper  are  illustrative  of  how  interlocutors  in  complex  communicative activities, with distinctly diff  erent inferential frames to derive inference from, manage to navigate and switch between activities. Reconstructive speech acts seem to be a helpful tool for this. Th us, the analysis serves to illustrate how diff  erent activity types make certain inferences possible and acceptable, and to demonstrate how a model of argumentative dialogue holds useful concepts for analysing the negotiation of meaning across activities.

In authentic as well as mock investigative interviews, the reconstructive speech acts seem to serve the purpose of open questions well as they invite the  interviewee  to  provide  a  more  or  less  free  account.  However,  a  police interview is an activity type where 'police offi cers  tend to use questions to glean  information,  query,  accuse,  etc.,  with  the  ultimate  aim  of  testing  the veracity of a witness's or suspect's account of events (Archer 2020, this issue, see also Vrij 2008). Th at is, an activity type with a built-in confl  ict or divergent points of view. On that basis, Nielsen's model of argumentative dialogue (Nielsen 2005) establishes a useful starting point for the analysis of the interaction in training interviews, in particular the notions of reconstruction and criticism . Among others, Nielsen's model draws on Searle's (1976) speech act theory and Grice's  (1975)  cooperative  principle  that,  accordingly,  form  the  theoretical and analytical  framework  of  the  present  study.  In  addition,  the  analysis  of the contextual pragmatic functions of the reconstructions draws on Danish Functional  Grammar  (Hansen  and  Heltoft    2019)  and  studies  of  epistemic stance  in  Danish  spoken  language  (Mortensen  2012)  and  in  courtroom interaction (Mortensen and Mortensen 2017).

An evaluating function of reconstructions is the focus of this paper, that is, reconstructions that function as questions while at the same time evaluate certain aspects of the interviewee's 3 utterances - apparently across the activities embedded  in  the  training  interview.  My  labelling  of  the  reconstructions as  questions  is  based  on  semantic  and  contextual  interpretations  (see  also section 4.1), but since the aim of this paper is not to determine whether the reconstructions  are  to  be  considered  questions  or  not,  I  will  refrain  from discussing ways to identify and classify questions.

## 2. Th e training interview activity

Th e interaction analysed in this study takes place as a mock police interview during a training course for police offi cers . Th us, there are, at least, two diff  erent activity types (Levinson 1992), the interview activity and the training activity , embedded in the overarching and complex activity, the training interview .

Th e  participants  in  the  training  interview  probably  know  each  other, at least from attending the same training course for some days. Within the context of the training activity, the relation is symmetric, and the goals for the  participants  are  probably  more  or  less  the  same;  that  is,  training  and improving their interviewing skills and performing well in order to make the mock interview proceed the best way possible. Consequently, the participants have a common interest in keeping the mock interview on the right track and play their roles as they are instructed to do.

In  the  context  of  the  interview  activity,  the  interviewees  follow  their instructions about what they are supposed to tell the interviewer - and what they  do  not  want  to  tell.  Th e  participants  try  to  simulate  an  asymmetric relation,  but  obviously,  the  conditions  for  the  interaction  in  the  interview activity are not the same as the conditions for an authentic police interview, neither regarding the relation between the participants or possible confl  icting goals and interests.

As already mentioned, the training interview holds two diff  erent activity types. On the one hand, these activities constitute diff  erent framings for the interlocutors to act within, and on the other hand, they intertwine. Activity types are 'a fuzzy category whose focal members are goal-defi  ned, socially constituted, bounded, events with constraints on participants, setting, and so on, but above all on the kinds of allowable contributions' (Levinson 1992:69). Hence,  the  notion  of  activity  types  is  a  useful  tool  for  distinguishing  and analysing  the  interaction  and  the  interlocutors'  speech  acts  in  the  training interview.

Activities  hold  distinctive  structural  elements  that  are  'rationally  and functionally adapted to the point or goal of the activity in question, that is the function or functions that members of the society see the activity as having' (Levinson 1992:71). Th us, the activity type constrains which roles it is possible for  the  interlocutors  to  have,  and  how  they  are  able  to  contribute  to  the interaction, linguistically as well. Speech can be a more or less integrated part of an activity, and the organisation of the activity both constrains 'what will count as an allowable contribution to each activity' , and constitutes certain activity-specifi  c rules of inference that 'help to determine how what one says will be 'taken' - that is, what kinds of inferences will be made from what is said' (Levinson 1992:97). As regards rules of inference, the training activity and the interview activity constitute quite diff  erent framings for the participants to derive meaning from. In addition, the interview activity simulates a relation between  participants  with  assumed  confl  icting  goals  and  assumed  lack  of social  cooperation 4 (Archer  2005:58).  Even  so,  Levinson  (1992:77)  notes, 'there could be some quite interesting relations between Grice's maxims and diff  erent kinds of activities, of a sort where some of the maxims are selectively relaxed to varying degrees in activities of specifi  c types' . Levinson (1992:78) argues that even in conversations that are not inherently cooperative, i.e. in the  social  sense  of  the  word,  it  is  possible  to  talk  about  relations  between specifi  c  activity  types  and  Grice's  maxims,  if  one  'accept[s]  Grice's  maxims as specifi  cations of some basic unmarked communication context, deviations from which, however common, are seen as special or marked ' .

## 3. Th eoretical background

Th e notion of reconstruction employed in this study, is inspired by the model of  argumentative  dialogue  put  forward  by  Nielsen  (2005,  2010),  in  which the counter argumentative speech act types reconstruction and criticism are discussed  in  detail.  Th e  model  is  rooted  in  the  pragma-dialectical  school of  argumentation  studies  (e.g.  van  Eemeren  and  Grootendorst  1984,  van Eemeren  and  Grootendorst  1992,  Grootendorst  et  al.  1996,  Nielsen  2005) that  combines  'the  pragmatic  focus  on  language  as  social  action  with  the dialectical focus of rule-based confl  ict resolution' (Nielsen 2005:26). In the pragma-dialectical approach, arguments are identifi  ed as external , functional , social and dialectical .  Consequently, studying argumentation builds on four corresponding  methodological  premises  that  'are  the  basis  for  integrating the  descriptive  dimension  of  argumentation  as  an  actual  phenomenon  of argumentative discourse with the normative dimension of argumentation as an essential ingredient of critical discussion' (Grootendorst et al. 1996:276). Briefl  y  outlined,  the  methodological  premise  of functionalisation points  to the  focus  on  'the  function  of  argumentation  in  the  verbal  management  of disagreement' (Grootendorst et al. 1996:278) and as persuasive acts (Nielsen 2005:27). Th e notion of externalisation covers the focus on language and what interlocutors  'have  expressed  in  discourse,  whether  directly  or  indirectly' (Grootendorst et al. 1996:276). Considering arguments as communicative and interactional acts, psychological dispositions and motives should not be the focus of analysis. Rather, the analysis of arguments is supposed to concentrate on  the  'externalized-or  externalizable-commitments'  of  the  interlocutors (Grootendorst  et  al.  1996:277)  and  'distinguish  what  commitments  follow from the discursive contributions' (Nielsen 2005:27).

Identifying arguments as social, signals that argumentation is a dialogical process involving two or more interlocutors participating in argumentative interaction, 'switching the communicative roles of speaker and hearer, and the interactional roles of protagonist and antagonist' (Nielsen 2005:27). Finally, according to Nielsen (2005:28) ' dialectifi  cation of argumentation refers to van Eemeren and Grootendorst's  philosophical  position  in  critical  rationalism' and the idea that argumentation is dialogical in the sense that it is not just a process of ' advancing standpoints, but just as much criticising standpoints' . Accordingly,  the  dialectifi  cation  of  argumentation  analysis  covers  a  set  of rules for the dialectical conduct of critical discussion.

Nielsen  (2005:185)  notes  that  his  approach  to  argumentative  dialogue 'can be approximately characterised 'a pragma-dialectical approach'' , stressing  that  ' Argumentation  is  a  pragmatic  phenomenon  and  should  be studied as such. Argumentation should be evaluated in terms of its critical adequacy as a dialectical process, according to critical rationalist principles' . However, the pragma-dialectical approach is normative while the purpose of Nielsen's approach is descriptive, aiming to 'show that language users do in fact occasionally reconstruct unexpressed premises in rational (co-operative/ reasonable) ways' (Nielsen 2005:188).

## 3.1. A model of argumentative dialogue

Argumentative dialogue involves a protagonist who expresses and defends a point of view, and an antagonist who challenges and criticises the protagonist's argument (Nielsen 2005:204). Nielsen proposes a model that illustrates these two roles and the linguistic actions typically connected to them, including the speech acts' linguistic expressions and functions:

Figure 1: Model of argumentative dialogue (Nielsen 2005:204)

|                       | PROTAGONIST                       | ANTAGONIST                              | ANTAGONIST                                          |
|-----------------------|-----------------------------------|-----------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------|
| Linguistic expression | Object linguistic                 | Meta-linguistic referents and verbs     | Meta-linguistic operators                           |
| Illocution            | Claiming entailment and soundness | Reconstruction by Paraphrases Implicata | Criticism by Formal refutations Factual refutations |
| Perlocution           | Persuasion/ conflict resolution   | Clarification                           | Meta-persuasion                                     |
| Type of argument      | Argument                          | Warranting counter argument             | Counter argument                                    |

Th e antagonistic argumentation involves the meta-linguistic utterance reconstruction and  the  meta-argumentative criticism. Neither  of  these  are '  committed  to  particular  direct  speech  act  types' ,  but  'may  be  phrased  as assertions, questions, etc. ' (Nielsen 2005:198). Th e purpose of   reconstructions is  to  clarify  the  protagonist's  argumentation  by  reproducing  what  the protagonist has literally uttered or by 'indicating what the protagonist meant by what he said, or what he is further committed to mean in the given   situation' (  Nielsen  2005:36).  Th e  reconstruction  forms  the  basis  of  the  antagonist's criticism, which is the core of the counter argument and criticises or evaluates the protagonist's   argument (Nielsen 2005:209).

Following  Searle's taxonomy  reconstructions  are  'a  special  type of representative speech act. But whereas the typical representative speech act aims at bringing 'the words to fi  t the world' , this type aims at bringing the words  to  fi  t  some  other  words'  (Nielsen  2005:206).  Furthermore,    Nielsen (2005:206)  argues,  the  essential  condition  regarding  the  reconstruction,  is more complex because 'the speaker/antagonist is non-committed to the truth of the   propositional content conveyed by the meta-linguistic referents, while he is committed to the truth of the meta-linguistic verbs and operators' . Th at is, the antagonist is committed to the consistency between the   propositional content, or the intended meaning, and his reconstruction of this.   Consequently, a   reconstructive speech act 'can never in itself add up to critical argument' (Nielsen 2005:209).

Hence, Nielsen (2005:206) proposes the following felicity conditions for reconstructive speech acts, 5 stressing that 'it is crucial to operate with two different propositional contents, the propositional content of the   reconstructive speech  act  itself, p ,  and  the  propositional  content  of  the  reconstructed utterance, p'' .

## 1. Content condition (or propositional act.) 6

Any proposition p describing any proposition p' .

(This is a deviation from the representative speech act whose propositional content is simply 'Any proposition p '. But reconstruction is meta-linguistic, so in order to count as a reconstruction, the content of the utterance should be about some other utterance, either its literal expression (paraphrase) or its implicit meaning (implicatum)).

## 2. Preparatory condition

- 2.1 Proposition p' has been uttered (directly or indirectly) at some time prior to the utterance of proposition p .
- 2.2 S has evidence for p. It is not obvious to S and H that H already knows p .
- 2.3 Insofar as p' has been uttered by H , H is prepared to have p' reconstructed or interpreted.
- (Ad 2.1: Clearly, reconstructing some speech act presupposes that the speech act in question has actually been uttered (i.e., said, implicated, or implied) at the time of the reconstruction. 2.2 does not deviate from Searle's account, while 2.3 simply states that it is a preparatory condition that H (if H is the protagonist) accepts to engage in meta-linguistic discourse about p' in the given context.)
3. Sincerity condition
- S believes that p accurately describes p' .
- ( S believes that his utterance, p , gives a charitable reconstruction of the reconstructed utterance, p' , but he does not have to believe p' .)

## 4. Essential condition

S takes on the obligation that p accurately describes p' .

(In producing the reconstructive utterance, S is committed to the accuracy of the fi  t between meta-linguistic reconstruction and the utterance it is a reconstruction of, but S is not committed to p' representing a state of affairs.)

Figure 2: Felicity conditions for reconstructions (Nielsen 2005:207)

As  to  the  criticising  speech  act,  Nielsen  (2005:208-209)  characterises  this as  'a  meta-linguistic  description  of  the  correspondence  between  some linguistic phenomenon and the facts, or the coherence between two or more linguistic phenomena' . Th at is, criticism as factual refutation referring to 'the truth    value  of  some  particular  utterance' ,  or  as formal  refutation referring to 'the   consistency between two or more utterances' . When performing the criticism, the speaker is only committed to his evaluation of the   reconstructed propositional content. On that basis, Nielsen (2005:208) proposes the   following felicity conditions for criticising speech acts, represented by q . Th e utterance that is criticised or evaluated is represented by p .

## 1. Content condition (or 'propositional act')

Any proposition q evaluating any proposition p' .

(The content of the utterance should be about some other utterance(s), and it should specify S 's evaluation of that other utterance, or S 's evaluation of the relationship between those other utterances.)

## 2. Preparatory condition

S has evidence for q . It is not obvious to S and H that H already knows q . (Again this condition is identical to the condition for the prototypical 'assertion', perhaps with the addition that insofar as p' is ascribed to H , H should be prepared to accept having his utterances evaluated by S in the given context.)

## 3. Sincerity condition

S believes that q accurately evaluates p' .

(The speaker believes that his evaluation refers to the truth value of some utterance (factual refutation) or to the consistency between some utterances (formal refutation)), and that his evaluation is true.

## 4. Essential condition

S takes on the obligation that q accurately evaluates p' .

( S is committed to his utterance referring to the truth value of some utterance or the consistency between some utterances.)

Figure 3: Felicity conditions for criticism (Nielsen 2005:208)

As appears from the felicity conditions for reconstructions, Nielsen distinguishes between reconstructive speech acts in the form of paraphrases or implicata. A paraphrase is 'an account of some proposition that has been literally said' ,  and 'implicatum is understood as an account of some proposition which has been implicated by what has been literally said, and/or is derived as a necessary condition for the literally said to be coherent' (Nielsen 2005:206).

Nielsen (2005:175) distinguishes between implicata that are intended and non-intended by the speaker. Th e latter refers to a situation where the meaning intended by the speaker, and the meaning reconstructed by the hearer, are not identical. Nielsen suggests that 'meaning is always negotiated in conversation' , and  that  non-intended  meaning,  like  intended  meaning,  is  implicatural. Th us,  he  elaborates on Grice's account of conversational implicature saying that  'In  accounts  like  Grice's  it  appears  that  meaning  is  transmitted from speaker to hearer' (Nielsen 2005:175). As opposed to this, Nielsen (2005:175) stresses that 'it is the hearer, not the speaker, that actually does the inferential work' and derives the implicatum. Hence, Nielsen characterizes 'the act of implicature' as a reciprocal action involving a double agency, illustrated by the fi  gure below:

Figure 4: Th e agency of implicature (Nielsen 2005:176)

<!-- image -->

Nielsen (2005:176) argues that 'an implicatum that was not intended by the speaker is also a result of the act of implicature, seeing that it was arrived at by the same kind of inferential procedure as traditional implicatures' . Hence, drawing on Ennis (1982, Nielsen 2005:178), Nielsen distinguishes between derived implicata as intended meaning ( used assumptions ),  that  is,  'assumptions that have actually been intended by the speaker' , and commitments ( needed assumptions ) that are 'thought to be necessary by a 'rational judge' , i.e. some external norm for rationality' . On a theoretical level, the two kinds of implicata are diff  erent, but in dialogue they are 'performed in practically identical ways' , and 'the practical analysis of argumentative dialogue will generally not be able to draw a distinct line between the two types of derived implicata' (Nielsen 2005:179-180).

## 4. Th e training interview as argumentative dialogue

Th e model of argumentative dialogue outlined above captures central features of more kinds of confl  icting dialogue than argumentation per se. Indeed, the training  interview  may  be  conceptualised  through  this  lens.  According  to Nielsen (2005:136) 'the fact that communication involves co-operation does not  contradict  the  fact  that  argumentative  dialogue  is  very  oft  en  a  kind  of confl  ict: there has to be a divergence of opinion, otherwise there cannot be argumentation in any ordinary sense of the word' . Th is point of view goes for training interviews as well.

In a police interview one might expect that the suspect 'may try to avoid committing himself to any defi  nite statement of fact' (Levinson 1992:77). Th e interview in this study is not authentic, though, but during the training course, some of the participants are instructed to play the role of a suspect who is unwilling to share details with the interviewer and to lie about certain parts of the mock event. However, such individual and psychological dispositions, or  lack  of  social  cooperativeness,  are  not  to  be  confused  with  Gricean, communicative cooperation and intentions (Archer 2005:58). Th us, when the mock suspect is lying or avoids shedding light on relevant parts of the event under investigation, he will most likely make his contributions as informative as required in the particular situation, but no more than that - that is, informative enough to count as communication and convey a communicative intention of truthfulness. As for the training activity, the participants also engage in a kind of argumentative dialogue when they reconstruct and evaluate the certainty of a co-participant's utterances in relation to remembering and following the instructions, they have been given.

Applying the model of argumentative dialogue to the training interview, I employ the interactional roles, protagonist and antagonist, though referring to them as interviewee and interviewer respectively . As mentioned in section 3, arguments are identifi  ed as social in the pragma-dialectical approach, meaning that the participants in the argumentative interaction switch interactional roles in the dialogical process. In this respect, the training interview diff  ers from the model of argumentative dialogue, at least with regard to the interview activity. In  this  kind  of  institutional  interaction,  'there  is  a  signifi  cant  and  built-in asymmetry  of  power  and  knowledge  in  the  institutional  participant  roles (…) which cast the institutional member (…) as the questioner and the noninstitutional  member  (witness,  defendant,  suspect,  etc.)  as  the  respondent' (Harris 2011:282).

Hence, switching roles is not part of the interview activity, and consequently the interviewer, roughly speaking, has the interactional role of the antagonist who reconstructs and criticises the statements given by the interviewee who plays the role of a suspect, i.e. the protagonist in Nielsen's model. Th ese are the role identities associated with and constrained by the interview activity. In terms of interactional roles, obviously, the training activity constitutes a less constraining frame for the participants to act within.

## 4.1. Reconstructions as questions

In Nielsen's model, the meta-communicative reconstructive speech act serves as a clarifi  cation or warning on which the meta-argumentative criticism is based. In the excerpts presented in this paper, though, some of the reconstructions serve both a clarifying and a criticising or evaluating purpose. For that reason, I only employ the notion of reconstruction in my analysis, thus defi  ning it as a speech act type that can fulfi  l both the clarifying function and the criticising function.

According to Nielsen, both reconstructing and criticising utterances can be phrased as assertions, questions, etc. Based on interactional and semantic interpretations, I consider the reconstructions displayed in this paper to be functional questions in  the sense that they are utterances that 'eff  ectively seek[s] to  elicit  information,  confi  rmation  or  agreement'  (Heinemann  2010:2703, see also Stivers and Enfi  eld 2010). Following Mortensen's (2020, this issue) categorisation, the reconstructions resemble declarative questions, as they 'do not have morphosyntactic features that clearly make them questions' , and echo questions, as they repeat (part of) the interviewee's utterance and elicit a reply from the interviewee as well (Mortensen 2020, this issue, see also Noh 1998). Th e reconstructions share certain characteristics with declarative questions, seeing that declarative questions rarely function as 'pure' questions (Teleman, Hellberg  and  Andersson  1999,  Mortensen  2018).  Declarative  questions,  as well  as  reconstructions,  are  meta  communicative  and  require  an  utterance prior to the declarative question (Mortensen 2018:118-119), and, equal to the essential condition of reconstructions, the speaker who utters a declarative question, is not committed to the truth of the propositional content, but to the meta linguistic operators (Mortensen 2018:124).

As the following analysis will illustrate, Nielsen's model of argumentative dialogue makes it possible to capture how, on the one hand, the reconstructions function as questions seeking to elicit information and, on the other hand evaluate and test the interviewee's statement and trustworthiness.

## 5. Method and data

Th e excerpts examined in this paper are a selection of examples from a study of the functions of reconstructions in mock police interviews. Th e    original dataset consists of audio recordings of 39 mock police interviews and   originates from an experimental study in the fi  eld  of  applied  criminology  and  police management, conducted during an interview training-course for   experienced detectives (Hviid 2017). Th e mock interviews are set up as role-plays based on the same mock case. Th e participants attending the training course take turns playing the roles of the interviewer, suspect and a willing witness. Prior to playing the role of a suspect or a willing witness, the participants have read an instruction about their character, what they experienced during the event under investigation, and how much they are willing to tell the police (Hviid 2017:33). During the mock interview, the participants are allowed to consult the written instruction.

## 5.1. Th e mock case

Th e mock event under investigation is a case of violence that involves four young  men 7 .  One  of  them,  Sedat,  is  a  suspect  and  the  interviewee  in  the excerpts in this paper. Sedat is a gang member, and by the time of the event he was hanging out with a boy from the neighbourhood, Søren. Two young men, Louai and Kim, show up. Th ey are both members of a rival gang, and soon Sedat and Louai start to argue and push each other. Someone has brought a knife, and during the scuffl e, Søren is hit and seriously injured. Kim and Louai run away, while Sedat and a witness take care of Søren.

In the mock case, two issues in particular are at stake. Firstly, who brought the  knife,  who  stabbed  Søren,  and  where  is  the  knife  now?  Secondly,  did the four young men meet by coincidence, or did Louai and Sedat set up the meeting to discuss an ongoing confl  ict?

## 5.2. Method

An  initial review of the data material showed  that the interviewers characteristically  repeat  and  paraphrase  the  interviewees'  statements  in various ways that seem to fulfi  l diff  erent functions in the particular contexts.

Four  interviews  with  mock  suspects  were  chosen  for  further  analysis, and based on transcriptions  of  these,  using  standard  orthography,  without indicating  intonation,  pause  lengths  etc.,  the  interviews  were  hand-coded inductively as part of a preliminary analysis.

Based on the preliminary analysis of the four interviews, three   predominant functions  that  the  reconstructions  seem  to  fulfi  l  were  identifi  ed; request for  confi  rmation , request  for  elaboration and evaluation .  While  requests for    confi  rmations  and  elaboration,  roughly  speaking,  clarify  in  terms  of comprehension, equalling Nielsen's reconstructive speech act, the   evaluating reconstructions  question  truth  value  and  trustworthiness,  more  or  less equalling Nielsen's criticising speech act. Furthermore, the evaluating   function diff  ers from requests for confi  rmation and elaboration because the   interviewee either  changes  his  or  her  explanation  or  sticks  to  the  explanation  that  the interviewer evaluates or questions, thus making the dispute clear despite the interviewer's disbelief in his or her trustworthiness.

Th e  three  functions  formed  the  basis  of  a  quantitative  overview  of  the reconstructions'  occurrences  and  functions  in  the  four  interviews  and, furthermore,  a  qualitative  analysis  of  two  of  the  four  interviews 8 .  Th e  two interviews illustrate how  the reconstructions fulfi  l diff  erent purposes, especially  when  the  interaction  is  confl  ictual,  and  how  the  reconstructions operate across the activities embedded in the training interview. Th e purpose of this paper is to illustrate sequences of interaction where the   reconstructions function  across  the  activities  and  in  the  intersection  of  social  cooperation and non-cooperation, when the interviewer on the one hand questions the suspect's  trustworthiness,  and  on  the  other  hand  helps  his  co-participant and supports the training activity. For this reason, the qualitative analysis is focused on reconstructions with a predominantly evaluating function.

## 6. Analysis

Th e  excerpts 9 in  the  analysis  below  are  from  an  interview  with  the  mock suspect Sedat. Sedat has a criminal background, and the police knows him very well. He is member of a criminal gang and is not in any way interested in talking to the police, and whenever possible he sidesteps issues that hold a potential confl  ict.

In this interview, a female interviewee plays Sedat's character. Th erefore, I refer to the interviewee as she and her , even though Sedat is male. It is very diffi cult  for  the  interviewee  to  remember  her  instructions,  which  shows  in various ways. Several times, she pauses during her explanation and tries to remember  what  to  say,  sometimes  laughing  and  sometimes  rereading  her instruction  before  going  on  with  the  interview.  At  one  point  during  the interview, the participants explicitly stop the interview activity and step out of the roles as suspect and detective. Th e interviewee is rather confused and tells the interviewer and the attending observer that it is very hard for her to remember the instructions and to distinguish the characters from the mock case, therefore struggling to remember which character she is actually playing, and what she is supposed to answer.

In the analysis, I will illustrate how the interviewer questions and raises doubt about the certainty of the interviewee's statements by   reconstructing the epistemic expressions in the interviewee's propositions. Prior to the   interaction in excerpt 1, the interviewee has explained that she and another suspect were arguing.  Suddenly Søren, the victim, was screaming and bleeding, and the interviewee says that 'something must have hit him' . Th e interviewee does not know what this 'something' was, but says that it might have been a knife. In addition, she claims that she does not know who brought the knife, and now the interviewer tries to shed light on this issue.

## Excerpt 1 10

- 1 IN: in that case where did the knife come from
- 2 IE: → well it is jo it is jo probably that guy Louaia who who had it
- 3 IN: → probably that guy Louaia who had it
- 4 IE:          yes
- 5 IN: → yes why are you saying that it is probably him who had it can you explain a
- 6 → bit about that
- 7 IE: → well so it is jo , because when when he (p) when he started and and

8 scold me there right er

9 IN: yes

10   IE: → about, er, my family then then, er, then I jo got really angry jo and like

11 that and then I also started jo pushing him a little

12   IN: okay

13   IE: at at Louaia that so so so therefore so, er, then then all of a sudden I was afraid

14 → because then I could all of a sudden see one that that that Louaia had a knife

15   IN: → you are saying that you see a knife then

16   IE: yes

17   IN: yes

18   IE: → I actually see a knife

19   IN: → try to tell a little more about that if you try to

20   IE: yes

21   IN: recall, er, when you see the knife for the fi  rst time.

In line 2 in the excerpt above, the interviewee employs the epistemic adverb nok 'probably' ,  thus  indicating  that  she  is  guessing  or  that  her  statement  is based on inference rather than recollection or knowledge about what she saw during the event (Jacobsen 1992:15). By employing probably the   interviewee 'opens the dialogical space' (Mortensen and Mortensen 2017:415, see also White  2003,  Martin  and  White  2005),  and  by  indicating  weak  epistemic support for  the  statement,  the  interviewee  gives  herself  the  opportunity  to revise her statement if necessary (Mortensen 2012:67).

Th e interviewer reconstructs the proposition, emphasising probably and thereby  addressing  the  interviewee's  uncertainty  and  questioning  the  truth value of a statement based on guesses and inferred conclusions.   Considering the  speech  act  as  a  declarative  question,  the  interviewer  questions  the evidential  basis  for  the  statement.  Th is  seems  to  recur  in  the wh -question following (line 5), where the interviewer asks why the interviewee says that it  is probably Louaia, thus requesting the interviewee to explain the reason (Heinemann 2010:2713) for the uncertainty rather than elaborating on the propositional  content.    However,  the  interviewer  employs lidt 'a  little'  in his question,   thereby downplaying the utterance and making it possible for the interviewee to revise her explanation - which she does (line 7) aft  er she has consulted the written instruction for the mock case and her role as the suspect. Based on this and the following revised statement, it seems plausible that the weak epistemic support, marked by probably (line 2), derives from the participant's trouble remembering the instructions for the mock case and her role as the suspect Sedat in particular. Th us, the training activity and the mock interview activity intertwine, and from the perspective of the interviewee, the opening of the dialogical space might be a way of showing her uncertainty about the   instructions, thereby leaving herself with the opportunity to revise her statement if it is questioned or challenged by the interviewer.

In line 7-15, the interviewee changes her explanation about the knife, now stating that Louai did have a knife. Four times in this sequence (line 7, 10, 11), she employs the Danish dialogical particle jo 'as you know' .   Th ereby, the interviewee indicates mutual agreement about her statement, as jo holds the polyphonic instruction that the speaker has a point of view that she   expects the interviewer to agree upon (Hansen and Heltoft   2019:1050). Th e   interviewee ends her revised explanation by saying that she faktisk 'actually' sees a knife. By employing actually she  indicates  and  recognises that an opposing point of view is possible (in this case her own inferred conclusion in line 2), but that she no longer subscribes to that (Mortensen 2012:82). Furthermore, the verb see is in the present tense. Th is is an example of dramatic present tense (Searle 2001:106) and might indicate that the utterance refers to a here and now in the interaction of both the training activity and the interview   activity. In    combination  with  the  relatively  strong  epistemic  support  from actually, the    inference  derived  in  relation  to  the  training  activity  could  be  that  the participant is now more certain about the instruction and her role as a mock suspect. As a contribution to the interaction in the interview activity, the use of the present tense might be a way of making her explanation more trustworthy.

In  summary,  excerpt  1  shows  two  examples  of  how  the  interviewer reconstructs and emphasises the particular part of the interviewee's   utterance that  signals  certainty  -  or  the  lack  of  it.  In  both  cases,  the  reconstruction evaluates  the  epistemic  stance  taking,  thus,  by  itself  forming  an  indirect question  about  trustworthiness  and  truth  value.  Th e  interviewer    expresses this  question  more  explicitly  in  the  requests  for  elaboration  that  follow. Referring to the model for argumentative dialogue, another possible   analysis could be that the reconstruction in line 3, holding the epistemic stance   marker probably , is a clarifying warning about the following criticism or evaluation. Nevertheless, I fi  nd it reasonable to say that the reconstruction in itself holds both  a    reconstructive  and  a  criticising  and  evaluating  aspect,  and  that  the interviewer  makes  this  explicit  in  the  following wh -question  because  the interviewee does not respond to the implicit questioning at fi  rst.

Whether the interviewee's utterances in excerpt 1 express a combination of the participant's trouble remembering and the mock suspect's   unwillingness to talk to the police is not possible to tell for certain. It is possible to   derive meaning  in  relation  to  the  inferential  frame  of  both  the  training    activity and the interview activity, while not knowing which implicature is   actually intended  by  the  interviewee.  Th e  interviewer  seems  to  respond  to  the utterances as   contributions to the interview activity, but his reconstructions of the   ambiguous utterances fi  t the inferential frames of both the training   activity and the interview activity, thus questioning his co-participant's memory and the mock suspect's unwillingness respectively.

Later in the interview, an exchange similar to the one in excerpt 1 takes places. Prior to the exchange in excerpt 2 below, the interviewee has explained that during the quarrel Louai tries to stab the interviewee, and that Kim, the interviewee's friend, tries to intervene. Th e interviewer asks the interviewee to elaborate on what was going on.

## Excerpt 2

- 1 IE: yes (sighs), er, (p) I do not quite know how he grabs it I just think he is trying

- 2 to help me like in this situation because he knows that it can end up badly (.),

- 3 → er, (p) and then there's this boy that that the Danish boy I think he had a knife

- 4 → too actually (p)

- 5 IN: → think

- 6 IE: well yes [it]

- 7 IN: [yes]

- 8 IE: → it he had a knife too

- 9 IN: → try to explain a bit about that

In the excerpt above, the interviewee says that she tror 'thinks' that the Danish boy had a knife too (line 3). By using the epistemic verb think, the interviewee marks her utterance as a subjective speech act with relatively weak evidential support (Mortensen 2012:82). However, she ends her statement with faktisk 'actually' in the fi  nal position, which marks a stronger evidential support to the statement. By repeating think (line 5), the interviewer evaluates the epistemic basis for the statement. Th us, in the context this reconstruction functions as an elliptical declarative (Heinemann 2010:2705) that raises doubts about the subjective and epistemic part of the interviewee's statement. Th e interviewee responds rather vaguely, though maintaining that the Danish boy had a knife (line 9). In her response she uses the past tense of the verb had .  Compared to her use of the present tense in excerpt 1 (line 14), this could indicate that the utterance in this case functions as a contribution to the interaction in the interview activity, and that the intended inference is that the mock suspect is now standing by her explanation.

In excerpt 1 and 2, I have shown how the interviewer reconstructs those parts of the interviewee's utterances that mark epistemic stance taking, thus questioning  the  truth  value  or  certainty  of  the  interviewee's  proposition, depending on which inferential frame the meaning is derived from. In   excerpt 1, this brings the interviewee to revise her explanation, possibly because the expression of weak epistemic support actually derives from the   participant's trouble  remembering  her  instruction,  and  the  epistemic  stance  marker functions across the training activity and the interview activity. In excerpt 2, on the other hand, the interviewee maintains her explanation, presumably in this case staying in her role as a suspect.

Like in excerpt 1, the interviewee employs probably in a later   utterance, shown  in  excerpt  3  below.  Similar  to  excerpt  1  and  2,  the  interviewer reconstructs the interviewee's utterance, but in this case he does not include the  epistemic  stance  marker  in  the  reconstruction.  Th is  could  indicate  a diff  erent function of the reconstruction in this particular exchange.

To  understand  what  is  going  on  in  excerpt  3,  a  brief  summary  of  the interaction  at  the  beginning  of  the  interview  might  be  helpful.  In  the preliminary free account, the interviewee explains that she was going to meet a friend at the day of the event under investigation. She says that it was 'just a friend' and that she does not remember who he was - but it was not Louai. A little later, the   interviewee says that she does not feel like   telling the friend's name, again saying that it was 'just somebody' .   Obviously, this seems like the interviewee playing her role as the unwilling suspect   Sedat   trying to cover up the truth. However, in the light of the interviewee's trouble   remembering her instructions and the details of the mock case, an   alternative   interpretation could be that she is   trying to make this   uncertainty part of the role as an   unwilling suspect. As   already mentioned, the interviewee has   trouble   remembering the characters and the sequence of events in the mock case as it is described in the   instructions. Th is,  in  particular, becomes clear and is said aloud by the interviewee right before the exchange in   excerpt 3. Th e   interviewee   explicitly steps out of her role as a suspect and tells her co-  participants that it is hard for  her  to  understand  and  remember  the    instructions.  Furthermore,  she  is confused about the character she is supposed to play in the ongoing   interview, because  she  keeps  mixing  up  the  instructions  and  characters  from  the various training interviews she is supposed to take part in during the training course. Th is talk also reveals that she has made a wrong statement during the ongoing   interview, and her co-participants, the interviewer and the   observer, agree  that  she  seems  quite  confused.  Aft  er  this  short  exchange  between the    co-  participants,  the  interviewer,  without  further  notice,  returns  to  the training interview. By reference to a printout from the interviewee's   mobile phone, he brings up the still   unresolved issue of whether the interviewee was going to meet Louai or another friend, and whether the meeting between the interviewee and Louai was planned or not.

## Excerpt 3

- 1 IN: but when I look at this report (.) secured phone (.) that is jo your phone

- 2 IE: yes

- 3 IN: here I can see that there is this phone conversation on May 11 between you

- 4 and Louai (p) er both in the afternoon and in the evening (p) do you remember

- 5 what you talked about on the phone that day (p) I do realise that it is one day

- 6 ago but er it was yesterday

- 7 IE: → well it is jo probably because it was him then we were going to meet jo

- 8 IN: → it was (.) Louai you were going to meet

- 9 IE: yes

- 10 IN: yes (p) okay so you arranged that with Louai

- 11 IE: well yes

- 12 IN:

- did you plan where you were going to meet

- 13 IE: well (p) we think supposedly we talked about meeting by the courtyard

In the excerpt above, the interviewee employs the epistemic stance marker nok 'probably' in her utterance (line 7). On the one hand, probably might refer to the causal relation between the interviewee's and Louai's phone call and the fact that they met at day of the event under investigation, that is, the reason for her conversation with Louai is that she did plan to meet him the next day. On the other hand, probably might refer to the fact that it was Louai, and not another friend, the interviewee was going to meet. Each interpretation might be relevant, as both issues have been sources of confl  ict and confusion during various stages of the interview.

Th e  interviewee  also  employs jo 'as  you  know' twice  in  her  utterance; in    relation  to probably and in the fi  nal  position  of  her  proposition.    Seeing that probably does not per se specify the epistemic strength or the degree of probability  (Hansen  and  Heltoft    2019:1058),  but  covers  a  spectrum  'from the wildest guess to the most deliberate and watertight inference' (  Jacobsen 1992:15),  a  possible  interpretation  is  that  the  interviewer  responds  to  the interviewee's  use  of probably as  a  statement  of  fact  rather  than    conjecture. Th is  due  to  the  strong  epistemic  support  from jo .  Th us,  it  seems  that the    interviewer  does  not  use  the  reconstruction  to  raise  doubt  about  the interviewee's   intentions or certainty, but to conclude and seek affi rmation that the interviewee had actually planned to meet Louai on the day of the event. In this case, the   reconstruction seems to count primarily as a contribution to the mock interview and the interviewee's utterance as a speech act with relatively strong epistemic support.

An  alternative  interpretation  is  that  the  interviewee's  utterance  (line 7)  is  directed  primarily  at  the  training  activity,  and,  within  that  inferential frame, functions as a question seeking affi rmation. As mentioned, jo might indicate  strong  epistemic  support  for  the  interviewee's  statement.  Right before  the    exchange  in  excerpt  3,  however,  the  interviewee  has  expressed anything but strong support for her explanation when she was talking with her  co-  participants  about  her  confusion.  Hence,  in  this  instance,  rather than   indicating consensus by using jo twice, it seems that the interviewee is violating the   maxim of quantity, thereby actually seeking confi  rmation of the content of her proposition - and an affi rmation from her co-participant that she   remembers her instruction correctly. In this perspective, jo in the fi  nal position seems to function as an adverbial tag, thus turning the   declarative into a question (Heinemann 2010: 2707). Jo is not commonly used as a tag, but due to its polyphonic instruction of consensus, and because particles like jo acquire dialogical meaning depending on their particular sentence   position (Mortensen and Mortensen 2017:211, see also Jensen 2000,   Christensen 2007), an interpretation of jo equalling a positive adverbial tag seems   plausible.

Th e interpretation of the interviewee's utterance as a question is furthermore based on the cleft   sentence it  was  him then we were going to meet jo (line 7). By employing this, the interviewee is both presupposing that she was going to meet somebody, and at the same time points out that, among other possible persons, this someone was Louai. Th is might refl  ect the interviewee's recurring confusion between the characters in the mock event, and the use of probably might, within the inferential frame of the training activity, indicate that this is what she believes to be the right interpretation of the instruction and the events in the mock case.

In other sequences during the interview, when the interviewee shows signs of a bad memory and confusion regarding her character, the   interviewer seems to stay in his role as a detective and responds to the interviewee's   utterances as if they count as contributions to the activity of the mock   interview. Th is is also the case in excerpt 3, but the omission of the epistemic stance marker, probably , makes the reconstruction in this excerpt diff  erent from the others. Th is could indicate that the reconstruction is a contribution to the   interaction between the participants in the training activity, and that the interviewer is responding to the interviewee's utterance as a question,   confi  rming that she, his co-participant, remembers her instruction and role as a suspect   correctly. Th e interviewer does not explicitly step out of his role as a detective, though, but  by  this  little  change  in  the  reconstruction,  he  seems  to  point  out  the relevant  inferential  frame  and  show  that  the  training  interview  is  back  on track.

Another  argument  for  interpreting  the  reconstruction  as    primarily a    contribution  to  the  training  activity  is  the  questioning  function  of  the interviewee's  utterance  prior  to  the  reconstruction.  An  exchange  like  that, where the suspect asks questions about the event under investigation, does not fi  t the conventional form of an investigative police interview,   including the casting of the detective as the questioner. Hence, in the light of the   constraints on allowable contributions in the two diff  erent activity types and the   preceding exchange between the co-participants, it seems plausible that the inference is to be derived primarily from the inferential frame of the   training activity.

## 7. Summarising the interview - and the analysis

When the interview reaches the closing stage, the interviewer summarises what the interviewee has told about the mock event under investigation, and he lets the interviewee know that he does not believe her. For instance he says that part of the interviewees' explanation 'sounds a little odd' and places the responsibility for this oddness and the lack of information on the   interviewee by saying that he will write in his report that the interviewee refuses to make suffi cient statements about the confl  ictual issues. Th us, he indicates that he believes that the unclarifi  ed parts of the event are the result of the   interviewee's unwillingness to tell rather than a bad memory.

As  shown  in  excerpt  1  and  2,  the  interviewer  raises  doubts  about  the uncertainty and trustworthiness of the interviewee during the   questioning stages  of  the  interview.  In  these  examples,  however,  he  mitigates  the confrontation  in  the  follow  up  questions,  saying try  to  tell  a  little  more about that (excerpt 1, line 9) and yes why are you saying that it is   probably him who had it can you explain a bit about that (excerpt 1, line 5-6). In the closing   summary, the interviewer does not mitigate his utterances like this, and it seems that during the interview he has compensated for the   potential face threats that his questioning poses to the interviewee. Th is  may be due to  the    interviewer's    interpretation  of  the  weak  epistemic  support  to  the propositions as an   indication of the co-  participant's uncertainty rather than the  mock   suspect's  unwillingness.  Th at  is,  considering  the  propositions  as, maybe    intended,  implicata  within  the  inferential  frame  of  the  training activity.    Consequently,  his  reconstructions  have  fulfi  lled  a  double  function and   operated across the training activity and the interview activity by   raising doubts about the   trustworthiness of the mock suspect while also responding to the derived   implicatum and   supporting the co-participant. In the context of the training activity, the   reconstructions of the interviewee's utterances are not    questioning  the  truth  value  or  the  trustworthiness  of  the    interviewee, but    evaluate  the    consistency  between  the  instruction  and  the    interviewee's statement.  Whether  or  not  such  double  function  can  explain  why  the interviewer mitigates his utterances and compensates for the face threat of a  co-participant,  is  not  obvious.  Nevertheless,  the  interviewee  shows  more certainty and unwillingness to cooperate when she is clearly enacting the role identity of the suspect at the end of the interview. Hence, the interviewer does not have to protect a co-participant's face, and in that situation, he seems less concerned with mitigating his utterances when he questions the interviewee's intentions.

## 8. Conclusions

Th e interview analysed in this paper is a mock police interview conducted as part of a training course for skilled police offi cers. In the training   interview, the  participants  navigate  two  distinctly  diff  erent  activity  types,  developing within  diff  erent  inferential  frames;  the  training  activity  and  the  interview activity.

Th e  interview  activity  simulates  an  asymmetric  relation  between  the participants who are instructed to act as interlocutors of an interaction that does not take its natural point of departure in mutual expectations of social cooperativeness. In the training activity, though, the participants are part of a symmetric relation, and they share the same goals for the   communication, among these to get  the  most  out  of  the  training  interview  and  keep  it  on the right track. Th is  activity invites to social cooperation. In the analysis, I have shown how contributions to the interaction function across these two activities,  even  though  the  inferential  frames  and  the  conditions  for  these activities are inherently diverse.

In the excerpts displayed in this paper, both the socially non-c  ooperative and  cooperative  aspects  show,  because  one  of  the  participants  struggles with  remembering  her  instruction.  When  her  utterances  seem  to  express this    struggle  and  uncertainty  as  a  participant  in  the  training  activity,  the interviewer makes his contributions to the interaction interpretable in   relation to both the training activity and the interview activity. Th e analysis illustrates how the   interviewer by reconstructive speech acts manages to   evaluate the interviewee's  utterances  across  the  activities.  With  the  reconstructions,  the interviewer   raises doubt about the trustworthiness of the mock suspect, hence contributing to the role-played interaction, and simultaneously addresses the uncertainty  of  the  co-participant,  thereby  supporting  the  participant  and keeping the training activity on the right track.

By  applying  Nielsen's  model  of  argumentative  dialogue  to  the  training interview, I have illustrated how the model has the potential to capture central features of confl  icting dialogue within diff  erent activity types. In particular, the speech act types reconstruction and criticism are essential in the   training interview.  In  this  context,  the  reconstructions  function  as  questions  that, within the inferential frame of this particular activity type, oft  en serve both a clarifying and a criticising function.

Th e  analysis  also  shows  how  the  participants  negotiate    comprehension and possible inferences. Whether the derived implicatum is intended by the interviewee, is not possible to tell from the excerpts, as her propositions in most cases can count as statements from both the mock suspect and the   participant in the training course. Th e interviewer responds to this double possibility of inference,  and  apparently  forms  his  reconstruction  as  c  ontributions  to  the interview activity, while also making an interpretation within the inferential frame of the training activity possible.

Th ese contributions,  holding  diverse  possible  implicata,  show  how the   participants take part in the reciprocal act of implicature, and how the activity-  crossing  implicatures  both  contribute  to  the  mock  interview  and simultaneously support the participants and guide the training interview.

## Appendix 1, excerpt 1 (Danish)

- 1 IN: hvor skulle den kniv i så fald være kommet fra
- 2 IE: → (p) jamen altså det jo (p) det er jo nok ham der Louaia der der havde den (p)
- 3 IN: → nok ham der Louaia der havde den
- 4 IE: ja
- 5 IN: → ja (p) hvorfor siger du det nok er ham der havde den (.) kan du forklare lidt om
- 6 det
- 7 IE: → ej men altså det er jo fordi da da han (p) da han begyndte og og skælde mig ud
- 8 der ikke øh
- 9 IN: ja
- 10   IE: → om øh min familie så så øh så blev jeg jo rigtig sur jo og sådan noget og så
- 11 begyndte jeg jo også og skubbe lidt til ham (.)
- 12   IN: okay
- 13   IE: til til Louaia der så så så derfor så øh så så lige pludselig så

- blev jeg bange
- 14 fordi så kunne jeg lige pludselig se en at: at at Louaia havde en kniv på sig
- 15   IN: → du siger du ser en kniv så
- 16   IE: ja
- 17   IN:
- ja
- 18   IE: → jeg ser [faktisk en kniv]
- 19   IN: → [prøv at fortælle] lidt mere om det hvis du prøver og
- 20   IE: ja
- 21   IN: genopfrisk øh hvornår ser du den kniv første gang

## Appendix 2, excerpt 2 (Danish)

- 1 IE: Ja (sukker lidt) øhm (p) jeg ved ikke helt hvordan han tager den jeg tror bare
- 2 han prøver på og hjælpe mig ligesom i den her situation fordi han godt ved at
- 3 det kan gå galt (.) øhm (p) og så er der den her dreng der den der danske dreng
- 4 → jeg tror også han havde en kniv faktisk (p)
- 5 IN: → tror
- 6 IE: jaer (.) [det]
- 7 IN: [ja]
- 8 IE: det han havde også en kniv
- 9 IN: → prøv at forklare lidt om det

## Appendix 3, excerpt 3 (Danish)

- 1 IN: men når jeg kigger på den her rapport sikret telefon (.) som jo er din telefon
- 2 IE: ja
- 3 IN: der kan jeg se der er den her telefonsamtale 11. maj mellem dig og Louai (p)
- 4 øhm det er både om eftermiddagen og om aftenen (p) kan du huske hvad du
- 5 snakkede med ham om i telefonen den dag (p) jeg ved godt

det er en dag siden

- 6 men øh det var i [går]

- 7 IE: → [ jamen ] det er jo nok fordi det så var ham vi skulle mødes med jo

- 8 IN: → det var (.) Louai I skulle mødes med

- 9 IE: ja

- 10 IN: ja (p) okay så det aftalte du med Louai

- 11 IE: jaer

- 12 IN: aftalte I hvor I skulle mødes henne

- 13 IE: jaer (p) vi tror vist nok vi snakkede om vi skulle mødes ved gården

## Notes

*  I  thank  the  anonymous  reviewer  and  my  editor  Sune  Sønderberg  Mortensen for insightful comments and for pointing out crucial points of improvement. In particular, I have benefi  tted from Sune Sønderberg Mortensen's great involvement in fruitful and encouraging input and discussions.

I also owe thanks to Tanya Karoli Christensen, who put me in touch with Regin Hviid and provided me with the necessary audio fi  les. I am especially grateful to Regin Hviid for allowing access to these fi  les and the huge body of data from his study and, not least, for his willingness to share his knowledge about investigative interviewing and training within the Danish Police.

- 1   PEACE: Planning and preparation, Engage and explain, Account, Closure, And Evaluation of the interview and the interviewer's performance (Clarke and Milne 2001:1)
- 2 For describing and analysing this kind of communication, Linell and   Th unqvist suggest  the  dynamic  concept  of framing rather  than frame (see  Linell  and Th unqvist 2003).
- 3 I refer to the participants as interviewer and interviewee . Th e latter is the   participant who plays the role as a suspect, and the interviewer is the detective who is doing the interview.
- 4 Archer (2005:58) distinguishes between Gricean conversational cooperation and social cooperation.
- 5 Note that Nielsen uses 'speaker' and 'hearer' instead of the argumentative roles. Th e reason is that 'while the speaker of a reconstructive or critical speech act is necessarily identical to the argumentative role of antagonist, it is not given that the hearer is necessarily identical to the protagonist role' (Nielsen 2005:206).
- 6 Th e comments about the felicity conditions for reconstructions and criticism are Nielsen's own.
- 7 Th e  description  of  the  event  under  investigation  is  based  on  the  instruction material from the experimental study (Hviid 2019:99).
- 8 Due to lack of space the quantitative overview is not presented in this paper.

- 9 Th e excerpts are English translations, except for the Danish dialogical particle jo ('as you know') as it has no direct translation equivalent in English. Th e original Danish excerpts are to be found in appendices 1, 2, and 3.
- 10 IN: the interviewer. IE: the interviewee.

## References

- Archer, Dawn. 2020, this issue. Understanding questions and answers in context : An argument for multi-channel analysis. Scandinavian Studies in Language 11(1) , 196-213.
- Archer, Dawn. 2005. Questions and answers in the English courtroom (1640-1760): A sociopragmatic analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
- Bitsch, Anders and Erik Modin. 2016. Politiarbejdets grundmodel. Adam   Diderichsen and  Anne-Stina  Sørensen  (eds.) Den  skarpe  ende.  Grundbog  i  politiarbejde . Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur.
- Christensen, Tanya K. 2007. Hyperparadigmer - en undersøgelse af paradigmatiske samspil i danske modussystemer , PhD thesis. Roskilde: Roskilde University.
- Clarke,  Colin  and  Rebecca  Milne.  2001. National  evaluation  of  the  PEACE investigative interviewing course . PRAS 149. London: Home Offi ce.
- Eemeren, Franz H. van and Rob Grootendorst. 1992. Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies . Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
- Eemeren, Franz H. van and Grootendorst, Rob. 1984. Speech Acts in Argumentative Discussions . Dordrecht: Foris Publ.
- Ennis, Robert H. 1982. Identifying Implicit Assumptions. Synthese 51(1), 61-86.
- Fisher, Ronald P . and R. Edward Geiselman. 2010. Th e Cognitive Interview method of  conducting  police  interviews:  Eliciting  extensive  information  and  promoting Th erapeutic Jurisprudence. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 33, 321328.
- Gibbons, John P. 2003. Forensic Linguistics. An Introduction to Language in the Justice System . Blackwell Publishing.
- Grice, Herbert P . 1975. Logic and Conversation. P . Cole and J. L. Morgan (eds.) Syntax and Semantics (3), Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press 1975, 41-58.
- Grootendorst, Rob, Ralph H. Johnson, Christian Plantin, Charles A. Willard, Frans H.  van  Eemeren  and  Francisca  Snoeck  Henkemans.  1996. Fundamentals  of argumentation  theory  :  A  handbook  of  historical  backgrounds  and  contemporary developments . Mahwah: Taylor & Francis Group.
- Hansen, Erik and Heltoft  , Lars. 2019. Grammatik over det Danske Sprog . Copenhagen / Odense: Det Danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab / Syddansk Universitetsforlag.
- Harris,  Sandra.  2011.  Interrogation  and  evidence  :  Questioning  sequences  in courtroom discourse and police interviews. Christopher N. Candlin and S. Sarangi (eds.) Handbook of Communication in Organisations and Professions. Berlin: De Gruyter.
- Heinemann,  Trine.  2010.  Th e  question-response  system  of  Danish. Journal  of Pragmatics 42(10), 2703-2725
- Hviid, Regin E. 2017. Information Yield from Investigative Interviewing : A   Randomised Laboratory  Trial  of  Simultaneous  vs.  Post-Interview  Report  Writing .  Cambridge: University of Cambridge.

- Jacobsen, Henrik G. 1992. Vist og nok: Om et par formodningsbiord i dansk. Mål og mæle 15(2), 13-20.
- Jensen, Eva S. 2000. Danske sætningsadverbialer og topologi i diakron belysning , PhD thesis. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen.
- Levinson, Stephen C. 1992. Activity types and language. Paul Drew and John   Heritage (eds.) Talk  at  work.  Interaction  in  institutional  settings  : Studies  in  interactional sociolinguistics 8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 71-97.
- Linell, Per and Daniel P . Th unqvist. 2003. Moving in and out of framings: activity contexts in talks with young unemployed people within a training project. Journal of Pragmatics 35(2003), 409-434.
- Martin, Jim R. and Peter R. R. White. 2005. Th e Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Mortensen, Janus. 2012. Epistemisk positionering i dansk talesprog. NyS - Nydanske Sprogstudier 42 . Dansk talesprog 2012, 62-91.
- Mortensen, Sune S. 2020, this issue. A question of control? Forms and functions of courtroom  questioning  in  two  diff  erent  adversarial  trial  systems. Scandinavian Studies in Language 11(1), 239-278.
- Mortensen,  Sune  S.  2018.  'Det  tror  du  ikke  på?'  Deklarative  spørgsmål  som grammatikaliserede metaspørgsmål. Ny forskning i grammatik 25, 107-129.
- Mortensen,  Sune  S.  and  Janus  Mortensen.  2017.  Epistemic  stance  in  courtroom interaction.  Poggi,  F.  and  A.  Capone  (eds.) Pragmatics  and  law  :  Practical  and theoretical perspectives . Springer International Publishing, 401-437.
- Nielsen, Niels M. 2005. Counter Argument - In Defence of Common Sense . Roskilde: Roskilde University.
- Nielsen, Niels M. 2010. Argumenter i kontekst. Introduktion til pragmatisk argumentationsanalyse. Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur.
- Noh, Eun-Ju. 1998. Echo Questions: Metarepresentation and Pragmatic Enrichment. Linguistics and Philosophy 21(6), 603-628.
- Searle, John. 2001. How Performatives Work. Vanderveken, Daniel, Kubo, Susumu and Vanderkeven, Daniel (eds.) Essays in speech act theory. Pragmatics and Beyond New Series 77. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 85-107.
- Searle, John. 1976. A Classifi  cation of Illocutionary Acts. Language in Society 5(1), 1-23.
- Stivers,  Tanya  and  Nick  J.  Enfi  eld.  2010.  A  coding  scheme  for  question-response sequences in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 42(10), 2620-2626.
- Teleman,  Ulf,  Staff  an  Hellberg  and  Erik  Andersson.  1999. Svenska  Akademiens grammatik 4: Satser och meningar . Stockholm: Svenska Akademien.
- Vrij, Aldert. 2008. Detecting Lies and Deceit: Psychology of Lying and its Implications for Professional Practice. Second edition. Chichester: Wiley.
- White,  Peter  R.  R.  2003.  Beyond  modality  and  hedging  :  A  dialogic  view  of  the language of intersubjective stance. Text & Talk 23(2), 259-284.