Information Technology Reference
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meaning of an utterance, for example a request for information. Based on this
notion, Searle (
1969
) created a classification of five different types of speech acts,
namely representatives (informing), directives (requesting), commissives (promis-
ing), expressives (expressing a psychological state), and declarations (for official
decisions). The main concepts in this theory are those of requesting information
(
questioning
) and
giving
(or not giving)
information
.
A special case of giving or withholding information is
lying
: providing infor-
mation that one knows or believes to be false. Police officers experienced in
interviewing have above average lie detecting skills (Mann et al.
2004
), mainly
because they focus on cues that relate to a suspect's story. In other words,
inconsistencies in the information exchange are important during police interviews.
The type of information that is exchanged and how it is interpreted is depen-
dent on context—in other words, the interaction's
frame
determines the type of
conversation. The notion of frame was first introduced by Bateson in 1955 as he
studied the behaviour of monkeys in different situations (Bateson
1955
). Bateson
stated that no communication could be interpreted without a meta-message about
what was actually going on—that is, what the current frame of the interaction
between the monkeys was. During a play frame, all monkeys knew that certain
behaviours were accepted (such as biting) which would otherwise be interpreted
as a hostile act. Fillmore elaborated on this idea by stating that a frame is “a system
of linguistic choices associated with a scene, where a scene is any kind of coherent
segment of human actions” (Fillmore
1981
). According to Tannen, conversational
frames are repositories for social cultural norms of how to conduct different types
of conversation, such as storytelling, teasing, and small talk (Tannen
1993
). A frame
tells us something about what we can and cannot say in that particular frame.
The frame that is currently active allows us to decide which assumptions we can
make, customs or “social scripts” we have (what we can do), and constraints we
have (what we should not do).
16.3.4.1
Corpus Examples
Dutch police interviews start with a social frame during which the police officer
tries to get to know the suspect and gathers information about the personal life and
emotional situation of the suspect. After getting to know each other they continue
with a task frame where they discuss the crime that the suspect has been accused of.
Conversational partners do not always agree on the frame that they are using.
During the Wassink scenario the suspect does not agree with the social frame the
police officer suggests and she asks: “Why do I have to tell you something about
myself?”
In the Huls scenario the suspect eventually admits to the crime of stealing money
from the gas station. During this confession the police officer uses an empathy
frame (Bickmore
2008
) in which he comforts the suspect by telling him that he
understands his situation because he too has children. He agrees with the suspect
that it is hard to provide for two children without a stable income.
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