Code-switching as a marked socio-pragmatic discourse strategy in Nigerian police interrogation

Abstract

Police-suspect interrogation is a strategically adversarial engagement thatinvolves tactical deployment of a variety of discourse strategies. This situationbecomes more complex in a multilingual context like Nigeria where the interlocutorshave the opportunity of expressing their communicative intents in a multiplicity ofcodes. This paper focuses on the pragmatic ways code-switching (CS) is deployedby interrogators and suspects as a socio-pragmatic discourse strategy to achievetheir institutional and personal goals. We will see that CS is used persuasively, asinterrogators and suspects negotiate from positions of power and inferiority, drawingon socio-cultural norms and expectations. 30 audio-recorded interrogations at theỌ̀̀yọ́and Oǹdó state commands of the Nigeria Police form the primary data. All theinterrogations were conducted primarily in Nigerian English and the subjects were18 years or above. CriticalDiscourse Analysis and CommunicationAccommodationTheory are adopted for analysis and discussion. Findings show that code-switchingis employed with different effects for different participants: for interrogators to warn,threaten, and perform verbally aggressive acts that attack suspects’ self-worth; forsuspects to plead for mercy and to blame-shift; and for both to boost credibilityand authority, and to highlight socio-cultural shared knowledge. Swearing andcursing also take place within CS with suspects using self- and other-cursing toindicate sincerity and to try to persuade interrogators to believe their claims andwith interrogators swearing to express their commitment and determination to followthrough with a course of action. CS is, therefore, seen as a marked and strategiccommunicative alignment that is motivated by institutional and personal goals andused for persuasive purposes