Built Space and the Interactional Framing of Experience During a Murder Interrogation

Keywords

spatial interaction, police interrogation, built environment

Abstract

Human interaction and communication involve space in multiple ways. This paper examines the spatial and interactional order of a covertly video-taped police interrogation. When the participants enter the interrogation room and become engaged in the interrogation process, the room itself is a constraint and a resource for interaction. While interacting within a built environment, the participants appropriate their material surroundings in ways that constitute a spatial order and make possible certain arguments. This paper examines how the physical structure of the interrogation room is differentially appropriated, used, and filled in by the participants''; territorial and postural manoeuvers over the course of their interaction; and how the spatial structures thus created by the bodily appropriation of the physical locale are subsequently formulated by talk and thereby used as a metaphorical resource to frame the participants'' situated experience. Through this embedded process, the interrogators move the suspect toward confession.

Original Publication Citation

LeBaron, C., and Streeck, J. (1997). Space, surveillance, and interactional framing of participants’ experience during a police interrogation. Human Studies 20, 1-25.

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

1997

Publisher

Human Studies

Language

English

College

Marriott School of Business

Department

Marketing

University Standing at Time of Publication

Full Professor

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