Sabrina Silveira de Souza Jorge ANALYSING BRAZILIAN POLICE INTERVIEWS IN CASES OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Tese submetida ao Programa de Pós- Graduação em Inglês da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina como requisito para a obtenção do Grau de Doutora em Inglês: Estudos Linguísticos e Literários. Área de Concentração: Estudos da Linguagem Orientador: Prof. Dr. Richard Malcolm Coulthard Florianópolis 2018 Sabrina Silveira de Souza Jorge ANALYSING BRAZILIAN POLICE INTERVIEWS IN CASES OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Esta Tese foi julgada adequada para obtenção do Título de “Doutora em Inglês: Estudos Linguísticos e Literários”, e aprovada em sua forma final pelo Programa de Pós-Graduação em Inglês. Florianópolis, 05 de abril de 2018. ________________________ Prof. Dr. Celso Henrique Soufen Tumolo Coordenador do Curso Banca Examinadora: ________________________ Prof. Dr. Richard Malcolm Coulthard Orientador e Presidente Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina ________________________ Profa. Dra. Virginia Colares Universidade Católica de Pernambuco ________________________ Profa. Dra. Débora de Carvalho Figueiredo Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina ________________________ Profa. Dra. Maria Ester Wollstein Moritz Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina To those who have always loved me unconditionally, in particular to the memory of my mom and dad. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To start with, I would like to thank my very dear Supervisor Malcolm Coulthard for all his patience, encouragement, dedication and kindness. Thanks so much for never allowing me to give up and believing that I could get there. I am very grateful to my dear sister Karina, my beloved husband Felipe and my sweet son Theo for all their help so that this thesis could be completed in the way it should be. Because I owe it all to you. Many thanks! I am also grateful to the other family members who have supported me along the way, especially to my mother-in-law Rose, my father in-law Murilo, my brothers Cristiano and Tuca and my sister-in- law Vivi. Also, to my encouraging and ever enthusiastic and dear friend Dulcinha who has sadly passed away very recently. I would like to give a special thanks to my PPGI colleagues who became very dear friends, Katia and Luciane, and who have always provided me with moral and emotional support throughout my doctoral studies. I would also like to give special thanks to the following UFSC professors: Carmen Rosa, Viviane, Adriana and Leda for their unfailing support and assistance. And finally, many many thanks to: My friends of a lifetime Beto, Cida, Gabriela, Dany, Ana, Aninha, Bela, Luciene, Roberto, Elisa, Carla, Henrique, Vanessa, Evelyn for your constant support and interest. My dear neighbors Sônia and Ana Paula, and the nanny Gica who made themselves available to help me with my son’s routine. Rui and Silvana for all their support and wise comments. My dear friend Sheila, I miss our long and interesting chats. All my PPGI colleagues, Bruna, Martha, Carol, Marina, Rafael, Davi, Cinthia. The members of the Committee: Profa. Virginia, Profa. Maria Esther and Profa. Débora for accepting the invitation and kindly reading my work. CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior ) for providing me with the scholarship and the Brazilian Ethics Committee for authorising data collection; without it this research would never have been possible. And finally, last but by no means least, to all PPGI staff and, in particular, to Valdete for her participation in helping me to get there. Violence against women continues to persist as one of the most heinous, systematic and prevalent human rights abuses in the world. It is a threat to all women, and an obstacle to all our efforts for development, peace, and gender equality in all societies. Violence against women is always a violation of human rights; it is always a crime; and it is always unacceptable. Let us take this issue with the deadly seriousness that it deserves. Ban Ki-moon 8th United Nations Secretary-General ABSTRACT Violence against women has been a recurring topic of discussion and of research in areas such as Psychology, History and Linguistics. Based on worldwide statistics, Brazil ranks fifth for cases of violence against women. However, it is claimed that statistics are unreliable due to women’s underreporting. By investigating what could lead women to avoid making a complaint to the police, studies in other countries revealed that one of the reasons women give up reporting their cases is that “reports to the police do not result in an arrest of an abuser and the risk to the victim may be heightened as a result of the report” (Pitts, 2014, p. 1663). Also, linguistic studies on police interviews, mainly in English speaking countries, point to constraints in the process that may lead to failures in the attempt to collect accurate evidence. Against this background, and to the lack of studies in the area in Brazil, this research pursued the following objectives: 1) to understand the current police practice for interviewing participants in cases of violence against women in two police departments in the state of Santa Catarina, in the southern region of Brazil, and, subsequently, 2) to provide suggestions which aim to increase effectiveness in the process of evidence-collection in police interviews in Brazil, more specifically, in cases of violence against women. To this end, the transcripts of audio recordings of 15 police interviews with victims, suspects and witnesses from the two police departments were analysed within the Conversation Analysis (CA) theoretical framework for linguistic analysis. Through the CA approach, it was explained how the interaction between the participants (interviewers and interviewees – victims, suspects and witnesses) in the interviews was established mainly in terms of topic management and (self) selection of turns. The findings revealed that the police interviews in general demonstrated constraints in the process of collecting evidence by the interviewers’ approach to the interviewees as well as the interviewees’ response to it. About the topic management in the participants interaction, it was verified that both interviewers and interviewees changed topics according to information they (the interviewers) pursued and they (the interviewees) were available and/or capable to provide. The selection of turns in the interactions were mainly conducted by the interviewers. Although the interviewees self- selected when they had the chance to, the interviewers’ took the floor back at their convenience. The choice for types of questions (closed v. open-ended ) were also the focus of this study. It was observed that, there was the interviewers’preference for closed questions as opposed to open-ended ones, giving the interviewees little chance for providing evidence freely. Also, the analyses intended to show how the relations of power were managed in the police discourse as an institutional discourse (Habermas, 1984; Drew and Heritage, 1993; Fairclough, 1989), especially with regard to the police approach to women victims of violence. The police interviews analyses reveal that the discourse of the police (performed by the interviewers), being a powerful institution, was frequently characterised by an informal (and many times friendly) tone, which contributed to minimise the tension and soften the participants’ interaction. Nevertheless, the approach to the victims was sometimes tense, although receptive. At other times, the victims were approached as being uncertain about their complaints and the legal implications thereof. Finally, in the interviews with suspects, police warnings did not follow a criterion and were issued at different moments in the interviews, before and after pieces of evidence had been reported. The findings of the research allowed suggestions of improvements to what were found as constraints in the police interviews analysed. They were based on recommendations in the ABE protocol developed by the UK government (England and Wales) and applied as measures for police training in that country. Given that, this study falls into the category of a prescriptive one, as the suggestions provided may act as a starting point for the elaboration of a Brazilian protocol that could contribute to the improvement of the practice of police interviews in Brazil of any case in addition to those of violence against women. Keywords: Violence against Women. Police Interviews. Conversation Analysis. Number of pages: 179 Number of words: 51.547 RESUMO Violência contra mulheres tem sido um tema recorrente de discussões e pesquisas em áreas como Psicologia, História e Estudos Linguísticos. Baseado em estatísticas mundiais, o Brasil é o 5º pais do mundo em casos de violência contra mulheres. No entanto, dados sobre violência contra mulheres tendem a não ser confiáveis devido a muitos crimes não serem reportados a polícia. De acordo com estudos realizados em outros países, um dos principais motivos pelo qual isto acontece é “porque as mulheres vítimas de violência acreditam que os agressores nunca serão presos, além de elas temerem por correr um risco maior se relatarem seus casos” (minha tradução) (Pitts, 2014, p. 1663). No entanto, estudos linguísticos sobre a interação verbal na tomada de depoimentos pela polícia, na maioria em países de língua inglesa, apontam para falhas no processo na tentativa de coletar evidências dos casos. Em face a estas observações, e devido à escassez de estudos na área no Brasil, esta pesquisa tem como objetivos: 1) compreender a prática policial de tomada de depoimentos em casos de violência contra mulheres em duas delegacias de polícia no estado de Santa Catarina, no sul do Brasil, e subsequentemente, 2) fornecer sugestões que visam a melhoria do processo de tomada de depoimentos pela polícia no Brasil, mais especificamente, em casos de violência contra mulheres. Para a realização desta pesquisa, foram coletados, através de gravações de áudio, e transcritos 15 depoimentos com vítimas, suspeitos e testemunhas nas duas delegacias. O conteúdo das transcrições das gravações foi analisado sob a ótica da teoria da Análise da Conversa (AC), ferramenta teórica utilizada para análise linguística do discurso verbal.