Aafke Dientje Diepeveen

• Diepeveen, Aafke (2025). Who said what? Epistemological positioning in police investigative interview reports. Journal of Pragmatics. ISSN 0378-2166. 250, s. 16–31. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.10.003. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This study is concerned with how suspects' statements are summarized and reproduced in writing in Norwegian police investigative interview reports. It explores epistemological positioning in such texts, understood as the expression of the source of information for what is written, and the author's commitment to its linguistic form and propositional content. The study encompasses both spoken interactional data (interview recordings) and written discourse (interview reports). It uses ethnomethodological conversation analysis (CA) as its main method to find how epistemological positioning is realized in the written version of the suspect's statement as compared to the original talk that it claims to represent. I find that epistemological positioning is expressed by (1) reporting speech in different formats; (2) obscuring the interviewer's and author's involvement in formulating the suspect's statement; (3) attributing talk to the suspect; and (4) omitting interactional detail. These practices work to either identify, obscure, ambiguate or manipulate the source of information for an utterance. They also involve varying degrees of commitment by the author to the linguistic form and propositional content of what they have written. The analysis shows that authors leave out much interactional detail and the texts display a focus on informational content, rather than on social actions and the way in which information was elicited. There is a clear tendency in these texts to underreport the police's role in shaping and (re)phrasing the suspect's story. The texts exhibit widespread use of constructions that are ambiguous and leave invisible shifts in voice – whether it is the author or someone else who should be considered responsible for what is written. The study provides insight into how interview reports function as a social and institutional practice and discusses implications for report writing practice.

• Svennevig, Jan; Urbanik, Pawel Kazimierz & Diepeveen, Aafke (2023). How police investigators seek to secure that suspects speaking a second language understand their rights in investigative interviews. Police Practice & Research. ISSN 1561-4263. doi: 10.1080/15614263.2023.2233660. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This study presents an empirical investigation of 54 police interviews in Norway conducted with suspects speaking Norwegian as a second language. Using Conversation Analysis as our method, we examine how investigators seek to ensure that suspects understand their rights. We find a range of practices for making rights more accessible compared to how they are formulated in legal acts. Investigators divide their turns into smaller segments and monitor the suspect for displays of understanding along the way. They simplify the syntax and substitute technical terms with plain vocabulary. Sometimes they supplement the wording of the prosecution instructions with explanations or reformulations. In a few instances, they also check understanding by asking a simple yes/no question. However, such questions only generate claims of understanding and no actual evidence of what has been understood. While there are isolated cases of requests to retell the rights, even these practices are problematic in generating strong evidence of understanding. This study discusses the importance of linguistic education and training in police forces for dealing with potential or emerging understanding problems during investigative interviews.

• Diepeveen, Aafke (2023). The suspect's statement in interaction: Responding to ‘formulations’ in the investigative interview. Journal of Pragmatics. ISSN 0378-2166. 220, s. 47–61. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2023.11.010. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This study explores suspects' responses to ‘formulations’ – retellings by police officers of what the suspect has said – in investigative interviews. It involves a data set of 73 audio recordings of interviews with suspects in Norway. Police investigators regularly ‘formulate’ the gist of the suspect's statement, preserving what is relevant and transforming a lay narrative into one that is legally adequate. This study focuses on response preference and forms of resistance in suspects' responses to such formulations. When police officers propose a formulation of what has been said, suspects may either confirm or disconfirm it, or do neither. The analysis shows that (1) preferred responses may take form either as minimal yes responses or repetitional responses, which confirm the candidate understanding; and (2) non-preferred responses come in two formats: as active resistance in that they explicitly reject or challenge a formulation, or as passive resistance which withholds acceptance, leading police officers to pursue an answer and seek for confirmation. By focusing on the way in which formulations function in interaction and how suspects may challenge them, the analysis explores how suspects may assert their right to ‘own’ and retain control over their story and how it is developed and transformed during the interview.

• Diepeveen, Aafke; Svennevig, Jan & Urbanik, Pawel (2022). Suspects’ opportunities to claim their legal rights in police investigative interviews. International Journal of Speech Language and The Law. ISSN 1748-8885. 28(2), s. 171–200. doi: 10.1558/ijsll.20349. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  When interviewed by the police, suspects are to be informed that they have the right to remain silent and the right to obtain the assistance of a defence counsel. This article presents a conversation analytic study of how it is established in interaction whether a suspect wants to go through with the interview or end it by invoking their legal rights. The data is a corpus of audio recordings of authentic police interviews conducted in Norway. First, we present a quantitative measure of how often suspects are asked explicit questions about whether they want to exercise their right to silence and/or to legal counsel. Second, we investigate variation in the design of such questions, concentrating specifically on expressions involving a preference for one response option over the other. Third, we discuss formulations used while presenting the rights that may legitimise or inhibit a free and independent decision. The results show that suspects are often not asked to take a stance on their rights, and when they are, such questions often involve a bias towards waiving their rights. And although some officers explicitly inform the suspects that they are free to choose whatever option they like, others provide information about the interview that either presupposes willingness to talk or presents the option of waiving one’s rights as preferable to invoking them. These findings have important implications for the safeguarding of suspects’ rights and form the basis for recommendations to the police about how to give suspects the opportunity to take a stance on their legal rights.

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• Diepeveen, Aafke (2026). Tale, tekst og flerspråklighet i politiavhør. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Diepeveen, Aafke (2026). «Wait a minute… I didn’t say that!» Suspects’ comments and negotiations over content and wording in police investigative interview reports. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Diepeveen, Aafke (2026). Tale og tekst: Språk i avhør og avhørsrapport. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Svennevig, Jan; Diepeveen, Aafke & Sørensen, Søren Sandager (2026). “Do you plead guilty?” Legal terminology as a trouble source in police investigative interviews. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Previous research from the United States has shown that L2 users who are questioned by the police may be considered more competent than they actually are because they can talk relatively effortlessly about everyday matters. However, this does not necessarily mean that they understand institutional language characterized by complex syntax and specialized legal terminology (Pavlenko, 2024). It has also been shown that even advanced L2 users do not understand their legal rights in interrogations as they are read to them from standardized formulations (Pavlenko et al., 2020). Against this background, this presentation will examine how legal terms are introduced and used in Norwegian police investigative interviews, and how they are perceived by L2 users. The data is taken from a corpus of more than 100 audio and video recordings of authentic police interviews with suspects conducted in Norway. Using conversation analysis as a method, we seek to analyze how and to what extent the interviewers anticipate problems with the legal terms and how the interviewees show their understanding of the terms. The analysis will focus on a question asked towards the end of the interview about whether the suspect ‘pleads guilty’ (Norwegian ‘erkjenner straffskyld’). This question is well suited to investigate understanding as the suspect must answer it and thus to a lesser extent can feign comprehension (as they may do while being informed about their rights). The interviewers’ anticipation of problems will be investigated by their use of pre-emptive repair techniques (Raymond & Gill, 2025), whereas the interviewees’ understanding will be explored by analyzing how they respond, either producing an answer or initiating repair. The study is relevant for understanding how professional terminology is treated in expert-lay conversations, and for making the police aware of possible sources of problems in communication with L2 users and strategies to prevent them.

• Diepeveen, Aafke (2026). Fra tale til tekst: Språk i avhør og avhørsrapport. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Diepeveen, Aafke (2025). Reviewing the written statement: Suspects' comments and negotiations over content and wording in the police investigative interview report. doi: https:/darg.lboro.ac.uk/event/forensic-conversations-in-criminal-justice-settings/. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Diepeveen, Aafke (2025). Mistenktes kommentarer, rettelser og tilføyelser ved gjennomlesning av den skriftlige forklaringen. doi: https:/nors.ku.dk/kalender/2025/relino-2025/. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Diepeveen, Aafke (2025). Den avhørtes stemme i avhørsrapporten. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Diepeveen, Aafke (2024). Fra muntlig samtale til skriftlig oppsummering: Avhør og avhørsrapporter. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Diepeveen, Aafke (2024). Tale og tekst: Språk i avhør og avhørsrapport. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Svennevig, Jan; Diepeveen, Aafke & Urbanik, Pawel Kazimierz (2024). Slik kan etterforskere bli bedre til å formidle rettighetene i avhør. Politiforum. ISSN 1500-6921. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Diepeveen, Aafke (2024). From talk to text: Linguistic analysis of summarized suspect statements in investigative interview reports. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Fløgstad, Guro Nore & Diepeveen, Aafke (2023). Språk og rettssikkerhet. Rettslingvistikk i Norge anno 2023. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Diepeveen, Aafke (2023). Spoken interaction in writing: Reporting police investigators’ actions in investigative interview reports. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Diepeveen, Aafke (2022). Transformation of and negotiation over the suspect's statement in the investigative interview. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Svennevig, Jan & Diepeveen, Aafke (2022). Securing Understanding of the Suspect’s Rights in Police Interviews. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Svennevig, Jan; Diepeveen, Aafke & Urbanik, Pawel (2022). Securing understanding of the suspect’s rights in police investigative interviews. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Diepeveen, Aafke; Gomes, Rafael Lomeu; Goodchild, Samantha; Ims, Ingunn Indrebø; Johnsen, Ragni Vik & Sollid, Hilde [Vis alle 8 forfattere av denne artikkelen] (2022). Language, Globalisation and the Nation. The workshop series from a Norwegian perspective. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Diepeveen, Aafke (2022). Negotiating a summarized police version of events: Suspects’ responses to formulations in the investigative interview. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Diepeveen, Aafke; Svennevig, Jan & Urbanik, Pawel (2021). Suspects’ opportunities to claim their legal rights in police investigative interviews. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Svendsen, Bente Ailin; Siiner, Maarja & Diepeveen, Aafke (2020). «Immigrants» and «Immigration» within Norwegian Media Discourses on Dementia across Time. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Svendsen, Bente Ailin; Siiner, Maarja & Diepeveen, Aafke (2020). Mediediskurser om innvandrere og demens fra 2000-2020. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Diepeveen, Aafke (2026). Talk and text in the police investigative interview: The suspect’s statement in interaction and in writing. Universitetet i Sørøst-Norge/Universitetet i Søraust-Noreg. ISSN 9788284830636. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In this dissertation, I investigate the way in which the suspect’s statement is produced and negotiated by police investigators and suspects in interaction, and then transformed and documented into a written report. The starting point for the research presented is the observation that the suspect’s official written statement is the result of a process, rather than a static product that is a representation of what has been said in the interview. The analysis of this complex process is guided by a research approach that takes its starting point in ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis (CA) with the aim of identifying and describing different features of talk and text in the investigative interview. The data set for the research consists of audio recordings and interview reports from investigative interviews with suspects in a Norwegian police district. The dissertation consists of three separate articles, each of which contributes in its own way to produce insight into the process through which the suspect’s statement is produced and negotiated in interaction and in writing. The articles cover three different topics: (1) suspects’ responses to summaries of their talk proposed by police officers during the interview (Article A); (2) the representation of interview talk in writing in the interview report (Article B); and (3) processes of negotiation over wording and content during the review of the written statement (Article C). Each of the articles in its own way seeks to examine the police’s involvement in the (re)phrasing of the suspect’s statement during the interview and when writing the interview report, as well as suspects’ opportunities to influence the production and written representation of their statement. Central to the work done in this dissertation is the question of how suspects may assert their right to ‘own’ and retain control over their story and how it is developed and transformed during the interview, as well as in the process of transforming it into an official written statement. The findings in this dissertation suggest that the suspect’s statement as it is represented in its final written form should be considered the result of a process in which the police is heavily involved, both as an interviewer and as the author of the interview report. In other words, it is the police’s written version of a collaboratively produced statement. While suspects are awarded some agency when they are invited to respond to the police’s summaries of their talk along the way and when they are invited to comment on the text proposed by the police, their ability to assert their right to ‘own’ and retain control over their story is limited in several other ways. Importantly, it is the police investigator who has the right to decide what is or is not relevant to include in the interview report, and what does or does not count as valid or legitimate input during review. The research done in this dissertation makes several important methodological and empirical contributions. Importantly, by studying both stretches of talk in the original interview and fragments of text that (claim to) represent that talk, I show that the final written statement is the result of a process involving the formulation of talk in the interview, its ‘translation’ into text, and subsequent negotiations over the form and content of the text during review of the statement. In this lies the key contribution of this dissertation, which shows the value of and potential in using CA as a method for studying both talk and text and the interplay between them in investigative interviews. The research further contributes to increased understanding of the interactional construction of the suspect’s statement from its beginning in the interview to its final written version in the interview report. Increased insight into what happens in this process forms the basis for discussing the evidential value of interviews and interview reports and its implications for social justice and the rule of law.

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