Reshmi Nair Ling 239 Concept map #1

The concept that Shuy explains in this chapter is about speech acts. He explains about the different types of confessions based on the various situations such as when a man confesses to his sins in front of god for forgiveness, and when a child confesses his or her sins to his or her parents and when someone has to confess their wrongdoings to law enforcement officials. The different confessions made by a person and how it varies depending on to whom it is being said. He explains the importance of speech acts, which can be defined as a way we use language to get things done. An example he gives is the phrase Father, I have sinned. Where the use of father lets us know that it is a confession to a priest. The concept of speech acts and how ones speech and language can vary based on the audience and the situation. He goes on to mention how concealing and falsifying can be considered as two ways to lie and revealing and self-aggrandizing are the ways of confessing. He also talks about the limitations of language analysis for deception detections. In the end, he gives a brief introduction to all the chapters in the book.

The concept that Shuy discusses in Chapter 2 is about the differences between interrogation and interviewing. He explains how interrogation has a negative connotation and so law enforcement officials use the term interview. He explains how when law enforcement officials interview, they question the suspect as though they were found guilty while in an interview there is less power play. Interrogators challenge, warn and accuse the suspect of being guilty even though they may not have any evidence indicating it. The

concept of interrogation has a negative connotation to it while interviewing is where both the interviewer and the interviewee hold the power.

He introduces the case of Steve Allen, where the tape recording was stopped midway and out of 25 minutes, 13 minutes was a talk between the detective, the pastor and the pastors wife. Shuy explains how the prosecution made a huge deal with the point that the 911 interviewer had said Steve Allen showed no emotion when he called them. In this case, we see how the law enforcement official actually interrogated the suspect by accusing him of committing the murder and not interviewing him. He goes on to explain two other cases, one was the Chris Jerue and Donald Goltz cases. In the Chris Jerue case, we see that the law enforcement officer used the tactic of switching certain verbs as kill to do it, which may have confused Jerue and he may have mistaken the verb do for something else and answered affirmatively and to the law enforcement officials it sounded as a sign of being guilty. In the case of Donald Goltz had decided to draw up a lease on behalf of the board but the one factor that Judge Goltz was unaware of was that the purchase of government surplus equipment includes a stipulation that one cannot lease out such property once it is purchased. By drawing up a lease he had violated the stipulation.

The third concept is about the limitations in a police interrogation. While reading the three cases we see how the law enforcement interviews the suspect by considering them guilty or by rephrasing the questions that may confuse the suspect and so would find them guilty. He discusses the drawbacks with memory problems, brief answers and short tempered, repeating the questions etc. When law enforcement officials questions the suspect, they look for these clues and based on these clues they consider the suspect guilty but this

can be a drawback since a suspect who was just in a traumatic situation may have a lot of these problems. In Steve Allen case, they said that he was not at all emotional and so he must be guilty but if he showed anger it would have considered him guilty. The deception clues that the law enforcement officials look for can be considered as murky since it may not really be a deception clue but just normal behavior of the person based on the situation. In Chris Jerue case, we see how the law enforcement officials rephrased the questions so that they probably would have got a confession, which they did and so we can say that it may be an interrogation since they only wanted a confession and not know what actually happened.