Since completing my PhD in 2016, I have published my own research as well as more recently, engaging with research regarding the use of VR, to increase awareness and create a focus for discussion of knife crime, with secondary school students. A paper regarding those studies is currently on submission.
Though my initial research was on the use of language in police interviews, I have varied interests and a passion for cross disciplinary research.
This is the abstract for my PhD :
This study investigates the use of discourse markers by police officers during interviews with suspects. Data was collected from both actual and simulated interview contexts, resulting in a corpus of 48 individual interviews. The data was analysed using a conversation analytic approach. From the analysis of the data, it is evident that the police officer and suspect negotiate an interactional space which allows for specific forms of information to be elicited and agreed in line with institutional and forensic objectives. The markers so, okay and well are analysed to identify how officers, through the use of these markers, manage and negotiate various aspects of the ongoing interaction, accomplishing the ultimate purpose of the interview which is to produce an account, whilst also managing local interactional issues such as confronting the resistance of the interviewee and establishing the engagement of the interviewee within the interview process.
Garbutt, J. (2016). A Study in the Use of Discourse Markers in Police-Suspect Interviews. Unpublished PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.
Recent publications
Garbutt, J. (2020) The use of the well-preface by police officers during sequences of suspect resistance in interviews. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines 11 (2).
Access Online.
Garbutt, J. (2018) The use of no comment in police interviews. In Taylor, C. and Schroeter, M. (Eds.) Exploring Silence and Absence in Discourse: Empirical Approaches. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Book Information.
Garbutt, J. (2017) The Long Haul: Staying motivated during part-time study. McMaster, C., Murphy, C. Cronshaw, S., and Codiroli-McMaster, N. (Eds.) Postgraduate Study in the UK: Surviving and Succeeding. Faringdon, Oxfordshire: Libri Publishing.
Book Information.
Book reviews
Ikuko Nakane, Interpreter-mediated Police Interviews: A Discourse-pragmatic Approach; Discourse & Society, May 2016.
John Gibbons and M. Teresa Turell (eds.) Dimensions of Forensic Linguistics; Sociolinguistic Studies, Jan 2012 (Co-authored with my PhD supervisor, Malcolm Edwards).
Chris Hutton, Language, Meaning and the Law, Sociolinguistic Studies, Jan 2009.
Georgina Heydon. The Language of Police Interviewing: A critical analysis. Frances Rock, Communicating Rights: The Language of Arrest and Detention. Sociolinguistic Studies, Jan 2008 (Joint review of two titles).