He said ‘I will ask you questions’: A case study of interpreter impact on rapport building in an authentic sign language interpreter-mediated police-suspect interview

In police-suspect interviews it has been argued that rapport building and management plays a vital role in collecting good quality evidence. How rapport building and management is achieved in the presence of an interpreter is an understudied topic. To examine how the interpreter manages this feature of communication we present an interdisciplinary case study analysis of an authentic police-suspect interview involving a deaf suspect, a British Sign Language interpreter and two police officers. Discourse-based interpreting research has determined that interpreters are participants within the interpreter-mediated interaction, and that a high level of discursive expertise and sensitivity is a necessary skill for interpreters working in police interview settings. For this study we draw on policing research to apply a rapport model used in police interviews, and on interpreting studies to examine the interpreter’s use of expanded renditions (Wadensjö, 1998) and source attribution (Metzger, 1999) and the interpreter’s impact on rapport building. These rendition types contain what appears to be conscious or unconscious additions to the source message that seem to support the suspect’s ability to understand the interpreted message but, in some cases, potentially jeopardise the officer’s rapport building strategies. The examples we provide demonstrate the delicate balance needed because expansions to meaning, repetitions or source attribution utilised by the interpreter may lead to unintentional coercive outcomes.