Analysing Conversations in Forensic Settings, Volume I

This book offers a collection of detailed, empirically grounded chapters examining how ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, discursive psychology and membership categorisation analysis illuminate the interactional foundations of criminal justice.  It draws on naturally occurring, recorded encounters across a broad range of settings, from emergency calls to police interviews, courtrooms, the forensic laboratory, youth justice, and mediation services. 

Part of a two-volume project, Analysing Conversations in Forensic Settings, Volume I  illuminates the interactional dilemmas participants face in when negotiating fact, evidence and competence in real time across criminal justice settings and as they play out in global (social) media. The collection shows how statutory guidance, evidential requirements and decision‑making practices surface within interactional exchanges. 

Designed for scholars in criminology, psychology, sociology and forensic linguistics, as well as practitioners seeking evidence‑based insights, this edited collection   establishes the methodological and analytical foundations for understanding criminal justice as an interactional accomplishment, setting the stage for how categories and identities are constructed, negotiated and contested in criminal justice work developed in Volume II.

Emma Richardson is Senior Lecturer in Language and Social Interaction at Loughborough University, UK. She uses conversation analysis applied to real police emergency calls and investigative interviews to understand how reports of domestic and sexual violence are made and progressed through the criminal justice system.

Laura Jenkins  is Senior Vice Chancellor Independent Research Fellow at Loughborough University, UK. Her expertise lies in recording and studying real conversations, using conversation analysis to generate new knowledge on human interaction across a range of everyday and institutional settings.