Rapport in police interviews with victims: A linguistic comparison between UK and Spain

Purpose: This study aims to explore how rapport is operationalised in police interviews with victims in the United Kingdom and Spain. Rapport is considered a key element in the success of investigative interviewing and therefore, police interviewers are trained to use rapport-building techniques throughout the interview. Previous research has enabled us to understand what rapport is and how it works in interviews with victims (Abbe and Brandon, 2012; Dando et al., 2016; Walsh and Bull, 2010). However, it has been highlighted that the expression of rapport may vary between cultures (Matsumoto and Hwang, 2021), as there are cultural and linguistic differences concerning interactional factors.

Design/methodology/approach: To uncover this, British and Spanish police interviewing guidelines are examined with regard to rapport techniques and how they are conceptualised. Then, a discourse-pragmatic and ethnographic approach is applied to real interviews with victims in the United Kingdom and Spain, to analyse what happens in real practice and how rapport with victims is expressed linguistically in British English and European Spanish.

Findings: The study unfolds certain linguistic subtleties in relation to “face-related issues” that need to be considered for future research on rapport in investigative interviews with victims, particularly in multicultural interviewing contexts.

Originality/value: The findings from this study contribute to a better understanding of how rapport is operationalised in different contexts and how the expression of rapport is tied to cultural and linguistic patterns that influence how people communicate.