‘We get that’: Narrative indexicality and the construction of frustration in police stories about domestic violence victim/survivors

Abstract

Abstract This article considers a particular set of cultural and ideological discourses—police discourse about domestic violence (DV) victim/survivors—in a study about indexicality. Via the processes of indexicality, victim/survivors are consistently described and constructed as frustrations for police officers and police work. We pinpoint two sociosemantic structures that index frustration—the use of the word frustration and statements that initially show understanding for the victim/survivors’ situation—and then mitigate that understanding with stories about being frustrated. In the process, we argue, DV victim/survivors become indexical forms that index the social meaning that victim/survivors are frustrating rather than compliant. Further, we show how such constructions are available for reiteration by different speakers in police discourse and different contexts. The linguistic features that signal ‘frustration’ thus function in police discourse as indexical features that can be accessed and animated by police officers when they describe encounters with victim/survivors and the victim/survivors themselves. (Indexicality, narrative, police discourse, domestic violence)*