A Rhetoro-Pragmatic Forensic Discourse Re-analysis of Police Interrogation in Kano Metropolis

This study reanalyses police interrogation in Kano metropolis through a rhetoro-pragmatic forensic discourse framework that explains how pragmatic actions acquire rhetorical force in institutional investigative encounters. Although previous studies of Nigerian police interrogation have examined discourse control, resistance, argumentation and responsibility negotiation, less attention has been given to a turn-level reanalysis that connects the distribution of recurring interactional functions with their rhetorical organisation across a documentary corpus. The study therefore revisits three appendix transcripts in Sadiq’s (2011) dissertation from Sabon Gari, Fagge and Nassarawa police divisions. The analysis covers 220 eligible police and accused, suspect or offender turns and examines elicitation, accusation, directive, prompt, denial, excuse, evaluation, threat, reassurance and negotiation, with Other retained as a residual category. Quantitative findings show that elicitation is the most frequent function, followed by denial and directive, while the qualitative analysis demonstrates how these actions combine in different sequences of information seeking, responsibility attribution, resistance, coercion, explanation and consequence management. The study contributes a turn-level account of forensic interaction that integrates descriptive quantitative evidence with context-sensitive rhetoro-pragmatic interpretation. It argues that the forensic significance of interrogation lies not only in obtaining information but also in how competing accounts are rhetorically organised and converted into potentially consequential records.