DISCOURSE STRATEGIES IN THE CONFESSIONAL STATEMENTS OF SUSPECTS IN SELECTED POLICE CASE FILES IN TARABA STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study analyses discourse strategies in the confessional statements
of suspects in selected police case files in Taraba State, Nigeria.
Previous studies on discourse strategies have revealed some attention
to discourse strategies in selected political rally campaigns of the 2011
election in South-West Nigeria. Similarly, same has been observed in
conversational strategies in selected sermons of Pastor E.A Adeboye
and the effects of conversation repair strategies on counseling
discourse in secondary schools in Kakamega Central Sub-county,
Kenya, but not in the scholarship on discourse strategies in the
confessional statements of suspects. In this study, the confessional
statements of suspects extracted from the police case files in the
Divisional Police Headquarters Jalingo Bali, Takum, and Area
Command Headquarters Jalingo serve as primary data. Van Dijk’s
(2006) Socio-Cognitive Model of Critical Discourse Analysis was
adopted as theoretical framework and qualitative descriptive and
quantitative designs were deployed to analyse its data. The results
revealed that the suspects used actor description, authority,
comparison, evidentially, and number game, in their confessional
statements. The dominant discourse strategies deployed are authority
and comparison. The second dominant set of discourse strategies are
actor description, evidentially and number game. The study
concludes that using discourse strategies in the confessional
statements makes the statements understandable.