Speaker tries to ascertain his own cognizance

October 6, 2009 7:24 PM

What is the term for how police officers talk to the press in official situations?

You all know what I mean: when they throw around words like "ascertain" and "cognizant" in an effort to sound extremely official, when in fact it sounds (to some) like severe affectation.

It's a difficult one to google because "police", "speech" and the like throw up all kinds of irregardless hits. (yes, joke)

posted by war wrath of wraith to writing & language (35 comments total)

Newspeak?
posted by ian1977 at 7:25 PM on October 6

"The decedent had indicated he was exiting the scene..." Isn't it the same language as police reports? (speaking as an ex crime reporter)
posted by Kirklander at 7:26 PM on October 6

I'd call it overly formal speech.

My guess, and it's only a guess, is that police officers are of the opinion that the people with whom they primarily interact outside of the police force, that is, lawyers, regularly say things such as "ascertain" and "cognizant" and that this is somehow "official" speech that the police ought to imitate when appearing before the public.
posted by dfriedman at 7:27 PM on October 6

This isn't exactly what you're talking about, but the Wikipedia article on hypercorrection is good food for thought on this topic.

The phenomenon you're talking about isn't limited to police. I immediately think of corporate douchebags who say things like "utilize" when "use" would communicate the same thing in a more economical and less clunky (and, arguably, more correct) way—apparently because they think those two extra syllables make them sound more intelligent and not just, y'know, more douchey.
posted by ixohoxi at 7:33 PM on October 6

Jargon.
posted by TheNewWazoo at 7:33 PM on October 6

I'm looking for a very specific term that I saw somewhere, similar in tone and make-up as "grocer's apostrophe."

dfriedman, ian1977: had
posted by war wrath of wraith at 7:34 PM on October 6

Stilted speech.
posted by dfriedman at 7:38 PM on October 6 [1 favorite]

officious

legalese
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:41 PM on October 6

Syntactic Disambiguation? As in, "Crusader for Syntactic Disambiguation Exprobrates Banks' Labored Locutions." (WSJ link; not sure how long it will last).
posted by webhund at 7:46 PM on October 6 [1 favorite]

It also sounds like the tone sometimes used in writing police reports, which is really just a variation of the form used in drafting legal complaints. I'm no cop, but I would imagine officers are often parroting back the syntax taught in report-writing classes from the academy or in Criminal Justice programs at local colleges.
posted by zachlipton at 7:50 PM on October 6

Haven't gone through the whole thing to see if there's a specific term, but Language Log had a crack at this.
posted by rhizome at 7:51 PM on October 6

I took a subject in rhetoric last semester. It's a specific type of rhetoric called bureaucratic rhetoric. There is a book here on google books (by the author that the lecturer acquired the idea of bureaucratic rhetoric from).
posted by ollyollyoxenfree at 7:59 PM on October 6

I don't know what they'd call it, but my sense from hearing such things is that it's an attempt to de-emotionalize often emotional situations by using very formal language.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 8:08 PM on October 6

It is simply a standardization of how to describe events with specificity. When every officer uses the same language to describe similar situations, everyone knows what's going on. And so nobody can accuse them of using preferential or derogatory language for or against anyone.

It's a good thing. Officers are taught to only state what they know, and no more or less. "I was approached by an unknown male white subject who identified himself as Joe Doe and ..." is very different from "I was approached by Joe Doe." In the first scenario, we clearly know that the officer did not know the person's identity until it was given. In the second, we have to guess. Depending on what we're trying to accomplish, we can argue that the officer DID know who the guy was, and that this could have colored the rest of the exchange.

It isn't an affectation in that they usually aren't trying to come off as something they aren't.
posted by gjc at 8:12 PM on October 6 [1 favorite]

I've heard it called Cop Speak and that's what this book calls it too.
posted by fritley at 8:14 PM on October 6

I don't know the name, but one of my favorite versions of this is "rate of speed", as in "the car was traveling at a high rate of speed". Speed is by definition already a rate, and "rate of speed" really means "acceleration".
posted by downing street memo at 8:34 PM on October 6 [2 favorites]

To me, this is textbook "stilted speech". Trying to come up with a fancier term is, well, stilted.
posted by jdroth at 8:52 PM on October 6

Daft?

Really I'd just say "overly formal".
posted by pompomtom at 9:32 PM on October 6

Chilean cops do this too: "Under the circumstances that the individual found himself conducting his vehicle." ("En circumstancias de que el individuo se encontraba conduciendo su vehículo", in the original Spanish) means "While he was driving", for example.
posted by signal at 10:10 PM on October 6

I disagree that this sort of language is used for precision's sake. It's not any more precise to use 'the decedent' or even 'the deceased'; it would be shorter and less stuffy to say 'Mr Ross'. Nor does saying 'approached' give any more precision than saying 'the suspect ran towards...' or 'the suspect was driving towards...'. And so on. I can think of three possible reasons why police officers speak in this stuffy way:

1. Official department practice, to ensure that descriptions are as abstract as possible rather than concrete, in case the police officer in question is mistaken about the facts. I don't understand this reasoning myself - it's extremely unlikely that any liability would attach to an officer who in good faith said something like 'he walked towards me and pointed a gun', but whatever. Bureaucracy tends to have a farcically overblown fear of litigation.

2. Unintentional copying of vacuous politics-speak or the bureaucratic handbook.

3. Unintentional copying of legal judgments.

I should note that lawyers don't talk like this in real life, at all.
posted by kid A at 10:48 PM on October 6

Hmm... for me, the reason is pretty clear, and quite logical. They're trying to sound as authoritative and official as possible (to contrast, imagine a police officer describing the scene of a crime like a teenager: "Yeah, so then this dood came up to me right, and, he, like, told me he just robbed a bank! I was like, no way! So I cuffed the dood, and like, arrested him and shit. Damn straight!"). Often this means using big words. (As others have pointed out, police officers aren't alone in going this route.) Problem is, some of them can't quite pull it off, and hence the unintended comical effect.

In any case, none of the suggestions given was what I was searching for. Hmm. Perhaps I happened upon someone's single-use neologism.
posted by war wrath of wraith at 11:17 PM on October 6

"obsfucation"
posted by Neiltupper at 11:34 PM on October 6

It happens in the UK, too, but here I think it is more to do with longstanding police jargon.

For example, you can compare the language used in police media statements to that used in witnesses' evidential statements given to court (in the UK they are written up by police officers, summarising what the witness describes: the witness themself is then cross-examined if it goes to court). The language in both is extremely similar - "the juvenile proceeded northwards before becoming involved in a disturbance and committing a public order offence" etc.

Thus I don't think it's police officers consciously trying to use big words, as much as it is them using a syntax and tone which they use in other official, public contexts such as when they are before a judge. Worth noting too that most senior and middle-ranking police officers in the UK will speak to the press a lot, even if it is just local press, on the principle that the local borough commander or the chief investigating officer in a case know the most about a particular topic and are hence best qualified to speak about it. They get media training as a matter of course and I'd be surprised if this issue hadn't been considered within that.
posted by greycap at 11:44 PM on October 6

I've always heard it referred to as 'Cop Talk.'

You can call a car a vehicle, but that don't make your GED a Ph.D.
posted by solipsophistocracy at 11:51 PM on October 6

It's not any more precise to use 'the decedent' or even 'the deceased'; it would be shorter and less stuffy to say 'Mr Ross'.

There are situations where it would be simpler to refer to someone by a memorable feature relevant to the situation, rather than by name, especially if there were lots of people involved.

For example, compare "war wrath of wraith has replied in this thread twice" to "the person who posted the question has replied in this thread twice" - I would argue that the second wording is easier to understand, as you know who I'm talking about without having to scroll up and down looking for the name.

IMHO one reason for this talk is due to the wording of the laws the cops are talking about. I mean, phrases like "released on his own recognizance" might sound like jargon/using big words to sound clever, but would it be any clearer to invent a second phrase to describe the same thing?

You can call a car a vehicle, but that don't make your GED a Ph.D.

If you're going to prosecute someone under a law entitled "operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated" to me it doesn't seem so unreasonable to use the words "vehicle" and "intoxicated" instead of "car" and "drunk".
posted by Mike1024 at 12:57 AM on October 7

I just looked up the style guide from the newspaper where I used to work. It calls it Police Speak there, but I've heard Cop Talk too.
posted by t0astie at 3:44 AM on October 7

One big reason it sounds obfuscated to you is that on several levels they're not talking to, or for, you. They're talking to the judge who will eventually hear the case, to the jury that will compare their words to the statute, to the lawyer who is going to cross-examine them, and to the other lawyer who has been waiting for 5 years to pounce with a slander lawsuit. You get to be next in line after them, and anything you happen to understand after every word goes through that filter is gravy.

This really doesn't seem that strange to me. If I had to speak in a very-public forum, and my words has potentially serious legal consequences for me and for others, I'd get pretty careful with my words too.
posted by range at 5:05 AM on October 7 [1 favorite]

I'd say Cop Talk, too, and my favorite example is "in color." As in "The suspect was last seen driving a late model Ford Taurus, blue in color."

As opposed to blue in... speed?

/former police/fire/ambulance chaser for a daily newspaper.
posted by emelenjr at 5:19 AM on October 7

Officers are taught to only state what they know, and no more or less.

To reporters, it can be enormously frustrating because they always give you so much less than they know, and they skip the details that make a story a story.

Eg: "The suspect exited the dwelling carrying the weapon and fled in a vehicle" could mean a dude jumped out a 15-story skyscraper window carrying a sword and landed in the basket of his hot air balloon, or that he slipped out the butler's pantry of his mansion with an AK47 and took off in a purple Camaro.

I've always heard it called cop talk or police speak.
posted by CunningLinguist at 5:35 AM on October 7 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure what the term for it is, but it's pretty prevalent throughout our culture today. It's not just cops. You hear it in offices, too. I take it to stem from the belief that using very formal or technical-sounding terms will bestow a veneer of legitimacy and, even, authority to a person's report. Think: every marketing Powerpoint presentation you've ever sat through.

I used to work with a guy who was especially fond of the word "cognizant." He pretty-much replaced every term in his vocabulary synonymous with "aware," "know," "knowing," etc. with "cognizant."
posted by Thorzdad at 5:42 AM on October 7

As to why they talk like that, gjc has it right. It's not about trying to sound important, it's about standardization of terminology and legal jeopardy.
posted by CunningLinguist at 5:42 AM on October 7

TV newsrooms have co-opted the language. When you see video of someone being led away in handcuffs, we call that video a "perp walk".
posted by Zambrano at 8:21 AM on October 7

Idiocracy riffs on this--person is always particular individual, for example.
posted by MrMoonPie at 8:42 AM on October 7

pedantic
posted by maloon at 10:25 AM on October 7

Police-speak (more commonly British) or cop-talk (more commonly North American) refer to the lexicon of officers withing a jurisdiction or region. For example, calling a stimulant user a tweaker.

The OP is asking about something different, the way officers speak to media. I believe it's similar to how they write reports often, as well as how they testify in court. It is the formalized language/lexicon they are trained to use to ensure that they are not ambiguous about legal "terms of art" ... words and phrases which have been given specific/special meaning by courts.

Unfortunately, I am not aware of a title for that form of language. I'll ask around though.
posted by unclezeb at 10:33 AM on October 8