1

JUDICIARY POLICE SYSTEM OF GENRES: A GENRE ANALYSIS OF

POLICE REPORT ON LANGUAGE CRIMES AGAINST HONOUR

(CALÚNIA, DIFAMAÇÃO AND INJÚRIA)1

Marcos Rogério Ribeiro2

INTRODUCTION The activity of the Judiciary Police is perhaps the one in which writing abilities are

most practiced. The main working tool for police officers is not fire guns, but discourse, since

it is through oral and written communication that people get arrested and released, among

other performative acts. Besides that, it is through the power of discourse that the fate of a

criminal can be decided, instead of physical power.

Most crime evidences gathered by the Judiciary Police in the Brazilian penal system

are turned into written documents that form a police investigation procedure called inquérito

policial and termo circunstanciado (for minor crimes3), whose aim is to launch a criminal

investigation in order to identify perpetrators and thus complete the first stage of state

prosecution4. The second stage is at the court, when the prosecutor attorney5, usually based on

the inquérito policial or termo circunstanciado, will accuse, or not, the defendant in a

posterior criminal suit.

Thus, the formal police procedure comprises a myriad of written texts that

linguistically represent the acts performed by police officers, such as the following: 1) Police

Report, through this report the police is informed about the occurrence of a crime or of other

non-criminal facts); 2) Crime Scene Report, issued by the police with a description of the

crime scene; 3) Investigation Report, it is a report on partial or complete investigations

carried out by policemen; 4) Victims, witnesses and suspects interviews, the written version

of police interrogation and hearings; 5) Requests to court, forensic experts, and other

1 Graduation final paper under the advisory of Dr. Desirée Motta Roth, Professor of English and Applied Linguistics at Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, RS, Brasil. 2 BA in English Language and Literature, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, RS, Brasil. 3 Crimes whose punishment is less than or equal to two years in prison. 4 For crimes committed by adolescents (from 13 to 17 years old) there is another procedure called relatório de investigação. 5 The prosecutor attorney is the public official who charges somebody officially with a crime and prosecutes them in a court of law, i. e., the prosecutor attorney leads the case against a defendant in a court of law.

2 agencies, written requests - made by the police to court or other agencies - for, e. g., search

warrant, expert report, etc; 6) Phone dialogue transcriptions, wiretapping transcription made

by the police; 7) Investigation final report, written by the police chief at the end of the

inquérito policial procedure.

Among the genres listed above, one of the main and most common ones produced by

the police, not only in Brazil, but throughout the world, is perhaps the police report

(henceforth PR)6, a genre whose communicative function is to inform the state agency

(police) about the occurrence of a crime (a violation of the law) and, if identified, about its

perpetrator or suspect. After this information is obtained, the police investigation is started.

Usually the procedure is the following: the victim of a crime (theft, burglary, larceny,

language crimes, etc.) goes to a police station and reports the detailed facts to a police officer,

who gathers from the victim all his/her personal information or simply the identity card

number to access the data bank of the police for retrieving the existing personal data of the

victim then the police officer access the police computer network to start typing the PR.

After hearing the so-called victim about the facts, their detailed circumstances,

possible evidences, witnesses and suspects, the police officer writes a narrative from what is

reported, whose length is generally no more than two pages. However, people in Brazil often

go to a police station and report facts which are not considered crime or misdemeanor, such as

car crashes without injuries, document loss, breach of contract, etc., and get a copy of the PR

as an evidence for private purposes, such as obtaining new documents, insurance reparations

or for civil actions. There are other less common ways of reporting facts to the police, such as

through the internet and telephone, through formal petition, etc., but in any case, based on

them, a PR is produced (see, on the next page, Figure 1 for a sample of a PR).

6 This statement is a hypothesis based only on empirical observation derived from my professional practice, not on previous studies.

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Figure 1 – Sample of a PR.

In the context of police practices, texts are thus of central importance in structuring the

activity system of the police institution. This paper aims at exploring this universe through the

analysis of PRs from the theoretical perspective of an area of study of occupational or

professional communication called Language for Specific Purposes. In the field of language

teaching, Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) can offer the analytical tools for looking at

the PR as a genre.

Therefore, regarding the PR as a genre part of English for Occupational Purposes,

which in turn belongs to the field of English for Specific Purposes (comprised by LSP), this

research can help students of police academies to better understand and produce the PR genre.

For this same reason, it would be useful for language course students in general, since it is a

genre many people probably have already met as a personal experience in a police station.

Furthermore, we can unveil a lot about how policemen represent crime linguistically7. From a

wider perspective, it can also provide a broader understanding of crime reports and the way

language can be used in this legal context.

This study also aims at carrying out a genre analysis of the PR, revealing its generic

structure, moves and corresponding functions based on the work of John Swales in genre 7 Motta-Roth, personal communication, 13-05-2010.

4 analysis and Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective on contextual variables (HASAN,

1989).

As specific objectives, this paper aims at revealing the nature of the social practice of

the genre and who are the participants of this social practice and the possible relationships

among them, as well as their roles and statuses. We will try also to identify the PR genre

component patterns and the main communicative purposes of social activities revealed by

them. Finally, we will describe the role played by language through its symbolic organization,

its status and its function in the context.

1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 Legal principles

Crimes against honour are described in Chapter V of the Brazilian Penal Code, in

articles 138, 139 and 140. Below I will present the basic legal classification of the three

crimes and their punishment and then I will briefly comment them on their primary

configuration.

In article 138, CALÚNIA: to calumniate somebody by falsely charging them with a

fact defined as crime.

Punishment: six months to two years of detention and fine.

In article 139, DIFAMAÇÃO: to defame somebody by charging them with an

offensive fact against their reputation.

Punishment: three months to one year of detention and fine.

In article 140, INJÚRIA: to insult somebody by offending their dignity or decorum.

Punishment: one month to six months of detention or fine.

/…/

§ 3rd: if the Injúria consists of using elements concerning race, colour, age, ethnicity,

religion, origin or condition of physical impairment.

Punishment: one year to three years of reclusion and fine8.

The aforementioned crimes describe human behaviors established in chapter V of the

Brazilian criminal code, related to the protection of honour.

Although they are in the same chapter and have a common character, they have some

basic differences. On one hand, both Calúnia and Difamação refer to charging with a fact (so

it must be a defined fact) against the objective honor of the victim, i. e., the reputation, the

8 Brazilian Penal Code, available at <http://www.planalto.gov.br/CCIVIL/Decreto-Lei/Del2848.htm>. Accessed on July 19, 2010.

5 image of a person held by others. On the other hand, Injúria does not refer to a fact, but to an

opinion about the victim expressed by the offender against the subjective honor of the

victim, i. e., the feeling each person has about her own dignity or decorum.

There is another main difference between Calúnia and Difamação: although both

have a fact as a requirement, only in the first this offensive fact is defined as a crime

(DELMANTO, 1982, p. 25) and has to be false. For example: if the agent insults somebody

generically by saying: ‘You are a thief’, it is considered Injúria, but if the agent falsely says ‘It

was Paul who stole my purse yesterday in the office’, it is classified as Calúnia, since it is a

defined fact considered crime. Note that the fact needs also to be false, because if Paul really

had stolen the purse in the example above, the fact would have been true and the agent

behaviour could not be considered a crime of Calúnia. On the other hand, in relation to

Difamação and Injúria, both are considered crime even if the offensive charge is true. Thus, if

the agent says ‘You are incompetent, a slut, bitch, gay, nigger, etc.’, it is classified as Injúria.

But if the agent says: ‘Mary has been betraying her husband every Monday when he is not

home’, it is a fact, but not criminal, since adultery is not crime in Brazil, so this insult can be

classified as Difamação.

Besides the objective element (the actions of charging, falsely charging, offending),

all the three crimes require a subjective element to be classified as criminal behavior which is

the intention of insulting (dolus), that is, the free and conscious will of offending somebody.

Finally, the punishment is aggravated if the Injúria is committed through using elements

concerning race, colour ethnicity, religion, origin or condition of aged or impaired person.

1.2 Linguistic principles This section will briefly present the main linguistic theories on which this paper will

rely: the notion of genre and move, systemic functional grammar and Language for Specific

Purposes (LSP), which encompasses English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) in which field

the PR can be included.

For Swales (1990 apud AL-ALI, 2005, p. 10), genre is ‘a class of communicative

events, the members of which share some sets of communicative purposes’. On the other

hand, from this assertion one can argue that the PR genre presents a schematic structure

resulting from social practices and conventions.

According to Al-Ali (Ibidem, p. 10), researchers such as Martin (1985), Miller (1984),

Swales (1990) and Ventola (1987, 1989), among other relevant authors, define genre

as a social action, goal oriented and cultural activity consisting of a sequence of moves. Each move has a minor function in the global communicative goal

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embedded in the genre. These moves are merely the realization of a particular social interaction (Ibidem, p. 11).

Move is ‘a text segment made up of a bundle of linguistic features which give the

segment a uniform orientation and signal the content of discourse in it’ (NWOGU, 1997, p.

122 apud AL-ALI, 2005, p. 11). Thus, bearing these concepts in mind, I will build the

sequence of moves of the PR, considering the linguistic features that delimit each piece of

information with its specific social interaction and constituting each one a function in the

whole communicative goal of the PR genre.

In the analysis, I will also adopt the theoretical framework developed by Halliday

(1989) called Systemic-Functional Grammar, according to which we can find on the linguistic

level of genre three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal and textual. According to

Hasan (1989), these three metafunctions constitute the Generic Structure Potential (GSP).

Firstly, the ideational meaning “refers to what is going on in the world, what is being

represented [through the transitivity system: process, participant and circumstances]”

(RAVELLI, 2000, p. 35). This is so because instead of simply describing the verb and its

complement, as in traditional grammar, the Systemic Functional Grammar regards the

transitivity as a system for describing the whole clause whose components are Process,

Participant and Circumstances. The Process is usually realized in the clause by a verbal group.

The participant is normally realized by a nominal group, usually Subject, but can be also a

Complement. Finally, the Circumstances, frequently optional in clauses, are normally realized

by adverbial groups or prepositional phrases (THOMPSON, 2004, p. 87-89).

According to Halliday and Matthiessen (p. 248, 2004), since they occur in the majority

of all clauses in a text, the three main processes types in the English language clauses are the

Material (they represent the physical world usually through the process of doing and

happening), Mental (they represent the world of consciousness usually through the process of

sensing) and Relational (they represent the world of abstract relations usually through the

process of being and having). However, there are another three subsidiaries processes types,

each one of which situated among the boundaries of the main verbal processes: 1)

Behavioral: placed at the boundary between Material and Mental, they represent the process

of behaving (typically human physiological and psychological behaviour); 2) Verbal: placed

at the boundary between Mental and Relational, they represent the process of saying); e 3)

Existential: placed at the boundary between Relational and Material, they represent the

process of existing.

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Below, from charts 1 to 6, we can see some major examples of the clause components

and the six process types.

Chart 1: MATERIAL Participant:

Actor Process: Material Participant: Goal Circumstance: Place

A car

crashed into

a house

in Palm Bay.

Chart 2: MENTAL Participant:

Senser Process: Mental Participant: Phenomenon Circumstance

He

enjoyed

her company.

-

Chart 3: RELATIONAL Participant:

Token Process: Relational:

Identifying Participant: Value Circumstance

Martin Luther King

was

an American pastor and civil rights activist. -

Chart 4: BEHAVIOURAL

Participant: Behaver

Process: Behavioural

Participant: Range Circumstance

Paul

Gave

a deep sigh.

-

Chart 5: VERBAL

Participant: Sayer

Process: Verbal

Participant: Receiver

Participant: Verbiage

He

told

me

a secret.

Chart 6: EXISTENCIAL -

Process: Existential

Participant: Existent

Circumstance: Time

There

will be

an answer

in the near future.

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Secondly, through the interpersonal meaning, the language constructs and conveys

some kind of interpersonal relationship in terms of giving and demanding goods and services

or information which is realized through the speech functions (offer, statement, command,

question) and the grammatical mood (modulated interrogative, declarative, imperative,

interrogative) (RAVELLI, 2000, p. 44-45). At this point, for a subsequent analysis of the

interpersonal metafunction, it is relevant to comment on the notion of grammatical metaphor.

It is a sort of “disjunction between meanings and wordings, between the semantics and lexico-

grammar” (Thompson, 2004, p. 219) that can be found when we analyze texts and face

difficulties in classifying and label certain wordings.

The grammatical metaphor is also known as the “possibility of re-setting the

relationships between meanings and wordings, which is a central resource for expanding the

meaning potential of language” (Ibidem, p. 220). We can do that by expressing the meaning

in a metaphorical way and conversely in a congruent way, “to describe the way in which

the reworded version expresses the meaning” (Ibidem, p. 221). So, in broad terms, there can

be congruent and incongruent (metaphorical) wordings of a meaning. Thompson (2004)

divides grammatical metaphor into three categories: experiential and logical, textual and

interpersonal.

Firstly, the Experiential and Logical metaphors usually occur when the “transitivity

analysis does not seem to reflect adequately the state of affairs being referred to” (Ibidem, p.

224). One of the main ways to create a metaphor is through nominalization, that is, through

the use of a nominal form to express a process meaning; this nominal form is derived from a

verbal form, so that the process component is transformed into a participant component of the

clause.

Ex.: These ideas have been subject to widespread criticism. (metaphorical wording)

Many people have criticized these ideas. (congruent wording)

Secondly, the Textual metaphor occurs with thematic equatives and predicated

themes in clauses such as: What you need to do is to write me a letter [you need to write me a

letter], and It is not the technology which is wrong [the technology is not wrong]. In these

examples the first messages express the meaning in a metaphorical (incongruent) way,

whereas the second messages - in square brackets - express it in a congruent way; It is worth

to mention that Thompson argues that the presence of metaphor is generally recognizable by

the need for a double transitivity analysis: “one of the original wording and the other of a

more congruent rewording” (Ibidem, p. 235). In this sense, he also sees a double analysis of

textual metafunction in relation to thematic equatives and predicated themes, wherefore he

9 regards the textual metaphor as a category of grammatical metaphor, even though Halliday

and Matthiessen does not include it in their studies of grammatical metaphor.

Finally, the Interpersonal metaphor is generally identified in the expression of Mood

meanings and occurs when the Mood choices and speech roles do not match. For example, we

expect that questions are typically realized through the interrogative Mood. However, they

can be instantiated through declarative Mood, as in:

And he’s been back with this girl since he’s been with Gertrude? Yes. (Ibidem, p. 231)

We can also find interpersonal metaphors with the use of Modality, which is “the

expression of the speaker´s attitude towards the likelihood or necessity of the proposition,

[…] congruently realized by modal verbs” (Ibidem, p. 232). This kind of metaphor is divided

into three categories, in which the modal meanings (speaker’s attitude) are experientialized, as

if they were expressing transitivity type meanings. The first one is the Explicit subjective

modality, a kind of metaphor in which the modality is expressed in a separate clause, instead

of being congruently realized by modal verbs. Usually, this modal clause “takes the form of a

mental process with “I” as Senser, projecting the other clause.” (Ibidem, 232).

Ex.: I think Mrs. Taylor would like a drink. (metaphorical wording)

Probably Mrs. Taylor would like a drink. (congruent wording) (Ibidem, p. 233)

The second one is the Explicit objective modality, a kind of metaphor in which “the

proposition is packaged as a fact and the speaker’s modal assessment of it is treated as if it

were an attribute of the fact” (Ibidem, p. 233).

Ex.: It seems possible that the ageing process might be cured through medical means.

(metaphorical wording)

Perhaps the ageing process might be cured through medical means. (congruent wording)

(Ibidem, p. 233)

The last one is the Implicit objective modality, a sort of metaphor in which “the

modality is more integrated into the clause.” (Ibidem, p. 233).

Ex.: You’re unlikely to be attracted to nursing because of the money. (metaphorical

wording)

You probably won’t be attracted to nursing because of the money. (congruent

wording)

Thompson presents many other examples of the three metaphors approached so far

and also discusses about another type of metaphor with modality, expressed through

nominalization, as well as about the self-projection as a form of interpersonal grammatical

metaphor, expressed through what he calls interpersonal annotating clause. (Ibidem, p.

10 235). However, due to the space limitations of this paper, the brief overview presented above

is enough to ground later transitivity analysis.

Finally, the textual meaning refers to the organization of the message: how is language

used to carry the message? Concerned with the analysis of theme and rheme, this

metafunction is relevant to detect the preferential patterns in terms of thematic position,

cohesion and coherence, because ‘there are choices available in terms of how to organize our

language: which part of the message to foreground, which to background, which part to signal

as being of most interest’ (Ibidem, p. 51).

The GSP, that comprises the aforementioned metafunctions, is the linguistic

realization of the context of situation (tenor, field and mode) and is associated with the

context of culture which corresponds to the extra-linguistic levels of genre. The concepts of

field, tenor and mode (context variables), as features of the context of situation (CS), ‘serve to

interpret the social context of a text, the environment in which meanings are being exchanged’

(HALLIDAY; HASAN, 1989, p. 12), as follows: the field of discourse refers to what is

happening, to the nature of the social action that is taking place; the tenor of discourse refers

to who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, their statuses and roles; and the mode

of discourse refers to what part language is playing, what it is that the participants are

expecting the language to do for them in that situation (Ibidem, p. 12). The relationship

between CS and GSP can be summarized in the chart 7.

Chart 7: Relationship between Context of Situation and Generic Structures Potential Based on Halliday and Hasan (1989, p. 12 and 26) and on Motta Roth and Heberle

(2005, p. 16-17)

CONTEXT OF SITUATION GENERIC STRUCTURES POTENTIAL CONTEXT VARIABLES LINGUISTIC METAFUNCTIONS

Field of discourse: what is happening in the social action.

Ideational meaning: what is going on in the world (transitivity system: process, participant and circumstances).

Tenor of discourse: who is taking part in the social action.

Interpersonal meaning: interpersonal relationship (giving and demanding goods and services or information through speech functions and grammatical mood).

Mode of discourse: what part language is playing.

Textual meaning: how is language used to carry the message (theme, rheme, coherence, cohesion).

These theoretical principles will be used for the analysis of the transitivity (ideational

metafunction) and the roles of social actors (interpersonal metafunction), situating the genre

within the wider context of situation and culture.

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In the domain of language teaching, Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) is a branch

of Applied Linguistics that comprehends the study, learning and teaching of how language is

used to perform specific tasks in occupational contexts (VIAN JR., 1999, p. 439). LSP can

borrow its definition from the widespread meaning of English for Specific Purposes (ESP).

Strevens’ (1988) broad definition of ESP, reformulated ten years later by Dudley-Evans and

St. John’s (1998), highlights ESP absolute and variable characteristics, as follows: Absolute Characteristics

ESP is designed to meet specific needs of the learner; ESP makes use of the underlying methodology and activities of the discipline

it serves; ESP is centered on the language (grammar, lexis, register) skills, discourse

and genres appropriate to these activities.

Variable Characteristics

ESP may be related to or designed for specific disciplines; ESP may use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology from

that of General English; ESP is likely to be designed for adult learners, either at a tertiary level

institution or in a professional work situation. It could, however, be used for learners at secondary school level;

ESP is generally designed for intermediate or advanced students; Most ESP courses assume some basic knowledge of the language system, but

it can be used with beginners (DUDLEY-EVANS; ST. JOHN’S, 1998, p. 4-5).

Beyond the teaching dimension of ESP, there is also a highly active part of ESP

community who concentrates on discourse analysis, of which this paper is an example. This

type of analysis can offer valuable information for ESP course designers in police contexts.

ESP is commonly subdivided into EAP (English for Academic Purposes) and EOP

(English for Occupational Purposes). The first is designed for training students, usually in

a higher education setting, to use language appropriately for study and research purpose. The

latter deals with the so-called Professional and Vocational English, which are designed for

learners in a professional work situation, where the study of PR genre could be included.

2. METHODOLOGY

In the present study of the PR genre, a genre analysis will be carried out for the

mapping of generic structure and moves with their respective communicative functions. For

the genre structure analysis, I will basically consider three broad analytical categories: 1)

linguistic; 2) intuitive and 3) typographic (HENDGES, 2008, p. 115). The linguistic

categories are those clues that can be found in verbal language, such as key-words, explicit

12 lexemes (i. e., words that explicitly signal the type of information is being presented: the

objective of this paper is …, the results show…), verbal tenses, modal verbs. The intuitive

categories are those related to the researcher perception and inferences derived from his/her

experience in textual analysis and familiarity with the genre under analysis, i. e., his/her

previous knowledge as a member of the historic, cultural and social context of the analyzed

genre. In this case, my own personal experience as police officer will be quite relevant. The

typographic categories are the non-verbal language elements, such as space and division

in text. Besides these three categories, I will also take into account, contextual information

regarding the PR obtained from my informal conversation and casual interviews with police

officers from the Police Station of Itaara city, next to Santa Maria, central region of Rio

Grande do Sul State, my workplace. This study will also try to reveal possible socio-cultural

rules and beliefs underlying the text linguistic patterns. For this purpose, I will use Halliday’s

Systemic-Functional Grammar as a tool of analysis and its ideational, interpersonal and

textual functions in connection with the three aspects used to describe the context of situation,

namely the field of discourse, the tenor of discourse, and mode of discourse (HALLIDAY;

HASAN, 1989, p.12). Each one in turn will be described in topics based on the samples of the

corpus that will exemplify and serve as basis for the comments and discussion.

This preliminary study does not intend to be exhaustive, but it might be helpful not

only for further deeper research, but also for revealing the formal and content schema

(SWALES, 1990 apud AL-ALI, 2005, p. 6) of police reports as well as some of the features of

this professional genre. To reach this aim, 60 PRs on three types of crimes against honour

(Calúnia, Difamação and Injúria) were randomly collected in the Police Station in Itaara city,

from 2006 to 2009. Because I am police chief (Delegado de Polícia) in the police station in

Itaara and have access to PR files as part of my professional duties, I opted for studying these

PRs. The choice for crimes against honour report is due to the fact they are among the crimes

committed through the use of language, and are called language crimes, i. e., a linguistic

behavior that becomes a target of legal action (GIBBONS, apud FUZER, 2007, p. 400).

The 60 PRs were digitalized and, for legal reasons, the names of persons involved

were erased. For each PR, identified by its original number, a table for SFG analysis was

designed in order to identify the linguistic patterns and to enable an overview of the main

linguistic features and recurrences to ground a subsequent interpretation.

Moreover, a move structure analysis was carried out to describe the component moves

of this genre and to interpret ‘why and how each component was employed to construct [the

PR] text as it is’ (AL-ALI, 2006, p. 710). Thus, in order to convey the analysis, I will try to

13 answer the following questions adapted from HALLIDAY; HASAN (1989, p.12) and

MOTTA-ROTH; HEBERLE (2007, p. 15):

1) What is the nature of the social practice of the genre?

2) Who are the participants of this social practice and what relationships are there

among them, their roles and statuses?

3) What component patterns can be identified in the PR genre and which main

communicative purposes of social activities are revealed by the building

components?

4) What is the role played by language through its symbolic organization, its status

and its function in the context?

3. RESULTS

3.1 Contextual configuration

The context of situation with its context variables is best approached through an

overview of the genre as a whole, instead of a particular/detailed analysis of each move in

separate, since the overview is more useful for comprehension and for answering the issues

proposed in the methodology section.

3.1.1 The nature of social practice (field) As I have already mentioned in the Introduction, the PR is a genre generally designed

to inform the police about the occurrence of a crime (a violation of the law) and, if identified,

about its perpetrator or suspect. However, people can often go to a police station and report

facts which are not considered crime or misdemeanor10, such as car crashes without injuries,

document loss, breach of contract, etc., and get a copy of the PR as an evidence for private

purposes, such as obtaining new documents, insurance reparations or for civil actions. As an

evidence for using in criminal or civil court or for any other purpose, although it is based on a

unilateral version of an event, the PR has a fundamental relevance, for it is the first

written impression of a crime most of the time obtained in the heat of the facts and, thus,

can carry a higher grade of authenticity from what has really happened. So, as social

practice, the PR is a legal social interaction, generally resulting from a social conflict,

between the person who reports the fact and the police, who accepts the report. In the PR,

criminal and non-criminal facts are portrayed. 10 In Brazil, misdemeanor is a lesser crime punishable by fine and/or jail time up to two years.

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3.1.2 Participants of the social practice (tenor)

The social actors who generally take part in the process of PR production include the

victim or other person (witnesses, military police officers, etc.) whose discourse is

mostly represented in the narrative part (Move 3) of the PR; the police officer who types the

PR and sometimes witnesses and suspects, if present at the police station. The relationship

among them would not be considered a symmetric one, since in this social practice the police

officer is in the position of representing the authority and the power of the State in relation to

the other participants (victims, witnesses, suspects/perpetrators) and so decides what is

relevant to include in the PR from what is said by those who report the facts. The asymmetry

in social relations among the participants is also evident concerning suspects or perpetrators

with respect to victims and witnesses, for the latter can feel intimidated by the former.

So, the social distance among them is maximal.

In addition, the police officer who types the PR is under the inspection of the police

officer chief of the team on duty, who in turn is under the command of the police chief

(Delegado de Polícia). Internally, according to the Rio Grande do Sul State Law no. 7.366 of

March 3, 198011, in its article 76, and State Law no. 10.994 of August 18, 199712, in its article

7, the Judiciary Police, as mentioned elsewhere, is an institution organized under the

principles of unity of procedure, as well as of hierarchy and discipline, so its personnel is

structured through ranks, from the lowest to the highest position, one having authority over

another according to previous established regulations13. So, today we have two broad careers

in Rio Grande do Sul State Judiciary Police: 1) police authority, that is, the Police Chief

(Delegado de Polícia); and 2) agents of police authority, that is, the Police Inspector (Inspetor

de Polícia) and Police Scrivener (Escrivão de Polícia)14. The Police Chief is the general

coordinator of the police station and is the one who presides over all the procedures and acts

legally ascribed to the Judiciary Police, such as the crime investigation procedure (inquérito

policial), misdemeanor investigation procedure (termo circunstanciado), lawbreaker

adolescents procedure (procedimento de apuração ato infracional) temporary and preventive

prison requests, etc.

11Available at <http://www.al.rs.gov.br/legiscomp/arquivo.asp?Rotulo=Lei nº 7366&idNorma=26&tipo=pdf>. Accessed on July 19, 2010. 12 Available at< http://www.al.rs.gov.br/legiscomp/arquivo.asp?Rotulo=Lei nº 10994&idNorma=216&tipo=pdf>. Accessed on July 19, 2010. 13 Rio Grande do Sul State Law no. 7.366 of March 3, 1980, State Law 10.994 of August 18, 1997 and others. 14 Article 77 of the State Law no. 7.366 of March 3, 1980.

15

The Police Chief career is ranked from classes 1 (the lowest rank) to 4 (highest rank).

The general chief of the state Judiciary Police is chosen among the Police Chiefs of class 4,

and is the coordinator of the whole institution. The Police Inspector is generally the agent of

authority responsible for crime investigation and arresting, among other law enforcement

actions. The Police Scrivener is generally the agent of authority responsible for writing all

sorts of documents and the Judiciary Police procedures, such as crime investigation procedure

and misdemeanor investigation procedure. Both Police Inspector and Police Scrivener are

under the command of the Police Chief and also have their careers organized from classes 1 to

4. Above class 4, the highest rank of both careers (a kind of class 5) is named Comissário de

Polícia, the last rank an agent can reach. In each career, the lowest rank is usually under the

command of the highest one15. As Gibbons points out (2005, p. 84), ‘these ranks are a direct

manifestation of hierarchical power relations’. As we will see in section 3.2., the participants

can be linguistically realized in Move 3, the narrative part of the PR, where the victim

attendance at the police station is emphasized, as follows: ”a comunicante comparece nesta

DP para registrar que …”. Also in Move 5, where the people involved in PR events (victims,

witnesses, suspects, etc.) are just named as: “participante” – “participant”, who are identified

through their complete personal data. On the other hand, the judiciary police personnel

are identified only by their names and ID number, and their roles in this social

activity are of: “atendente” – “attendant”, “chefe plt” – “chief of team on duty” and

“titular do órgão” - “chief of police station”. Thus, the members of the Judiciary Police

institution have their careers organized according to a strictly hierarchical order, which shows

that, as participants of the PR genre, their relations are influenced by this hierarchical

network. Despite of this, the Judiciary Police members, as institutional peers, can have a

higher degree of familiarity, so the social distance among them is possibly a little bit less than

the maximal.

3.1.3 The role played by language (mode)

According to Hasan (1989, p. 58), the mode can be described under three main

different factors: 1) the role of language (constitutive or ancillary), 2) the process sharing

(active or passive through graphic or phonic channel) and 3) the medium (spoken or

written). Firstly, the role of language in the PR genre is constitutive, since the interaction of

reporting a criminal or non-criminal event is materialized through written language. As we

will see bellow in section 3.2, Moves 1, 2, 5 and 6 mostly consist of nominal and adverbial

15 Article 77, § 1, of the State Law no. 7.366 of March 3, 1980.

16 words and groups which role is to present information about participants and their

identification, as well as about the reported event and PR circumstances. On the other hand,

Move 3 refers to the narrative part of the PR and demonstrates the central role of written

language which is to narrate reported facts. Secondly, in terms of process sharing, that is, the

possibility of the addressee of either sharing the process of text creation (active) or coming in

contact with it as a finished product (passive), the PR possible addressees are more proximal

to passive, since the channel, that is, the way “through which the addressee comes in contact

with the speaker’s messages” (HASAN, 1989, p. 58), is graphic instead of phonic, for the

written text favours a more passive role of the addressee in the process sharing, since it is

received as a finished product with little or no room for intervention or dialogue, except in the

moment of the PR production where the role of the police officer in the process of text

creation is fundamental. Thirdly, concerning medium, the text message is conveyed to the

possible addressees through the written medium and graphic channel, instead of the spoken

medium and phonic channel. This suggests a greater distance between the participants than if

the text were oral and synchronically produced or received. Finally, it is relevant to highlight

the importance of the social interaction between the police officer and the person (victim or a

third person) who narrates the events, when the latter tells orally what happened and the

former writes it down.

3.2. Move analysis

Based on three analytical categories, namely linguistic, intuitive and typographic

(HENDGES, 2008, p. 101-129), discussed earlier, I analyzed the PR general structure and

identified seven moves: 1) identifying and situating the agency, the PR and its circumstances;

2) classifying the fact and its circumstances; 3) narrating (reporting) the facts; 4) indicating

the addressee of the PR; 5) identifying the participants (victims and/or complainant,

witnesses, suspects); and 6) identifying the personnel responsible for the report.

The PR is a highly structured genre, therefore there are no major variations in its

sequence of moves, which are recurrent and obey the same order in the 60 samples of the

corpus as follows: 3.2.1 Move 1 - Identifying and situating the agency, the PR and its circumstances

This move aims at identifying the institution, Polícia Civil, and the city, Itaara, where

the report is produced. In this move, we can also see the sequential number of the PR, as well

17 as date, time, and means by which the facts were reported to the Police. So, the purpose of

this move is to inform the circumstances of time and place in which the PR genre was

produced and printed. These data are relevant if one needs to search and retrieve the PR from

the Police files. This retrieval can be done in anywhere with access to the Police computing

system. So the recurrent main steps through which this move can be realized are three:

Step 1: identifying the institution, city and page number.

Step 2: numbering the PR and providing the date and time of its print.

Step 3: providing the date and time of PR production, indicating means of report and

the number of the computer used to send the PR to the police computing system.

Figure 2 – Move 1 from PR #390/2005

Linguistically, as we can see in Figure 2, Move 1 shows features of a formulaic

move, since it does not change its structure and linguistic components in all the samples

analyzed. The identification referred to in Step 1 is mostly realized through noun groups

referring to circumstances: the noun group “polícia civil” (civil police), for identifying the

institution; the noun group “Itaara”, for identifying the city, and the noun group “folha 1”

(sheet 1), for identifying the page. In step 2, we see the noun goup “ocorrência” (report)

followed by the numerals “320/2005”, indicating the sequential number of the PR and the

year it was produced; the numerals “20/09/2009” (09/20/2009) and “10:24:00” indicate date

and time of PR printing. Finally, in step 3, the date and time of PR production are indicated

by the numerals “26/09/2005” (09/26/2005) and the adverbial group “as 14:14 horas" (at

14:14). The noun group and the epithet “comunicação: pessoal” (communication:

personal) indicate the means by which the event was reported to the police and the

abbreviation “transmit.” (transmitt.), from the passive finite “transmitido” (transmitted)

means that the PR was already sent to the police computing system. The last line of this step,

the noun group “micro” (micro), a short form of “microcomputador” (microcomputer), is

followed by the numeral that identifies it “7802” and the noun group “mono”. The linguistic

features of this move indicate that there are no explicit processes, therefore there are no

clauses, but single words or at most groups in the rank scale. It is characteristic of a formulaic

move, as we will see in most of next moves that usually presents words as headings for

MOVE 1

18 indicating information that is fast and easy to grasp as well as guide for filling fields

necessary to produce the genre.

3.2.2 Move 2 - Classifying the fact and its circumstances When a person reports a human behavior to the police, the police officer who

receives it, has to obtain from the complainant all the facts and their circumstances. After

hearing the person (generally the victim), the police officer has to analyze the fact and

compare it with the human behavior described in the criminal code as crime. The aim of the

comparison is to check if the human behavior reported by the victim matches one of the

behaviors established in the criminal code. In the case of the corpus of this study, the purpose

would be to verify if the reported behavior can be classified as one of the crimes against

honour, that is, Calúnia, Difamação or Injúria, each of which with its particular behaviors. So,

in classifying the facts, the police officer will preliminarily describe whether what is reported

by the victim or other person is a crime and what sort of crime it is.

After this tentative classification, the PR is reexamined by the head of the police

station (Delegado de Polícia), who decides about the final classification of the reported facts

based on their interpretation and on the criminal code. This classification can change

according to what is investigated and cleared until the final report is issued. This move also

presents the date, time and place where the facts occurred with detailed information about

them and is realized through the following three steps:

Step 1: establishing the legal or technical classification by analyzing the reported

fact.

Step 2: providing spatiotemporal circumstances of the reported fact.

Step 3: providing information about the perpetrator’s modus operandi in terms of

where and how the fact was perpetrated (area, way, instrument, behaviour, means of access).

Figure 3 – Move 2 from PR #390/2005

As shown in figure 3, Move 2 is linguistically realized by noun groups, followed by

colons, which give names to the fields that are filled with the required information. Step 1 is

named “fato” (fact) followed by the legal or technical classification based on the fact

reported. In the case of our corpus, “Calúnia”,”Difamação” or “Injúria” are the options

MOVE 2

19 available for this field, followed by the finite “consumado” (consummated), instead of the

finite “tentado” (attempted), an alternative option that does not apply to our corpus. In Step

2, the adverbial groups “25/09/2009 as 17:30 horas ate 25/09/2009 as 18:00 horas” (from

09/25/2009 at 17:30 to 09/25/2009 at 18:00) and “BR 158 – Itaara – RS – Brasil, via

pública, cemitério” (federal road 158, Itaara City, RS state, Brazil, public thoroughfare,

cemetery) indicate the spatiotemporal circumstances of the reported fact. Step 3 is realized

through noun groups referring to “área, forma, instrumento, atuação” (area, way,

instrument, behavior) and prepositional groups referring to “vias de acesso” (means of

access). Although all noun and prepositional groups are followed by a colon, which

presupposes that information must be provided in the field that comes next, only the

information related to the field area , that is, if the fact happened in an urban or rural area, is

provided in almost all the samples of the corpus. This is probably due to the lack of police

officers’ interest in filling these fields, since this information also appears in other forms

which also feed the computing data system of the judiciary police. 3.2.3 Move 3 - Narrating (reporting) the facts

This component can be considered the main move of the PR genre. It is the history

of the facts. The victim or the other person who reports them on behalf (or not) of the victim

narrates what happened to the police officer, who then produces a detailed summary of the

whole event based on what is told by the person who gives the information to the State,

represented in this practice by the police officer. This move generally offers a narrative of the

behavior of each participant of the criminal event (victim, witnesses, suspects) with its causes

and consequences. Usually, the PR presents the victim’s and sometimes the perpetrator’s (if

present) preliminary version of the facts. Both versions will eventually have to be included in

the procedure.

In the corpus of this study, no suspect was present during the issue of the PR, so

their preliminary version does not appear. According to what is narrated in this move, the

police officer will classify (typify) the fact in accordance with the criminal behavior described

in the criminal code as a crime. If the fact narrated is not a crime (i.e., the human behavior

narrated in this move does not fit with the behavior described in the specified section of the

criminal code), it will be classified as a non-criminal fact. Yet, this tentative classification is

submitted to the chief of the team on duty and to the police chief (Delegado de Polícia) in

charge of the police station. In this move, if the victim knows only part of the suspects’ (or

witnesses’) name, it will be mentioned here. If their names are thoroughly identified, they will

be in Move 5. Move 3 can generally be realized through the four steps below:

20

Step 1: emphasizing the victim or complainant attendance.

Step 2: restating circumstances (time and place).

Step 3: describing the perpetrator’s behavior (criminal or non-criminal fact).

Step 4: stating the victim’s volition of suing or not the perpetrator and/or informing

the victim about the deadline for suing them.

Figure 4 – Move 3 from PR #390/2005

Linguistically, with respect to delimitation and appropriate definition of Move 3 as a

narrative, it is relevant to present the notion of rhetorical mode (also known as text types,

rhetorical functions, or kinds of discourse) (Meurer, 2002). On a study where he intended to

discuss the crucial differences between the notion of genre and rhetorical mode, Meurer

(Ibidem, p. 67) defined the latter as similar textual strategies, differently clustering in different genres, which are utilized by writers as a means to textualize specific parts and functions of their texts. Thus, rhetorical modes are recognized patterns of textual resources, which are available for the production of specific genres. The rhetorical organization of specific genres is realized by the set of rhetorical modes that a text producer may use in order to indicate to readers how his/her text is organized and what the functional relationship is between the several parts of the text and their relationship with the textual architecture as a whole (Ibidem, p. 11).

Regarding the notion of Rhetorical Mode, Meurer (Ibidem, p. 67), divides it into two

broad categories: Traditional Rhetorical Modes and Organizational Rhetorical Modes, with

their corresponding subcategories, as summarized in Chart 8.

Chart 8: Meurer’s Rhetorical Modes (2002, p. 67)

(adapted from Motta-Roth and Hendges, 2010, p. 48)

TYPES TRADITIONAL ORGANIZATIONAL

Subtypes Narration, Description, Exposition, Argumentation

Macrostructural (Textual patterns)

Microstructural (Semantic Relations)

Subcategories Illustration, Classification, Explanation, Process, Definition,

etc.

Situation-Evaluation, Hypothetical-Real, General-

Particular

Matching, Prospection or Prediction, Retrospection or

Labeling

MOVE 3

21

For the analysis of Move 3, it is relevant to note the traditional category of narration,

for it comprises the textual strategies most common in the instantiation of a PR genre. For

Meurer (Ibidem, p. 66), four types of discourses can be identified, that is, “four basic natural

needs that are fulfilled in discourse”. According to him, when we use language we want to

explain or inform about something (exposition). We want to convince somebody (argument).

We want to tell what a thing looked like – or sounded like, or felt like (description). We want

to tell what happened (narration).

Although the subcategories of exposition and description can be present in this

component, since information can often be given or a suspect can be described by the

narrator, our primary concern in this move is the purpose conveyed in narration, whose

intention is to present an event to the reader – what happened and how it happened. The event itself may be grand or trivial, a battle or a ball game, a presidential campaign or a picnic; but whatever it is, the intention is to give the impression of movement in time, to give some immediate impression of the event, the sense of witnessing an action. (Brooks and Warren, 1972, p. 44-45, apud Meurer, 2002, p. 66).

So, in the PR the narrator intends to present a criminal or non-criminal event (that

they suffered or witnessed) to the reader with all its circumstances, that is, what happened,

how, when and where it happened, etc, in a temporal sequence. In this sense, for better

understanding of Move 3, it is useful to present the definition of narrative and how it is

structured.

According to Labov & Waletzky (1967, p. 27-37), narrative is defined “as one

method of recapitulating past experience by matching a verbal sequence of clauses to the

sequence of events that actually occurred” (Ibidem, p. 12). Therefore, PR narratives

recapitulates past experiences in terms of criminal and non-criminal events and police officers

aim to report them in the same order as the original events occurred based on what is

informed by the narrator. The overall structure of narratives is divided into five sections:

orientation, complication, evaluation, resolution and coda.

Orientation consists of “a group of free clauses that precede the first narrative

clause”. In this sense, ”they serve to orient the listener in respect to person, place, time and

behavioral situation” (Ibidem, p. 27). It should be emphasized, however, that not always

narratives have the orientation section, and, if present, not always the orientation sections

perform the four mentioned functions. Frequently, the orientation can also be performed by

phrases and lexical items in narrative clauses.

Complication is not clearly defined by Labov and Waletzky (1967), however they

point out that the complication (or complicating action) is “regularly terminated by a result”

22 (Ibidem, p. 28), after which comes the evaluation section. So, it can be inferred that

complication is located between Orientation and Evaluation sections, whose limits have to be

detected in order to identify the complicating action, that could also be made through

isolating the result, using semantic criteria and functional analysis, so that it can be possible

to find when the narrative actually ends, as well as when the result begins and is completed.

According to Bastos (2008, p. 83), however, the complicating action is justly the temporal

sequence of clauses that refer to past events, typically build with verbs in the past. In other

words, it is the narrative itself. In this sense, among the five elements of the narrative above

mentioned, complication would be its only mandatory element, without which there would

not be narrative.

Evaluation is “frequently located at the break between the complicating action and

the resolution of these complications” (Labov & Waletzky, op. cit., p. 30). This signals (a

function performed by evaluation section in most narratives) “where the complication has

reached a maximum”, a point without which is “difficult to distinguish the complicating

action from the result” (Ibidem, p. 30). It is important to highlight, however, that many

narratives have the result amalgamated with the evaluation, so that “a single narrative clause

both emphasizes the importance of the result and states it” (Ibidem, p. 30). So, evaluation

can be defined “as that part of the narrative that reveals the attitude of the narrator towards

the narrative by emphasizing the relative importance of some narrative units as compared to

others” (Ibidem, p. 32).

Resolution is defined as “that portion of the narrative sequence that follows the

evaluation. If the evaluation is the last element, then the resolution section coincides with the

evaluation” (Ibidem, p. 35). For Bastos (op. cit., p. 83), the resolution section would be the

finalization of the sequence of events of the complicating action.

Coda, as an additional element after the resolution section, “is a functional device

for returning the verbal perspective to the present moment”, since “the actual sequence of

events described in the narrative does not, as a rule, extend up to the present”. This function

can signal the end of the narrative and is performed through many devices, such as: a) deixis

(that, there, those, this, here, these),”that points to a referent instead of naming it explicitly”

(Labov & Waletzky, op. cit., p. 35-36); b) an incident, which is not relevant to narrative

sequence, that pursues one of the actors up to the present moment; and c) the narrative effect

upon the narrator extended up to the present moment.

It is important to point out that the suggested narrative structure, according to its

proponents, is not uniform, since they can vary, in accordance with its degree of complexity,

23 its number of structural elements and the variety of its functions. However, in more complex

narratives performed by verbal skilled narrators, there is a higher probability of finding the

five mentioned elements of narrative.

The structure and analysis of narrative in the PR can be summarized in Chart 9.

Chart 9: Narrative analysis based on Labov & Waletzky (1967)

NARRATIVE SECTIONS

PR #353/2009 CALÚNIA

PR #723/2004 DIFAMAÇÃO

PR #629/2008 INJÚRIA

1 – ORIENTATION

Comunica que na data e hora supra mencionada

A comunicante registra

Comunica que participou de uma festa de umbanda de final de ano, na casa de umbanda Xangô e Abasse, no Parque

Osório, sendo que no decorrer da festa,

2 – COMPLICATION

tomou conhecimento que o seu - Zé Louco – tinha dito para o Fulano de Tal, há cerca de quatro meses, que o comunicante estava mantendo relações sexuais com a sua filha adotiva desde que a menina era

pequena, sendo que a mesma tem hoje 18 anos de idade. Que o comunicante tão logo soube foi até a casa de Zé louco para tirar

a limpo o que ele estava dizendo e Zé Louco não quis nem ouvir o que o Fulano

de Tal e o comunicante tinham para lhe dizer, e entrou em casa logo que eles disseram a que vieram lhe procurar.

que vem sendo difamada por suas vizinhas Fulana de Tal e

Beltrana de tal que andam falando pela vizinhança que a comunicante é amante de um

vizinho chamado Sicrano de Tal.

o vizinho Fulano de Tal e sua companheira Sicrana de Tal começaram a ofender as

pessoas da festa. O comunicante é negro e foi ofendido como negro sujo, ladrão, bagaceira.

3 – EVALUATION

Que o comunicante se sentiu ofendido assim como as pessoas que estavam

presentes.

4 – RESOLUTION

5 – CODA

Foi orientado a ingressar com queixa crime no Fórum local, através de um advogado,

no prazo máximo de seis meses. Que Zé louco é pedreiro e mora na primeira

casa depois da loja Agromix, na Estrada Velha do Perau. Era o registro.

Fulana e Beltrana moram na Rua

Pernambuco próximo ao número x, em Itaara. Não sabe maiores dados sobre as Itaara. Não sabe maiores

dados sobre as autoras. Foi cientificada que tem seis meses para

queixa-crime, no foro.

Que o comunicante deseja

representar criminalmente contra Fulano de Tal e Sicrana de Tal.Que

não é a primeira vez que eles ofendem as pessoas, especialmente

os negros que participam da casa. Que Fulano e Sicrana são alcoólatras.

Nada mais.

As we see above in chart 9, Evaluation is not always present in the PR narrative16

and Resolution does not belong to the time of narrative, but to the time of interaction

between the narrator and the police officer. In this sense, Resolution aligns with Coda, since

both stand in a time out of the narrative events and point out to the moment in which the PR

is produced at the police station.

Finally, it is important to highlight the PR main recurrent processes with respect to

narrative clauses. As chart 9 indicates, the finites in the narrative clauses are describing a

sequence of events related to the simple past tense, such as “tomou (conhecimento)”, “foi (até

a casa do Zé Louco)”, “(Zé) não quis (nem ouvir)”, in the PR #353/2009 example; and

“começaram (a ofender)” e “foi ofendido”, in the PR 629/2008 example. However, the

second example (PR #723/2004) shows clauses in passive voice and present tense, such as

16 Herein, according to Labov and Waletzky (1967, p. 29), narratives of vicarious experience can lack

“the evaluation section that is typical of personal experience” (Ibidem, p. 29).

24 “vem sendo difamada” and “andam falando”, for indicating an action that was occurring in

the past, but still continues in the present. These narratives clauses are predominantly in the

complication section. The processes in the coda section, in clauses such as “Zé Louco é

Pedreiro e mora na primeira casa depois da loja Agromix”, “Fulana e Beltrana moram na

Rua Pernambuco”, “eles ofendem as pessoas” e “Que Fulano e Sicrana são alcoólatras”, are

in the present tense and convey additional information in relation to the narrated events. 3.2.4. Move 4 - Indicating the addressee of the PR

In this move, the police officer indicates the police station (or another police unit) to

where the PR is sent. The sending of the PR is made either depending on the place where the

reported fact occurred or on the matter of what is being reported. For example, a PR on

murder can be sent to a special unit of homicides, and a PR on theft that occurred downtown

can be sent to a corresponding (downtown) precinct. This move is split into two parts of the

PR: the first part is located before Move 5 and the second one after it. This move is realized

by two steps:

Step 1: identifying the name of the police station that will investigate the case.

Step 2: providing a field (line) to write down on a printed version of the PR the

identification of the police station that will investigate the case.

Figure 5 – Move 4 from PR #390/2005

In Move 4, as shown in figure 5, we see, in step 1, two prepositional groups: “órgão

de destino” (institution of destination) followed by the name of the police unit addressee of

the PR: “Itaara/Delegacia de Polícia” (Itaara/Police Station). In step 2, we see the noun

group “destino 1.ª via” (original PR destination) followed by a blank line, where the name

of the police unit that will receive the original PR can be written down.

3.2.5. Move 5 - Identifying the participants (victims and/or complainant, witnesses, suspects)

The purpose of this move is to identify, if possible, all the main participants of the

narrated event in Move 3, such as complainant and/or victims, witnesses and suspects. The

MOVE 4

25 Judiciary Police has access to data banks (with the identification of people who made their

identity card, driver’s license, fire gun license, vehicle registration certificate, etc.) through

which every citizen personal data can be accessed by a police officer conducting a criminal

investigation. Once a person goes to the police station to fill out a PR, his/her data can be

retrieved from these data banks without the need to fill the required fields, except to update

them or to add further information. So, in this move, each event participant is identified by

name, affiliation, date and place of birth, nationality, level of instruction, gender, skin colour,

address, profession, driver’s license number, ID number, work address and physical

conditions. After the end of every identification, there is a line on which each participant (if

present) has to sign. The signature of the victim (or of the person who informed the facts, v.

g., a military police officer) is a way of ensuring the legal responsibility of what is reported to

police. In this move, the victim is given the opportunity to express the intention of suing or

not the offender. Later, this will be a requirement for the prosecutor attorney’s action in

court. This move can be divided into three steps, one for each participant, as follows:

Step 1: identifying the victim and/or complainant by providing his/her personal data

and getting his/her signature and checking the victim’s option/will of prosecuting or not the

perpetrator;

Step 2: identifying the witness by providing his/her personal data;

Step 3: identifying the perpetrator (suspect, culprit, defendant, adolescent

lawbreaker) by providing his/her personal data.

Figure 6 – Move 5 from PR #390/2005 (only Step 1)17

Linguistically, in Move 5, as shown in Figure 6, we see headings followed by colon

and next to them the required information. In Step 1, these headings present initially the noun

phrase “PARTICIPANTE 1” (participant 1) followed by “VITIMA” (victim) and next to it the

epithet “PRESENTE” (present), which means the victim was present at police station to

17 The other steps (2 and 3) have the same form of step 1, except the yes/no option/choice of perpetrator’s prosecution.

MOVE 5

26 report the PR. Bellow, we see the personal data and physical characteristics of participant 1 in

this order: “NOME” (name), “FILIAÇÃO (affiliation), “NASCIDO” (date of birth), the

participant physical characteristics and marital status – which, in the sample of Figure 6, are

“FEMININO” (female), “BRANCA” (white) and “SOLTEIRO” (single) -, “INSTRUÇÃO”

(level of instruction), “COR DOS OLHOS” (eye color), “NATURAL” (place of birth),

“BRASILEIRO NATO” (Brazilian), “DOCUMENTO” (Identity), “C.N.H” (driver’s license),

“PROFISSÃO” (profession), “CARGO” (post), “TRABALHA” (job address), “CONDIÇÃO

FÍSICA” (physical condition). In step 1, we also see the sentence: “A VÍTIMA DESEJA VER

PROCESSADO?” (Does the victim wish the prosecution [against the perpetrator?]). After this

question, there is a “SIM/NÃO” (yes/no) answer option for this interrogative sentence that,

through a mental desiderative verbal process (wish), demands this information from the

victim. At the end of Step 1, we see the letter “a” followed by a blank line, which is an

abbreviation for “assinatura” (signature). Steps 2 and 3, which do not have this final question,

follow the same pattern of Step 1. However, Step 2 begins with the heading

“PARTICIPANTE 2” (participant 2) followed by “TESTEMUNHA” (witness), and Step 3

with the heading “PARTICIPANTE 3” (participant 3) followed by “AUTOR” (perpetrator).

3.2.6 Move 6 - Identifying the personnel responsible for the report

This move presents the identification of the police officers on duty responsible for

the report production. They generally work 12h or 24h shifts in groups of two or more

members at the police station, except in smaller cities where there is only one person each

time hired in a full time job responsible for the report, who, after that, is called at home. Each

team on duty is identified by letters of alphabet. For instance, if there are five teams, they will

be identified by letters ‘A’ to ‘E’. The police officers are identified by their names and ID

number. The amount of members in each team varies according to the needs of each city or

neighborhood based on the amount and complexity of activities in each state agency (police

station, judiciary area). In this move, three police officers are identified: the attendant, who

writes the PR, the chief of the team, who is responsible for revising the PR and supervising

other activities of the team, and the chief of police station, who coordinates all the personnel.

According to the state regulations, the Judiciary Police is an institution organized under the

principles of hierarchy and discipline, so the aforementioned identification obeys a

hierarchical order, from the lowest to the highest ranked police officer on duty. Finally, beside

each police officer’s name, there is a line above which each component has to sign the report.

27 It is a way to ensure legal responsibility of those who are directly or indirectly involved in this

social practice. So, this move is realized through the following four steps:

Step 1: identifying the team on duty.

Step 2: identifying the police officer who typed the PR.

Step 3: identifying the chief of the team on duty.

Step 4: identifying the head of the police station (Delegado de Polícia) on duty.

Figure 7 – Move 6 from PR #390/2005

Finally, in Move 6, as shown in Figure 7, we see the same pattern of the other moves,

i.e., it is composed with headings followed by colon and after that the required information.

They are linguistically realized through titles such as “EQUIPE” (team) (Step 1), and

“ATENDENTE” (attendant) (Step 2), as well as “CHEFE PLT” (team chief) (Step 3) and

“TITULAR DO ÓRGÃO” (head of police station) (Step 4). These participants are

linguistically identified both by their ID number, a numeral with ten digits, and their complete

names followed by the letter “a” (s) and a subsequent line for the correspondent signature, as

explained in Move 6.

To conclude this section, it is worth to mention that this analysis was performed in a

specific corpus of PRs related only to language crimes against honour, so there might be

other components that can be optional or obligatory in other sorts of PR related to thefts,

burglaries, murders etc. In these cases, for instance, we can have fields for describing

documents and objects (vehicles, fire guns, stolen goods etc.) seized by the police or

presented to the police by someone as evidence, as well as a list with names of people

separately interviewed while the PR is being made. Although they are not present in the

analyzed corpus, some of these components can be found exceptionally in PRs concerning

crime against honor.

On the next two pages, we will see the PR moves and steps summarized in the chart

10, as well as a sample of a PR on crime against honour with its moves in figure 8.

MOVE 6

28

Chart 10: PR Moves and Steps

MOVES

STEPS

M 1

M 2

M 3

M 4

M 5

M 6

Identifying and

situating the agency, the PR

and its circumstances

Classifying the fact and its

circumstances

Narrating (reporting)

the facts

Indicating the addressee of

the PR

Identifying the

participants (victims and/or complainant,

witnesses, suspects)

Identifying the

personnel responsible for

the report

S 1

Identifying the institution, city

and page number

Establishing the legal or technical classification by

analyzing the reported fact

Emphasizing the victim or

complainant attendance

Identifying the name of the

police station that will

investigate the case

Identifying the victim and/or

complainant by providing his/her personal data and

getting their signature and checking the

victim’s intention of prosecuting or

not the perpetrator

Identifying the team on duty

S 2

Numbering the PR and providing the

date and time of its print

Providing

spatiotemporal circumstances of the reported fact

Restating

circumstances (time and place)

Providing a field

(line) to write down in a

printed version of the PR the

identification of the police station

that will investigate the

case

Identifying the witness by

providing their personal data

Identifying the police officer

who typed the PR

S 3

Providing the date and time of PR

production, indicating means of

report and the number of the

computer used to send the PR to the police computing

system

Providing information about

perpetrator’s ‘modus operandi’ in terms of where and how the fact was perpetrated

(area, way, instrument,

behavior, means of access)

Describing the perpetrator’s

behavior (criminal or non-

criminal fact)

Identifying the perpetrator

(suspect, culprit, defendant, adolescent

lawbreaker) by providing his/her

personal data

Identifying the

chief of the team on duty

S 4

Stating the victim’s volition of suing or not the perpetrator

and/or informing the victim about the deadline for

suing them.

Identifying the head of the

police station (Delegado de

Polícia) on duty

29

In Figure 8, each of the aforementioned moves are produced by the police officer by

filling in fields sequentially displayed on the computer screen, as shown in the sequence of

figures displayed as appendix (from letter C to N) in the end of this paper.

Figure 8 – sample of a crime against honour PR and its moves

30

3.2.8 The three different language crimes against honour

Charts 11 to 13 show the linguistic content of the moves extracted from 3 PRs,

chosen among the corpus of 60 PRs, which represent the three language crimes against

honour: Calúnia, Difamação and Injúria.

Chart 11: PR #353/2009 on Calúnia and its moves

PAGE 1

MOVE 1

MOVE 2

MOVE 3

MOVE 4

MOVE 5

STEP 1:

STEP 2:

PAGE 2

Repetition of Step 1 from

Move 1

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

31

MOVE 5

STEP 2 (continuação):

STEP 3:

NOT PRESENT

MOVE 4

MOVE 6

Chart 12: PR # 723/2004 on Difamação and its moves

PAGE 1

MOVE 1

MOVE 2

Added Information18

MOVE 3

MOVE 4

18 These data are not originally part of this PR. They were added in the system after the procedure (termo circunstanciado) have been concluded and sent to court.

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

32

MOVE 5

STEP 1:

STEP 2:

NOT PRESENT

STEP 3:

Added

Information19

PAGE 2

Repetition of Step 1 from

Move 1

MOVE 5

STEP 3:

Added Information20

MOVE 4

MOVE 6

19 Idem footnote 8. 20 Idem footnote 8.

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

33

Chart 13: PR #629/2008 on Injúria and its moves

PAGE 1

MOVE 1

MOVE 2

MOVE 3

MOVE 4

MOVE 5

STEP 1:

STEP 2:

NOT PRESENT

STEP 3:

PAGE 2 Repetition of Step 1 from

Move 1

MOVE 5 STEP 3

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

34

MOVE 6

In chart 11, the PR #353/2009 presents an example of Calúnia in which the false

offensive fact is the following: “o seu – Zé Louco – tinha dito para o Fulano, há cerca de

quatro meses, que o comunicante estava mantendo relações sexuais com a sua filha adotiva,

desde que a menina era pequena, sendo que a mesma hoje tem 18 anos de idade”. This

narrative passage, in English, with the corresponding transitivity analysis, is the following:

“Mr. - Zé Louco - (Sayer), four months ago (Circumstance: Time), had told (Process:

Verbal) the John Doe (Receiver) that the complainant (Actor) has been having (Process:

Material) sex with his stepdaughter (Circumstance: Accompaniment) since she (Carrier)

was (Process: Relational) a little girl (Attribute), and she (Carrier) is (Relational) now 18

years old (Attribute). The first clause of the passage above is Verbal, the second is Material

and the third is Relational. Note, however, that the second and third clauses are functioning as

projected clauses (message) of the first (verbal clause). The second and third clauses would be

the false accusation made by the Actor Zé Louco in the original speech event which is

indicated by the verbal group “tinha dito” (had told). So, the original speech event is reported

in the context of the PR production by the projected clause in a form of report clause instead

of quote clause.

In chart 12, the PR #723/2004 shows an example of Difamação, a crime in which the

offensive fact against the reputation of the victim is the following: “a comunicante registra

que vem sendo difamada por suas vizinhas Fulana de Tal e Beltrana de Tal que andam

falando pela vizinhança que a comunicante é amante de um vizinho chamado Sicrano de

Tal”. In English, this passage is analyzed as follows: "the complainant (Sayer) informs

(Process: Verbal) that she (Receiver) has been defamed (Process: Verbal) by her neighbors

Jane Doe and Jane Roe (Sayer) who (Sayer) have been talking (Process: Verbal) around the

neighborhood (Circumstance: Space) that the complainant (Identified) is (Relational) lover

of a neighbor called John Doe (Identifier)”. In the first, second and third clauses we see

verbal processes, whereas, in the fourth, we see a relational clause projected from the third

verbal clause. However, what defines the offensive fact is the clause: “the complainant is

lover of a neighbor called John Doe”, where the victim is identified as the lover of a neighbor

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

35 called John Doe, the identifier. So, this identifying clause, through a relational process, turns

the event into a determined fact that can be classified as Difamação.

In chart 13, the PR #629/2008 presents the following example of Injúria: “no

decorrer da festa o vizinho Fulano de Tal e a sua companheira Sicrana de Tal começaram a

ofender as pessoas da festa. O comunicante é negro e foi ofendido como negro sujo, ladrão,

bagaceira”. The transitivity analysis of this passage, in English, is as follows: “during the

party (Circumstance: Time), the neighbor John Doe and his concubine Jane Doe (Sayer)

started to insult (Process: Verbal) people (Receiver) at the party (Circumstance: Space).

The complainant (Carrier-Receiver) is (Process: Relational) black (Attribute) and was

insulted (Process: Verbal) as dirty black, thief, rabble (Verbiage)”. Here, we see three

clauses that describe the insults. The first and third are verbal clauses and the second is an

attributive relational. Note that in this passage the offenses are not in projected clauses as the

two previous examples, but in verbiage. This variation linguistically demonstrates and

confirms one of the legal differences between Calúnia and Difamação on one side and

Injúria on the other. Since, both in Calúnia and Difamação the insults are committed by

charging someone with a fact, this fact needs a clause to be defined, reason why it is defined

in a projected clause, whereas in Injúria, the offenses are usually just vague and imprecise

words, wherefore they are realized in verbiage.

Finally, it is important to emphasize that the three examples of PR discussed above

did not show any projected paratactic clause in quote, whose function would be to

recapitulate the wording of the original speech event, only hypotactic report that serves to

“project not the wording, but the meaning of the original language event” (THOMPSON,

2004, p. 10). So, further quantitative and qualitative research will be needed to explore,

among other linguistic issues, the recurrence of quotes (paratactic) and reports (hypotactic)

in the narrative move of PR.

36

CONCLUSION

This study showed that the PR is a genre that linguistically realizes a legal social

interaction through which the victim or a third person informs the police about a criminal or

non-criminal event. The PR is comprised of six fixed moves that do not vary, wherefore it is

considered a formulaic genre. In all moves, we see headings providing, and implicitly asking

for information to fill out the form fields, as well as adverbial and nominal groups with the

same function. In addition, it is a way of guiding the police officer making the PR easier to

complete and standardizing professional routines and procedures.

We also see a predominantly narrative function in Move 3, where narrative clauses

recapitulate a sequence of past events generally experienced by the narrator with processes

prevalently in the simple past tense, an indication of narration as one of the traditional

rhetorical modes, along with other subtypes of the same category found in Moves 1, 2, 4, 5, 6,

whose functions (that label them) is primarily to identify and situate people and places and

classify facts through the corresponding rhetorical functions of description and exposition.

These two rhetorical functions can also be found in Move 3, as it was commented elsewhere,

since one of its main purposes is to describe what a person looked like (description) or to

inform about something to someone (exposition). So, narration, description and exposition are

the main subtypes of traditional rhetorical modes present in the PR genre.

Perhaps, due to these linguistic features, we see the predominance of the declarative

expression (statement) (Halliday and Matthiesen, 2004, p. 114) as its primary speech function,

composed, in terms of rank scale, of clauses (prevalent in Move 3), and groups and single

words (prevalent in the other moves). They are part of the interpersonal meaning of giving

information, from which demanding information is the implicit counterpart linguistically

realized through the incongruent mood of “declarative” nouns, such as (in Move 5) “nome”

(name), “filiação” (affiliation), etc, followed by the semicolon and the demanded information.

It indicates that, under the linguistic surface of single words, there are in fact two interrogative

grammatical moods that ask “what is your name?” and “what is your parents’ name?”.

In terms of the context of situation, the PR is a result of a social interaction that

involves the police officer and the narrator (victims, witnesses, suspects or perpetrators) and

the relationship among them reveals an asymmetry between the police officer and the

narrator. The former stands for the coercive power of the state and decides what is relevant

from what is informed by the narrator. In this sense, the corpus of this study differs from the

37 corpus used by Labov and Waletzky (1967) in their research on narrative analysis, since it

was based upon oral versions of personal experience recorded directly from the narrators,

whereas the corpus of this paper is a “second hand” narrative, for it has the mediation of the

police officer, who writes what is reported by the narrator, whose voice tends to be in third

person, while the narrator’s voice in Labov and Waletzky is predominantly in first person.

Due to these features, in the first the indirect speech is predominant, whereas in the second we

see some passages of direct speech.

The PR is also a genre, produced in written medium, in which the language is

constitutive, fundamental, since without the written form it would not exist, and its process

sharing with the addressee (reader) is proximal to passive, because we do not see almost any

interference of the addressee in its production, except the active role of the police officer

during the social interaction with the narrator at the police station for producing the PR.

In relation to the social participants, the PR samples show a balance of data, since out

of 60 collected PRs, 29 victims of the crimes against honour were female and 29 were male,

whereas 2 were perpetrated against both at same time. Concerning perpetrators, 23 were

female, 25 were male and 12 were both. In terms of place, 26 facts happened in the victims’

residences and 29 in public spaces, such as schools, workplaces, public thoroughfares, etc. In

relation to the level of proximity between the victims and perpetrators, the data show that

most victims and perpetrators (35) have a sort of closer relationship (they are spouses,

neighbors, employers and employees, schoolmates) and 25 of them did not inform any sort of

proximity in relation to the other. Since language crimes against honour are usually

committed during arguments, in moments of strong emotion, the data suggest that the

significant female participation as perpetrators (almost 50%) could mean that women would

be more prone to express linguistically, instead of physically, their anger if compared to men,

since in most other crimes involving physical action or offenses the male participation as

perpetrators is the smashing majority.

Therefore, we hope this preliminary study can serve as a starting point and stimulus

for further and deeper studies in PR genre and others that can be part of what I would call a

judiciary police system of genres, mainly in the field of critical discourse analysis and

appraisal theory concerning crimes against honour. Collection and analysis of quantitative

data will also be helpful for future research. Finally, this study can be useful in academic and

professional settings as a way to foster the study of the genre, mainly in classes of

composition in police academies to improve communication channels and thus to construct

clearer social practices that depend on language use. This is true mainly with respect to Move

38 3 (the other moods come practically ready in the computer system, it is just to fill out the

fields), which deals with the narration of facts, where the lexico-grammatical choices (in

terms of transitivity, modality and appraisal) are fundamental knowledge to enable police

officers to represent the facts in a more reliable way and closer to what was reported, avoiding

ambiguities, misrepresentations and other possibilities of reading different from those

intended by the complainant.

39

JUDICIARY POLICE SYSTEM OF GENRES: A GENRE ANALYSIS OF POLICE REPORT ON LANGUAGE CRIMES AGAINST HONOUR (CALÚNIA, DIFAMAÇÃO AND INJÚRIA)

One of the main and most common genres produced by the police, not only in Brazil but throughout the world, is perhaps the police report (henceforth PR), a genre whose main communicative function would be to inform the state police agency about the occurrence of a crime (a violation of the law) and, if identified, its perpetrator or suspect. Since this study aims at carrying out a genre analysis of the PR, revealing its generic structure, moves and respective functions, I will mainly base my task on the works of John Swales’ genre analysis, M. A. K. Halliday’s (1989) Systemic Functional Grammar and Labov and Waletsky’s (1967) narrative analysis. This preliminary study does not intend to be exhaustive, but it might be helpful not only for further deeper research, but also for revealing the formal and content scheme (Swales, 1990, apud Al-Ali, 2005) of PRs as well as the features of this professional genre. To reach this aim, 60 PRs on three types of crimes against honour (Calúnia, Difamação and Injúria) were randomly collected in the Police Station of Itaara city next to Santa Maria, central region of Rio Grande do Sul State, from 2006 to 2009. The choice of insult crimes report is due to the fact they are among the crimes committed through the use of language, so that they are called language crimes, i. e., a linguistic behavior that becomes a target of legal action (Gibbons, 2005, apud Fuzer, 2007). This research can help students of police academies to better understand and produce the PR genre and, for this same reason, would be useful for language courses in this area, since it is a sort of genre many people probably have already met as a personal experience in a police station. Plus, we can unveil a lot about how policemen represent crime in language. From a wider perspective, it can also provide a broader understanding of crime reports and the way language can be used in this legal environment.

KEY WORDS: police report – professional genre – language crimes – genre analysis

SISTEMA DE GÊNEROS DA POLÍCIA JUDICIÁRIA: UMA ANÁLISE DO GÊNERO BOLETIM DE OCORRÊNCIA SOBRE CRIMES DE LINGUAGEM CONTRA A HONRA (CALÚNIA, DIFAMAÇÃO

E INJÚRIA) Um dos principais e mais comuns gêneros produzidos pela polícia, não só no Brasil, mas em todo o mundo, talvez seja o boletim de ocorrência (doravante denominado de BO), gênero cuja função comunicativa principal consiste em informar a polícia, como um órgão do estado, sobre a ocorrência de um crime (uma violação da lei penal) e, caso identificado, o seu autor ou suspeito. Considerando que o objetivo deste estudo é fazer uma análise de gênero do boletim de ocorrência, revelando a sua estrutura com os movimentos e respectivas funções, serão utilizados como fundamento teórico os estudos sobre análise de gênero de John Swales (1990), sobre gramática sistêmico-funcional de Halliday e Hasan (1989), e sobre a análise da narrativa de Labov and Waletsky’s (1967). Este estudo preliminar não pretende ser exaustivo, mas poderá ser útil não somente para pesquisas posteriores mais aprofundadas sobre o assunto, mas também para revelar o esquema formal, o conteúdo (Swales, 1990, apud Al-Ali, 2005), e as propriedades do BO como gênero profissional. A fim de atingir tal objetivo, foram coletados aleatoriamente 60 BOs sobre crimes contra a honra na Delegacia de Polícia de Itaara, cidade contígua à Santa Maria, na região central do estado do Rio Grande do Sul, dos anos compreendidos entre 2006 e 2009. A escolha de ocorrências de crimes contra a honra deve-se ao fato de eles figurarem entre os crimes praticados por intermédio do uso da linguagem, razão pela qual são chamados de crimes de linguagem, isto é, um comportamento linguístico que se torna alvo da ação legal (Gibbons, 2005, apud Fuzer, 2007). Esta pesquisa pode servir de auxílio a alunos das academias de polícia no sentido de melhor compreender e produzir o gênero BO e, por esta mesma razão, pode ser também útil em cursos de letras nesta área, uma vez que o BO é um gênero com o qual muitas pessoas, como experiência pessoal, devem ter mantido contato em uma delegacia de polícia. Ademais, este estudo pode trazer revelações significativas acerca de como se dá, pelos policiais, a representação do crime por meio do uso da linguagem. Numa perspectiva mais ampla, este estudo poderá também fornecer uma maior compreensão acerca das ocorrências criminais e do modo como a linguagem pode ser utilizada nesse campo legal. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: boletim de ocorrência – gênero profissional –crimes de linguagem – análise de gênero

40

REFERENCES

AL-ALI, M. N. Communicating messages of solidarity, promotion and pride in death announcements genre in Jordanian newspapers. Discourse and Society, 2005, v. 16, n. 1, p. 5-31. _____. Religious affiliations and masculine power in Jordanian invitation genre. Discourse and Society, 2006, v. 17, n. 6, p. 691-714. BASTOS, Liliana Cabral. Estórias, vida cotidiana e identidade – uma introdução ao estudo da narrativa. In: CALDAS-COULTHARD, C. R.; SCLIAR-CABRAL, L. (Org.). Desvendando discursos: conceitos básicos. Florianópolis: Ed. da UFSC, 2008. BONINI, A.; MOTTA-ROTH, D. MEURER J. L. Gêneros: teorias, métodos, debates. São Paulo: Parábola, 2007. BRASIL. Presidência da República. Decreto-Lei n.º 2.848, de 07 de dezembro de 1940. Código Penal. Disponível em: <http://www.planalto.gov.br/CCIVIL/Decreto-Lei/Del2848.htm >. Acesso em: 19 jul. 2010. DELMANTO, Celso. Código Penal Anotado, 3. ed., São Paulo, Saraiva, 1982. DUDLEY-EVANS, T.; ST JOHN, M. Developments in ESP: a multi-disciplinary approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. FUZER, C. DELTA, São Paulo, v. 23, n. 2, 2007. p. 399-403. Review: GIBBONS, J. Forensic linguistics: an introduction to language in the justice system. Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. 337 p. GIBBONS, John. Forensic Linguistics: an introduction to language in the justice system. Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. 337 p. GUIMARÃES, Antônio Sérgio Alfredo Guimarães. Racial insult in Brazil. London, UK: Discourse and Society; vol. 14 (2): 133-151; SAGE Publications, 2003. HALLIDAY, M.A.K. Part A. In: HALLIDAY, M.A.K.; HASAN, R. Language, context, and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. HALLIDAY, M.; MATTHIESSEN, C. An introduction to functional grammar. 3. ed. London: Arnold, 2004. HARRÉ, R. Gramática e léxicos, vetores das representações sociais. In: JODELET, D. (Org.). As representações sociais. Trad. Lilian Ulup. Rio de Janeiro: EdUERJ, 2001. p. 105-122. HASAN, R. Part. B. In: HALLIDAY, M.A.K.; HASAN, R. Language, context and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. p. 52-116. HEBERLE, V. M. Critical reading: integrating principles of critical discourse analysis and gender studies. In: Ilha do Desterro (UFSC), 2000, v. 38, p. 115-139. HENDGES, G. R. Procedimentos e categorias para a análise da estrutura textual de gêneros. In: MOTTA-ROTH, D.; CABAÑAS, T.; HENDGES G. R. (Org.). Análises de textos e de discursos: relações entre teorias e práticas. Santa Maria: PPGL-UFSM, 2008. LABOV, W.; WALETZKY, J. Narrative analysis: oral versions of personal experience. In: HELM, J. (Ed.). Essays on the verbal and visual arts: proceedings of the 1966 Annual Spring Мееting of the American Ethnological Society. Seattle/London: University of Washington Press, 1967. p. 12-44. MEURER, J. L. Genre as diversity, and rhetorical mode as unity in language use. Ilha do Desterro, n. 43, p.61‐82, jul./dez. 2002. MOTTA-ROTH, D.; CABAÑAS, T.; HENDGES G. R. (Org.). Análises de textos e de discursos: relações entre teorias e práticas. Santa Maria: PPGL-UFSM, 2008.

41 MOTTA-ROTH, D.; HEBERLE, V. M. O conceito de “estrutura potencial do gênero” de Ruaqayia Hasan. In: MEURER, J. L.; BONINI, A.; MOTTA-ROTH, D. Gêneros, teorias, métodos, debates. São Paulo: Parábola, 2007. MOTTA-ROTH, D.; HENDGES G. R. Explorando Modalidades Retóricas sob a perspectiva da multimodalidade. In: MOTTA-ROTH, D.; T.; HENDGES G. R. (Org.). Gêneros Discursivos & Interfaces Teóricas. Santa Maria: PPGL-UFSM, 2010. RAVELLI, L. Getting started with functional grammar. In: Unsworth, L. (Ed.), Researching language in schools and communities. London: Continuum (Cassell), 2000, p. 27-64. RIO GRANDE DO SUL. Assembléia Legislativa. Lei Estadual n.º 7.366, de 03 de março de 1980. Dispõe sobre o Estatuto dos Servidores da Polícia Civil. Disponível em: <http://www.al.rs.gov.br/legiscomp/arquivo.asp?Rotulo=Lei nº 7366&idNorma=26&tipo=pdf>. Acesso em: 19 jul. 2010. _____. Assembléia Legislativa. Lei Estadual n.º 10.994, de 18 de agosto de 1997. Estabelece a organização básica da Polícia Civil, dispõe sobre sua regulamentação e dá outras providências. Disponível em:< http://www.al.rs.gov.br/legiscomp/arquivo.asp?Rotulo=Lei nº 10994&idNorma=216&tipo=pdf>. Acesso em: 19 jul. 2010. STREVENS, P. ESP after twenty years: a re-appraisal. In M. Tickoo (Ed.), ESP: State of the Art. Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Centre, 1988, p. 1-13. THOMPSON, G. Introducing functional grammar. 2. ed. London: Arnold, 2004. VIAN JR., Orlando. Inglês instrumental, inglês para negócios e inglês instrumental para negócios. DELTA [online]. 1999, vol.15, n.spe, pp. 437-457. ISSN 0102-4450.

42

APPENDICES

43

RETHORICAL

MOVES

PR1

PR 2

PR3

PR4

PR5

PR6

PR7

PR8

PR9

PR10

PR11

PR12

PR13

PR14

PR15

PR16

PR17

PR18

PR19

PR20

PR21

PR22

PR23

PR24

PR25

PR26

PR27

PR28

PR29

PR30

PR31

PR32

PR33

PR34

PR35

PR36

PR37

PR38

PR39

PR40

PR41

PR42

PR43

PR44

PR45

PR46

PR47

PR48

PR49

PR50

PR51

PR52

PR53

PR54

PR55

PR56

PR57

PR58

PR59

PR60

TO

TAL

1

Identifying and situating the

agency, the PR and its circumstances

+

+

+

+

+

+

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

2 Classifying the fact

and its circumstances

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

3 Narrating

(reporting) the facts

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

4

Indicating the addressee of the PR + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

5

Identifying the participants

(victims and/or complainant,

witnesses, suspects)

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

6 Identifying the

personnel responsible for the

report

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

APPENDIX A

TYPES AND FREQUENCY OF MOVES IN THE CORPUS

44

MO

VE

S

STEPS

PR1

PR 2

PR 3

PR 4

PR 5

PR 6

PR 7

PR 8

PR 9

PR 10

PR 11

PR 12

PR 13

PR 14

PR 15

PR 16

PR 17

PR 18

PR 19

PR 20

PR 21

PR 22

PR 23

PR 24

PR 25

PR 26

PR 27

PR 28

PR 29

PR 30

PR 31

PR 32

PR 33

PR 34

PR 35

PR 36

PR 37

PR 38

PR 39

PR 40

PR 41

PR 42

PR 43

PR 44

PR 45

PR 46

PR 47

PR 48

PR 49

PR 50

PR 51

PR 52

PR 53

PR 54

PR 55

PR 56

PR 57

PR58

PR 59

PR 60

TO

TA

L %

1

STEP 1 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

STEP 2 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

STEP 3 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

2

STEP 1 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

STEP 2 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

STEP 3 + + + + + + + + + + + . + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . + + + + + +

100%

3

STEP 1 + + + + + + + + . . . . + + + + . + . + + + . + . + + + + + + . + . + + . + . . . . + + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48%

STEP 2 + + . + + . + . + . . . + . . . + . + + + + + . + + + + + + . . + . . + + + + . + + + + . + + + + . . . + + + + + . . + 63%

STEP 3 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

STEP 4 + + . + . . + . + + + + + + + + + . + + + + + . + + + . + + . + . + + . + . + + + + . + + + + + + + + . . + + + + . + + 75%

4 STEP 1 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

STEP 2 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

5

STEP 1 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

STEP 2 . . . . . . . . . . . + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . + . . . . . . . . + . . . . . . . . . . + . . . . . . . . . . . . +

8,33%

STEP 3 . . . . . . . . . . . + . + + + . . . . . . . . . . . + . + . . + . . + . . + . + . + + . . . + . + . . + + + . + . . .

30%

6

STEP 1 + . + + + + + + + . . . + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + . + + + + + + + + + . + + + + + + + + + + + 90%

STEP 2 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

STEP 3 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

STEP 4 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

100%

APPENDIX B

TYPES AND FREQUENCY OF STEPS IN THE CORPUS

45

APPENDIX C

Figure 1 shows the first screen that is displayed when the police officer starts accessing the PR system by typing their id number and password.

Figure 1 – PR system.

46

APPENDIX D

In Figure 2, we can see the screen where the police officer has to choose the option 1 to begin to type the PR.

Figure 2 – Options displayed before starting to type the PR.

47

APPENDIX E

The following figures display the fields that are filled in by the police officer in order to elaborate all the moves of the PR. The data typed in this screen will result in the part of the

PR illustrated in the Figure 4.

Figure 3 – PR inclusion.

APPENDIX F

Figure 4 - PR move generated after filling in the field showed in Figure 3

48

APPENDIX G

Figures 5, 6 and 7 show the screens with the fields for including the participant (victim) that will result in the part of the PR illustrated in Figure 8.

Figure 5 – Participant inclusion.

49

APPENDIX H

Figure 6 – Participant inclusion (personal data).

50

APPENDIX I

Figure 7 – Participant inclusion (home and professional addresses).

APPENDIX J

Figure 8 – PR move generated after filling in the fields showed in Figures 5, 6 and 7

51

APPENDIX K

Figure 9 shows the screen that generates the PR section illustrated in Figure 10.

Figure 9 – PR inclusion

52

APPENDIX L

Figure 10 – PR moves (1, 2, 4 and 6) generated after filling in the fields showed in Figure 9

53

APPENDIX M

Figure 11 shows the screen where the narrative of the events (history) is typed,

generating the PR section illustrated in Figure 12.

Figure 11 – Narrative of the events (history inclusion)

APPENDIX N

Figure 12 - PR move generated after filling in the field showed in Figure 11

54

APPENDIX O

PR MOVES AND STEPS