Is this discursive Yentling? A critical study of an RCMP officer’s interaction with a child sexual assault complainant

ABSTRACT

The present study features an interview between a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer and a female indigenous minor, who was reporting her own sexual assault. The study highlights how the child's interview with the officer appears to include gender-specific judgements. Thus far, few critical studies, underscoring interview techniques, feature power relations and ideologies in the discourse. This study identifies police negotiation with female assault complainants as discursive Yentling. Inspired by the term Yentl syndrome, where female health is often underappreciated because it is judged from male prerogatives, the present study proposes that discursive Yentling emerges from victim blaming, perpetrator mitigation, and the sexualization of rape. Drawing attention to transcripts of an RCMP interview with a child complainant, this study asks (1) what power relations and ideologies manifest in the dialogue between the officer and the complainant? (2) Do the findings give evidence for discursive Yentling? Transitivity analysis and a discourse historical approach reveal ideological predispositions towards the complainant during the interview. The implications for this study hopefully provoke more considered police interview techniques for potential victims of sexual assault and inculcate a culture of feminist understanding in Canadian public services.

KEYWORDS:

• police interview
• ideology
• critical discourse analysis
• sexual assault
• Yentl syndrome

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher A. Smith

Christopher A. Smith (Adjunct Research Professor - Carleton University, Canada) spent 18 years teaching English communications in Korea before returning to Canada to complete a PhD in Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies. His research interests include multimodal critical discourse studies, critical pedagogy in language learning and English language teaching textbook analysis.