The Language of COPS
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they should get control of events and that one way in which that could be done
was to use the type of language suitable for that crime situation.
In addition, Stillar’s concept of theme seems relevant in this analysis.
By theme, I mean that there is an order of linguistic elements in language, in this
case, the English language (46). In English, the theme of a sentence is marked by
units that occur in the initial position. In commands, we assign actions that we
want our listeners to carry out. From the data, officers used commands more
often than questions or statements. In commanding an individual to “Put the gun
down,” the theme was on the weapon, as opposed to the command “Put the gun
down on the floor,” where the prepositional phrase “on the floor” would be a
secondary feature of the command.
In addition, this analysis of language and social situations further
supports the notion of communicative competence (O’Grady et. al 454). In other
words, unlike grammatical competence, which allows us to determine
grammatical from ungrammatical utterances, communicative competence allows
speakers to use language that is appropriate to the situation or c