Power And Function Of Language

For my Power and Function of language assignment I have chosen research the language of police officers.. I chose this subject because I thought I wanted to find out a little bit how police officers communicate and I could interview my Dad. Dad has been a PO for about 25 years and has worked in many different sections of the police force, like Fatal crash investigation and major crime investigation. I also wanted to find out some of the common jargon used in a Police station.

I had chosen to interview my Dad because I thought it would be easier to organise, but that proved to be very difficult as he was always very busy working, or I was busy when he wasn't. The first question that I asked my Dad was about general communication with police officers, like police radio and is it used as much as they do on TV. He said that police radio is essential for police officers to communicate on the field, but nowadays they have so many more complicated little gadgety things that they use, and the radios are getting less common. He said that email has absolutely taken over within the office, with Dad receiving over 100 emails a day - even from people in the same office who write an email instead of walking over and talking o him.. The only thing that I really wanted to know from this assignment was some of the common jargon and slang that police officers use.

They are ;

Skank- a young female criminal

Scrote - a young male crook

Serial - stolen vehicle

GIG - an informant

Dogging - chasing or tailing a criminal

CTD - circling the drain

And this last on has only really come about in the last few years

CSI - crime scene investigations were NEVER called CSI's at leat in Australia amongst police, but now from TV dramas on televisions, police officers have started to call them CSI's

Some of these words are used to shorten phrases like scrotes and CSI, and word jargon like CTD is used to keep sad situation light, or . Police officers deal with death all the time, especially in areas like fatal crash investigation, so they have come up with jargon to suit the condition of the victims. CTD means circling the drain - the victim isn't dead but it would only be a short amount of time until they are. Abbreviations like CTD are also used to protect other people like friends or family nearby from hearing and understanding.

It is quite difficult