Contemporary policing in migrant-receiving countries often involves navigating complex interactions in which multiple languages and cultures are present, requiring specific communicative expertise on the part of police to ensure effective communication and the safety of all involved.
Policing, like all professions, has its own attitudes and practices in relation to language and communication (Hamilton-Smith et al., 2014; Lave & Wenger, 1991). From an applied linguistic perspective, what constitutes the communicative expertise of police in the context of contemporary policing is not well understood. This paper reports on part of a qualitative study that investigated how police understand the role and significance of their language choices in face-to-face interactions, with a focus here on how these understandings are translated into practice to navigate multilingual, multicultural interactions. In the context of many migrant-receiving countries such as Australia, policing encounters increasingly involve multiple languages and cultures, creating complexity for police and those their expertise is designed to serve. The study involved semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with a range of police, including cadets, trainers, probationary constables, field tutors and supervisors, thus representing different points along the trajectory of their training and experience and diverse perspectives in relation to language and communication. The data were analysed taking a thematic approach (Riessman, 2008) to explore how police formally and informally develop communicative expertise, including ways to navigate multilingual, multicultural encounters. The findings highlight ways in which police develop successful ‘local methods’ (Garfinkel, 1967) to communicate effectively and promote safety in such situations where the stakes can be high for all involved. I argue that, in the context of human mobility and growing linguistic and cultural diversity, understanding this expertise and how it is deployed in locally developed responses is important so that it may be incorporated systematically into policy, professional learning and practice more broadly.
