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Stigmatizing and Stereotyping the Police: Communicative Realities for the Policed

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Abstract

For the policed, stigmas and stereotypes are used to describe, inform or interpret interactions with the police. Stigmas and stereotypes are employed in the service of providing interactive framework that suggest the author or user’s stance and provide a context for justifying the communicative realities evidenced in discourses produced in the service of an individual or a group making sense of their reality of otherness. In this chapter, stigmas and stereotypes evidenced in the discourses of the policed are explained and a further discussion of their impact on communication between the community and the police is presented. Much like police stigmas and stereotypes, those identified in the discourses of the policed are thematically grouped.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Corn is slang used to refer to bullets lodged in an individual’s body from rapid gunfire.

  2. 2.

    Black refers to persons of Afro-Caribbean descent.

  3. 3.

    Coasting is slang used to refer to macho displays intended to intimidate or express contempt.

  4. 4.

    Ranking is slang used to refer to any verbal or physical power display.

  5. 5.

    Weed is another name for marijuana.

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Watson, D. (2019). Stigmatizing and Stereotyping the Police: Communicative Realities for the Policed. In: Police and the Policed. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00883-3_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00883-3_7

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-00882-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-00883-3

  • eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)

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