Ole hyvä (’please’) + imperative: A multimodal analysis of Finnish police directive turns

Abstract

In this article we conduct a multimodal conversation analysis of the use of OH directive constructions where police officers instruct citizens to step into a police van as the final phase of an apprehension. To perform the task, officers typically formulate a directive turn that uses an imperative clause (IMP), but in the examples analysed in this article, it is combined with ole hyvä (OH) — ‘please’. In the case of these OH directive constructions, the preferred next action by the citizen is to step into the van, which may either take place unproblematically or require verbal and embodied upgrading from the officers. We show that the sequential position of the OH directive construction can be (1) the first-pair part of a sequence initiated in a series of collaborative actions, (2) an upgrade to a previous directive in the effort to maintain a police-led project during a prolonged directive sequence, or (3) a response to a citizen’s turn which has bypassed the police’s directive. From the embodied action perspective, we suggest that the OH directive constructions allow the police to divide their attention between the van and the citizen, thus providing a strong orientation for the citizen to step into the van themselves.