We’re just people. We’re not these crazy guys with guns:’ Rhetorical Narratives and Officer Identity Performance
Narratives can create a shared worldview and provide resources that teach members of a society how to behave. As it does elsewhere, storytelling plays an important role in the work of police officers and in forming and maintaining police culture. Quotidian narratives shape police culture and give rise to officer identities. In this talk, I present a concept called “flexible and evolving identity.” I hold that identity not only emerges in-the-moment but evolves over time. The narratives I analyze consider emergent identities that operate outside traditional officer behavior (i.e., racist, machismo, suspicious, etc.), rhetorically positioning officers as “human.” Being “human” is used to create connection and camaraderie with the public. The stories told by these officers are not “just stories”; they do real rhetorical work to reshape and reframe police culture. Using this analysis, I show that officer identity and police discourse are rhetorically flexible and open to evolution. As more idiosyncratic identities and non-traditional policing narratives are shared, police discourse and culture metamorphosizes.