Directive actions in three assistance-orientated activities between Finnish police officers and drunken persons

In this article, I investigate police officers' use of directives as they wake up drunken persons and assist them in moving from a static lying (horizontal) position to a mobile upright (vertical) position and further in stepping into the police van. One of the issues that officers confront is discerning whether the drunken person is willing and/or able to comply with their directives and acts of assistance. I show that officers' choices of directives are informed by these discernments, as well as a desire to minimise threats to drunken person's face and to avoid confrontations. The
analysis is based on video data from a reality tv show centred around police encounters with intoxicated citizens. Conversation analysis is employed to analyse said data, which are in Finnish.