Characterizing the Hybrid Genre of Italian Police Interview Transcripts: A Computational Forensic Linguistic Comparison of Narrative and Question–Answer Formats

Police interview transcripts serve as key evidential documents, yet their linguistic form is rarely examined using scalable and reproducible computational methods, despite its direct impact on how statements are interpreted and assessed for credibility in judicial contexts. This study provides the first computational genre analysis of Italian police interview transcripts, operationalizing genre distinctions through large-scale linguistic profiling. We analyze 50 authentic transcripts produced in two transcription formats: narrative monologues and question-answer (Q-A) interactions, using automated extraction of 147 linguistic features spanning morphology, syntax, readability and legal-language markers. We apply automated feature extraction and feature selection, combined with statistical testing, to compare the transcripts against a large multi-genre Italian reference corpus to assess both shared and format-specific characteristics. Results show that both transcription formats exhibit strong narrative orientation, marked by high verbal density, first-person reference and deeply embedded subordination, distinguishing transcripts from legal and journalistic prose. Narrative monologues align more closely with institutional writing through higher syntactic embedding and domain-specific terminology, whereas Q-A transcripts display elevated pronoun use, preverbal objects, and clause chaining, revealing interactional and procedural dynamics of elicitation. By demonstrating how transcription format encodes distinct communicative functions at the level of measurable linguistic features, this study shows that computational profiling provides a robust forensic method for evaluating transcription practices and their interpretive consequences in judicial settings.

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Werner, R., François, T., & Bitzer, S. (2026). Characterizing the Hybrid Genre of Italian Police Interview Transcripts: A Computational Forensic Linguistic Comparison of Narrative and Question–Answer Formats. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law. Published. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-026-10487-w (Original work published 2026)