“I'm Giving You a Lawful Order”: Dialogic Legitimacy in Sandra Bland's Traffic Stop

• Date: 01 June 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12265
• Published date: 01 June 2017

“I’m Giving You a Lawful Order”: Dialogic

Legitimacy in Sandra Bland’s Traffic Stop

Bel

en V. Lowrey-Kinberg Grace Sullivan Buker

On July 10, 2015, a young African American woman named Sandra Bland

was stopped by State Trooper Officer Brian Encinia for failing to signal a lane

change. What began as a routine traffic stop quickly devolved into shouting, a

physical confrontation, and Bland’s subsequent arrest. We use discourse anal-

ysis to examine the rapid escalation of this encounter with a focus on proce-

dural justice (Sunshine & Tyler2003) and the dialogic approach to legitimacy

(Bottoms & Tankebe2012). In analyzing the transcript of Sandra Bland’s traf-

fic stop, we addressseveral key questions: How is procedural justice manifested

linguistically?Can the dialogic legitimacyframework be used to understandthe

dynamicsof individualpolice-citizen interactions?The conclusions of this analy-

sis provide an interdisciplinary view of how procedural justice and legitimacy

are manifestedand negotiated in a police-citizen interaction.

On July 10, 2015, a 28-year-old African American woman

named Sandra Bland was pulled over by State Trooper Officer

Brian Encinia in Prairie View, Texas for failing to signal a lane

change. The traffic stop that followed devolved into shouting, a

physical confrontation, and Bland’s subsequent arrest for assault-

ing a public servant. What began as a routine traffic stop resulted

in Bland’s jailing and eventual suicide at the Waller County jail

(Hennessy-Fiske 2015). These events were the subject of public

outrage, especially as they came amidst a number of other police-

citizen incidents, including those involving Michael Brown of Fer-

guson, Missouri; Eric Garner of New York City; and Tamir Rice

of Cleveland, Ohio. Encinia was later indicted for perjury and his

employment was terminated (Burnside & Berlinger 2016). A

wrongful death lawsuit brought by Bland’s family was settled for

$1.9 million (Hauser 2016). Sandra Bland’s traffic stop raises

The authors extend their gratitude to Eliezer Kinberg for providing the inspiration for

this study as well as Roger W. Shuy, Justice Tankebe, Edward R. Maguire, and the anony-

mous reviewers for their many helpful comments and suggestions.

Please direct all correspondence to Bel

en V. Lowrey-Kinberg, Department of Justice,

Law and Criminology, American University,4400 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC

20016; e-mail: belen.lowrey@student.american.edu.

Law & Society Review, Volume 51, Number 2 (2017)

V

C2017 Law and Society Association. All rights reserved.

379

several questions with important implications for police-citizen

interactions. How did a routine traffic stop become such a violent

encounter? What interactional factors could explain such rapidly

escalating tensions between an officer and a civilian?

Unlike many cases of police-citizen confrontations discussed

in the media, Officer Encinia’s dashboard camera captured the

entire interaction, from the time Bland was pulled to the side of

the road through Officer Encinia’s call to his supervisor after the

conclusion of the incident. In our analysis, we use a transcript of

Bland’s traffic stop and arrest to examine the rapid escalation of

the encounter with a focus on procedural justice (Sunshine &

Tyler 2003) and the dialogic approach to legitimacy proposed by

Bottoms and Tankebe (2012). While procedural justice provides a

lens through which to understand how individual portions of the

discourse convey legitimacy, the dialogic approach provides a

broader framework for understanding the progression of the

interaction. Using discourse analysis, this article will explore the

formulation of procedural justice and police legitimacy in Bland’s

traffic stop, more specifically how authority is claimed by Encinia,

how it is resisted by Bland, and the role it plays in the escalation

of the encounter.

This case study of Bland’s traffic stop adds to the small body

of literature on the language of police-citizen interactions and is

the first, to our knowledge, to focus on the language of police

legitimacy and procedural justice. In analyzing the transcript of

Sandra Bland’s traffic stop, we address several key questions:

How is procedural justice manifested linguistically? Can the dia-

logic legitimacy framework be used to understand the dynamics

of individual police-citizen interactions? The conclusions of this

analysis provide a concrete and interdisciplinary view of how pro-

cedural justice and legitimacy are manifested and negotiated in a

police-citizen interaction.

Literature Review

Several bodies of literature are important in understanding

the devolution of Sandra Bland’s traffic stop and the manifesta-

tion of procedural justice and legitimacy therein. Here, we review

the literature on race and identity in police-citizen interactions,

procedural justice theory, dialogic legitimacy, and the use of dis-

course analysis in the legal context.

Police, Race, and Identity

It is impossible to ignore the role that race and social identity

may play in today’s police-citizen interactions, especially in light

380 Dialogic Legitimacy

of the history of race and policing in the United States (Berry

1994; Hawkins & Thomas 1991), police shootings of African-

American men and women, and protests against the police use of

force that have accompanied these events (Davey & Bosman

2014; Lee & Landy 2015; Mueller & Southall 2014; Yan & Ford

2015). From this perspective, it is not surprising that studies have

found that minority citizens hold more negative views of police

than do White citizens (Albrecht & Green 1977; Decker 1981;

Jacob 1971; Lundman & Kauffman 2003; Scaglion & Condon

1980; Tuch & Weitzer 1997). Moreover, minorities perceive dis-

crimination and misconduct to be more widespread among police

than do Whites (Hagan & Albonetti 1982; Hagan, Shedd, &

Payne 2006; Weitzer & Tuch 2004; Wortley, Hagan, & Macmillan

1997).

These deep-seated beliefs regarding fairness and discrimina-

tion may influence minority citizens’ interpretations of police

actions. For example, in a recent mixed-methods study of citi-

zens’ perceptions of police, Epp, Maynard-Moody, and Haider-

Markel (2014) found that race is a significant factor in how inves-

tigatory traffic stops are interpreted by citizens. The researchers

argue that the institutionalized practice of conducting investigato-

ry stops undermines the legitimacy of the police in the eyes of

Black Americans and sends a strong message about their identity

and belonging as citizens. Similarly, Skogan (2012) notes that citi-

zens’ “prior expectations could independently color how they

view specific features of an encounter” (276), a statement that

echoes the findings of other researchers (Levin & Thomas 1997;

Rosenbaum et al. 2005).

Officers themselves may be subject to conscious and uncon-

scious biases that can affect their interpretations of citizens’ words

and actions (Correll et al. 2002; Fridell 2013; Lane, Kang, &

Banaji 2007). Relatedly, Price (2005) and Bottoms and Tankebe

(2014) explain that power-holders can come to believe that par-

ticular groups are not restricted by or entitled to certain moral

obligations.

1

Moreover, aspects of a citizens’ “moral worthiness,”

including age, sex, race, and role have been theorized to influ-

ence police actions in individual encounters (Mastrofski et al.

2016: 121). Officers’ underlying beliefs about citizens’ moral wor-

thiness may, in turn, shape behaviors in individual interactions.

For instance, recent research found that officers in Oakland, Cali-

fornia used more informal terms when speaking with Black driv-

ers than with White drivers. These linguistic choices may reflect

1

For linguistic perspective on social categorization by those with institutional power

see Gordon (1983).

Lowrey-Kinberg & Buker 381