Abstract
The study uses a discourse-analytic approach to explore Chinese police’s discursive strategies of regulating citizens’ negative emotions during police-citizen interactions. Through analyzing natural-occurring conversations from two famous Chinese police documentaries, we find that the police’s extrinsic emotion regulation targets at six types of negative emotions, which can be realized through four explicit discursive strategies, including comforting, distracting, negotiating, and showing empathy, as well as six implicit strategies, namely delegitimating, hope-building, evoking the influence of family bonds, displaying good intent, pinpointing misunderstanding, and affirming. Given the persuasive and educational orientation of Chinese policing, these strategies closely align with appeals to pathos, logos, and ethos. This study offers insight into the growing literature on extrinsic emotion regulation in the context of police-citizen interactions.
Keywords
Introduction
As first responders and the only professional group available 24 hours a day to provide on-site assistance, police officers are regularly involved in situations of human conflict and/or crisis (emotional, physical, etc.) where actions are needed (Bittner, 1980). During their tasks, police officers are likely to encounter citizens who experience a broad range of negative emotions (Bakker and Heuven, 2006). When seeking police assistance, citizens not only hope for justice to be restored, but also seek psychological comfort and the fulfillment of emotional needs. In these scenarios, the police are expected to notice citizens’ emotional needs, thereby avoiding harming their physical or mental health and promoting their well-being by employing discourse-dominated devices (Ali et al., 2012; Daus and Ashkanasy, 2005; Risan et al., 2016). Moreover, to manage their relationships with the public, Chinese police are expected to prioritize rapport-oriented, persuasive, and educational approaches (Li et al., 2024; Song and Chen, 2024) rather than resorting exclusively to directives or coercive means, in order to fulfill their communicative goals effectively. Given that emotion regulation is a key component of the police’s institutional practices, it necessitates the use of various discursive strategies that ultimately contribute to fulfilling the police’s institutional goals.
Emotion regulation has been defined as “the activation of a goal to modify the emotion-generative process”, and involves “the motivated recruitment of one or more processes to influence emotion generation” (Gross et al., 2011: 767). In the theory of emotion regulation, these processes involve “extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying” both negative and positive emotions (Thompson, 1994: 27–28). Extrinsic emotion regulation is defined as an “action performed with the goal of influencing another person’s emotion trajectory” (Nozaki and Mikolajczak, 2020: 3), while intrinsic regulation is “evoked automatically by the stimulus itself and run to completion without monitoring and can happen without insight and awareness” (Gyurak et al., 2011: 401). Compared with intrinsic regulation, extrinsic regulation has a more explicit regulation goal and controlled change processes (Braunstein et al., 2017). Although the distinction between the two processes can be verified through psychological experiments, linguistic realizations of each process require further investigation. The field of emotion regulation has largely emphasized intrinsic emotion regulation (Nozaki and Mikolajczak, 2023), while extrinsic emotion regulation remains relatively underexplored. We argue that extrinsic emotion regulation constitutes a kind of interpersonal interaction aimed at influencing others’ emotions (Swerdlow and Johnson, 2020) and thus warrants further linguistic investigation.
Although linguistic research on extrinsic emotion regulation has examined contexts such as doctor-patient interactions (e.g., Jiang et al., 2024), service encounters (Fuoli and Bednarek, 2022), and civil mediations (Chang, 2018), there has been little attention paid to police-citizen interactions. This is particularly notable given that, despite the asymmetrical power inherent in police-citizen interactions (e.g., Heydon, 2005), the service-oriented mandate of Chinese policing requires the police to assist distressed citizens in resolving their problems. To the best of our knowledge, existing literature on police’s emotion regulation is predominantly focused on intrinsic emotion regulation, with limited attention to police’s discursive strategies of extrinsic emotion regulation. As a result, it remains underexplored how the police discursively regulate the citizens’ negative emotions during their encounters.
To fill these gaps, we aim to explore the discursive strategies employed by Chinese police to regulate citizens’ negative emotions in an interactional context. Specifically, two questions will be addressed: (1) What types of discursive strategies are deployed by the police to regulate citizens’ negative emotions? (2) How do these strategies contribute to the police’s emotion regulation? By addressing these two questions, we aim to uncover the discursive strategies of police’s extrinsic emotion regulation in police-citizen interactions, which have been significantly underexplored.
Literature review
Previous research on emotion regulation
Existing linguistic research has probed into emotion regulation in different contexts such as doctor/therapist-patient interactions (Jiang et al., 2024; Lei and Ran, 2022; Ruusuvuori, 2007; Weiste, 2016), interactions between passengers and service agents (Fuoli and Bednarek, 2022), and civil mediation (Chang, 2018) as well as governmental new media discourse (Li and Yuan, 2023). Some research has identified various discursive means used in emotion regulation. These include the formulation sequence (Weiste, 2016), aposiopesis (Jiang, 2021), politeness markers, emphatic expressions, medical jargon, attitudinal discourse (Jiang et al., 2024), specific speech acts, generalized kinship address terms, and multimodal resources (Li and Yuan, 2023). In this study, following Fuoli and Bednarek’s (2022: 258) work on emotional labor, we adopt “emotion” as an umbrella term that encompasses “all the ways in which language users display feelings, moods, dispositions, and attitudes in discourse”. According to their definition, emotional labor encompasses two interconnected tasks: emotional performance that involves expressing emotions linguistically as well as backgrounding them; emotional management that involves handling the interlocutor’s emotions as well as regulating one’s own emotion.
Other studies have established a connection between emotion regulation and the management of interpersonal relationships. For example, Chang and Holt (1994) similarly highlight emotional support as a central aspect of social practice in Chinese relational work. Chang (2018) also provides empirical evidence showing that emotivity can function as a discursive resource in the interactional construction of face in Chinese mediation interactions. Jiang (2021) demonstrates that aposiopesis, primarily aimed at avoiding triggering or escalating the hearer’s negative emotions, plays a crucial role in maintaining relationships by facilitating the achievement of interactional goals, preserving face, and upholding equity rights. Lei and Ran (2022) argue that therapists’ regulation of patients’ negative emotions toward the absent third party contributes to managing the interpersonal relationship between the present party and the absent third party. In the context of police-citizen interactions, Song and Chen (2024) examine traffic police officers’ positive rapport management with citizens, revealing that traffic police officers sometimes use comforting and empathy strategies to manage citizens’ fear and anger. These studies demonstrate that emotion regulation contributes to achieving communicative goals in different contexts. Moreover, emotion regulation in interactions is shaped by the participants’ social identities and relational dynamics (Ren and Li, 2024). While their research sheds light on the relationship between emotion regulation and rapport management in police-citizen interactions, the discursive strategies employed by officers to regulate citizens’ emotions have yet to be comprehensively examined.
Previous research on police’s emotion regulation
Research on police’s emotion regulation has predominantly focused on their intrinsic emotion regulation, that is, the regulation of their own emotions. Police officers are routinely exposed to dangerous and unpredictable situations that elicit intense negative emotions such as stress, anger, and anxiety (e.g., Anderson et al., 2002). They have a particularly strong need for effective methods of regulating such emotions to maintain appropriate demeanors called for by the situation and required by the police department (e.g., Bakker and Heuven, 2006). Previous research reports that they often experience difficulty in acknowledging negative emotions (Evans et al., 1993) and tend to rely on strategies such as denial, suppression, and avoidance (e.g., Amaranto et al., 2003). However, these strategies evoke feelings of inauthenticity and alienation when organizational expectations and pressures contradict their actual emotional states (Kwak et al., 2018), which leads to their emotional dissonance, and even burnout (e.g., Van Gelderen et al., 2017).To help regulate police’s negative emotions and lessen their burnout, many scholars have conducted in-depth explorations from diverse aspects, including but not limited to police’s effective emotional regulation practices (e.g., Klajn and van der Woude, 2025; Mearns and Mauch, 1998), factors influencing police’s emotion regulation (e.g., Beshai et al., 2022), the effects of emotional regulation (e.g., Roth et al., 2022), and emotion regulation training (Bressler et al., 2023).
While the field of emotion regulation has primarily centered on intrinsic emotion management (such as anger, shame, and guilt), scant attention has been paid to extrinsic emotion regulation (Nozaki and Mikolajczak, 2020), let alone the police’s extrinsic emotion regulation. Traces of police’s extrinsic regulation can be found in established guidelines for investigative interviews that emphasize the importance of reducing interviewees’ anxiety to establish rapport and maximize interviewees’ recollection (e.g., Fisher and Geiselman, 1992). The study most relevant to our research is Risan et al. (2016), who examine extrinsic emotion regulation by police officers during interviews. They present four key considerations for training interviewers in managing emotions in investigative interviews: self-awareness, attention training, communication skills, and emotion regulation. Among these, emotions can be actively regulated via various processes, such as “modifying the situation (for example, providing a break)”, “changing the focus of attention (for example, changing the topic of conversation)”, “changing in cognition (for example, by helping the interviewee to see the positive aspects of their own efforts)”, or “changing the response to an emotion (for example, by asking the interviewee to take deep breaths)” (p. 416). Although Risan et al. (2016) identify various processes of emotion regulation, there remains a lack of linguistic insight into how police officers discursively regulate citizens’ negative emotions.
To the best of our knowledge, despite the significance of interpersonal processes (Gagnon and Monties, 2022) underlying police officers’ extrinsic emotion regulation, there has been little scholarly attention paid to their discursive strategies for regulating citizens’ negative emotions during police-citizen interactions. However, emotion regulation practices are especially notable in the Chinese context, where police officers are expected to perform extensive service-oriented duties under the “110: Four Obligations, Four Requirements” principle: responding to every call, assisting in every time of need, rescuing in every moment of danger, and answering every request (有警必接、有难必帮、有险必救、有求必应) (Zhu and Chen, 2024). Building on this gap, the study adopts discourse analysis to examine how Chinese police officers conduct extrinsic emotion regulation during their everyday interactions with citizens.
Method
Data collection
To investigate the Chinese police’s discursive strategies of emotion regulation during police-citizen interactions, we collected data from two popular Chinese police documentaries, “Shouhu Jiefangxi” (“The Guardians of Jiefangxi”) (Season 1) and “Paichusuo De Gushi, 2019” (“Police Stories-Guardians on the Move, 2019”). These two documentaries provide naturally occurring data for us to investigate the police’s extrinsic emotion regulation. A total of 21 extracts were collected from these two series. The episodes of Shouhu Jiefangxi have an average duration of 40 minutes, while those of Paichusuo De Gushi, 2019 average 60 minutes. All extracts were transcribed, comprising 241,775 words. The original language of the extracts is Chinese, and English translations are provided in the excerpts presented in the following sections. Given the difficulty in collecting sufficient naturalistic police-citizen interactions for analysis, these two documentaries provide an opportunity to investigate the police’s discursive strategies of regulating the citizens’ negative emotions. The data are particularly apt for our study due to two primary reasons. First, given that police documentaries exhibit interactivity and public visibility (Garcés-Conejos and Lorenzo-Dus, 2013), they can be studied as a public discourse without requiring informed consent from participants. Moreover, police documentaries have been increasingly used as data sources in prior research, as exemplified by Li et al. (2024) and Song and Chen (2024). Shouhu Jiefangxi presents real cases that reflect the routine work of the Pozi Street Police Station in Changsha, and Paichusuo De Gushi, 2019, offers a panoramic lens to display the meticulous policing across hundreds of police stations in Shanghai, capturing the details of community policing in one of China’s largest cities. Without any scripts or other fictional elements, both documentaries offer a first-hand account of front-line police practices in various cases (ranging from combating crime to handling community affairs). Second, the widespread acclaim these two documentaries have received is due to the officers’ extensive experience in handling cases and their effective communication skills when interacting with the public. As a result, the discursive strategies employed by the police in these documentaries can serve as exemplary models for other officers to learn from. A caveat is warranted: the naturalness of our data from two documentaries may raise concern. Although the participants may realize that they are being filmed for a television program, their conducts are still “the result of a set of resources and practices available to [them] for so conducting interaction” (Walker, 2004: 29). Therefore, the documentaries reflect the “situated realities” for which they were produced (Jones and Raymond, 2012: 116).
The authors began by identifying citizens’ negative emotional performance and the police’s regulation of these emotions in their interactions with citizens. In line with Jiang et al.’s (2024) emotion identification, our identification was mainly based on negative emotion markers or indicators. Given that the documentary incorporated both on-site recordings of police-citizen interactions and follow-up interviews of the police, along with off-screen voice, the authors identified citizens’ emotional performance and the police’s emotion regulation based on negative emotion markers or indicators. First, we identified citizens’ emotional performance according to the off-screen voice, such as emotion-related expressions (e.g., “her emotions once again spiral out of control”). Second, the citizens’ paralinguistic features, such as prosodic signals (e.g., pitch, tempo, loudness, voice quality), facial expressions, and body postures, were explicit representations of the citizens’ emotional performance. Third, we also identified the police’s emotion regulation based on their emotion-oriented metadiscourse (Chen, 2022), for example, “control your emotion”.
A complete process of emotion regulation can be identified by a combination of a citizen’s negative emotion performance and emotion recovery/mitigation upon the police officer’s emotion regulation. When a citizen displayed an emotional performance, the police responded with discursive strategies aimed at managing the citizen’s negative emotions. The authors identified the termination of the police’s emotional regulation in the following ways: (1) The off-screen voice indicated that the citizens’ negative emotion was de-escalated (e.g., “the woman gradually calmed down”); (2) The citizens displayed paralinguistic cues such as the cessation of crying; (3) The police confirmed that the citizens can control their negative emotions (e.g., “There, there. No more crying”). In a few cases, however, the citizen did not fully calm down. In such situations, the emotional regulation was deemed to end when the police ceased to regulate the citizen’s emotions.
Drawing on the Dictionary of Emotional Meaning (Davitz, 1969), we coded six types of citizens’ negative emotions, which are indicated either through their emotional performance or the police’s emotion-oriented metadiscourse. The distribution of six negative emotions and examples are displayed in Table 1. In the following sections, male citizens are denoted by “M”, female citizens are denoted by “F”, and police officers by “P”.
The distribution of the citizens’ negative emotions.
Data analysis
Since there is no established framework for the discursive strategies of police’s emotion regulation, we adopted a bottom-up discourse-analytic approach to identify the discursive strategies that potentially impact citizens’ negative emotions. We conducted several rounds of data analysis and identified ten types of emotion regulation strategies that can be classified into explicit and implicit emotion regulation. In light of the classification of explicit and implicit comforting in Ren and Li’s (2024) study, we defined the police’s explicit emotion regulation as the direct acknowledgment of citizens’ negative emotions, along with the elaboration and modulation of those emotions, as indicated by the use of emotion-oriented metadiscourse (Chen, 2022) and sometimes empathetic expressions (Pounds, 2019). In contrast, implicit emotion regulation occurs when officers do not directly address citizens’ negative emotions, but instead only present factual information, reasons, causes of the negative emotions, or practical solutions that can mitigate negative emotions. Although these utterances may appear emotionally neutral, they function to mitigate the citizens’ emotional arousal. As a result, citizens’ negative emotions are de-escalated over the course of the interaction, often without explicit emotional engagement. Consider the following two excerpts.
Excerpt 1 Excerpt 2
P:
女同志,
P:
Ma’am,
P:
. . .. . .理念, 就是年代嘛, 都是有代沟的, 但是解决代沟不是靠这样子的,
P:
. . .The thinking pattern, exactly the generational gap, generation gap exists.
In excerpt 1, the officer employed the comforting strategy by directly instructing the citizen to calm down and cease crying. In this instance, the citizen’s negative emotion becomes the explicit focus of the officer’s intervention. Conversely, in excerpt 2, the officer shifted toward an educative and rationalizing approach, advising the girl to communicate her needs to her parents rather than expressing them through crying. By evaluating crying as ineffective in achieving her goals, the officer engaged in implicit emotion regulation.
Quantitatively, we calculated the occurrence of each type of discursive strategy. In a single instance of emotion regulation, if a particular discourse strategy occurred multiple times, its frequency was counted as multiple occurrences. During the coding process, all the data were independently coded by the authors (both are pragmatics researchers), achieving an intercoder agreement rate of 89.4%. Then, these coding results were checked by a pragmatics expert. Disagreements were resolved through a detailed discussion among the authors.
Police officers’ discursive strategies of emotion regulation
As shown in Table 2, the discursive strategies of the police’s emotion regulation were divided into two major categories: explicit and implicit discursive strategies. In the following sections, we will present representative excerpts for each strategy. It is worth noting that the officers sometimes employ both explicit and implicit discursive strategies to regulate citizens’ negative emotions. In such cases, each occurrence of these strategies is counted separately. Altogether, the police’s discursive strategies of emotion regulation occur 104 times. Explicit strategies (59 instances, 56.7%) slightly outnumber implicit strategies (45 instances, 43.3%).
Discursive strategies of the police’s emotion regulation.
Explicit discursive strategies
Comforting
Comforting strategy is the most frequent explicit discursive strategy. The police mobilize this strategy to address citizens’ six negative emotions. It functions as “changing the response to an emotion” (Risan et al., 2016: 416), which is typically realized through emotion-oriented metadiscourse, such as repetition of calming expressions. Comforting strategy is deployed by the officers at the initial stages of police-citizen interactions where citizens feel upset or agitated. In this way, police officers can navigate the citizens’ heightened emotional state toward a calmer disposition, thereby facilitating more effective communication. Consider: Excerpt 3
P:
G:
（大哭）救命。
P:
画外音：一番劝说之下, 小姑娘终于停止了哭泣, 从封闭的衣帽间里被扶了出来。
P:
G:
(Crying loudly) Help me!
P:
Off-screen voice: After P’s persuasion, G finally stopped crying and was helped out of the closet.
In excerpt 3, a little girl (G) locked herself in a small closet after having a heated argument with her father. The officer (P) attempted to open the closet, which caused her to become panicked and resistant, as indicated by her cry. To encourage her to come out, P sought to make her calm down through repeated directive utterances (e.g., “don’t get upset”). In addition, reassuring expressions (e.g., “everything’s fine now”) were used to inform her that she was safe. P also reminded other officers on the scene to act gently, aiming to create a sense of security for the girl. At last, P successfully transformed the girl’s unease into calm, and persuaded her to get out of the closet.
Distracting
Distracting strategy refers to the discursive efforts to keep the citizens’ minds occupied with irrelevant cognitions so that the amount of attention devoted to a negative stimulus is diminished (Ochsner and Gross, 2005). In our data, it regulates three types of emotions: sadness, anger, and disgust. This strategy functions as modifying the situation and changing the focus of attention (Risan et al., 2016). Consider: Excerpt 4
M:
. . .. . .什么都没有了, 我什么都没有了。我身上还有20块钱。
P1:
你这样, 帅哥。
M:
你别过来。
P1:
帅哥帅哥, 冷静一下。
M:
. . .I’ve got nothing left. I’ve got nothing left. I only have 20 yuan.
P1:
Hey there, handsome.
M:
Don’t come near me.
P1:
Handsome, handsome, calm down.
In excerpt 4, a man (M) wanted to jump out of a window after having an argument with his wife. His repeated statement “I’ve got nothing left” indicated his deep despair. When the officer (P1) approached him to offer reassurance, M became alert and displayed his disgust for P1, as evidenced by his resistance to P1’s approach, which complicated the police rescue operation. In response, P1 adjusted his strategy by offering M a cigarette and encouraging him to sit down, attempting to change his focus of attention to facilitate the police rescue operation. According to the subsequent footage, upon seeing that M was distracted, P1 successfully led M to move away from the dangerous window.
Negotiating
Negotiating strategy refers to the use of negotiated tones rather than coercive or authoritative tones (Bates et al., 2012) to mitigate the citizens’ negative emotions, namely sadness, anger, and disgust. It is typically realized through discourse markers that check for understanding and agreement, as well as commissive speech acts (Yang, 2024), thereby eliciting the citizens’ commitments to control their own negative emotions. Consider: Excerpt 5
P:
好吧, 保证啊。今天没问题啊, 不不能哭了, 也不能剪。
G
点头。
P:
G
nods.
In excerpt 5, the officer (P) successfully mediated the conflict between the little girl (G) and her father. Before leaving, he encouraged G to uphold her commitment to remain calm. Specifically, P employed discourse markers such as “alright?” and “okay?” as confirmation checks, seeking acknowledgment and further ensuring mutual understanding (Schleef, 2005). These expressions signaled respect for the girl’s autonomy in controlling her own emotions. Ultimately, G’s nodding affirmed her commitment to the promise, which demonstrated the effectiveness of the negotiating strategy in emotion regulation through commitment rather than coercion.
Showing empathy
Empathy, broadly defined as the “ability to experience another’s emotions and perceptions” (Lipman, 2003: 269), is a critical component in the police’s emotion regulation practices (Madsen and Holmberg, 2014). In our dataset, showing empathy strategy is employed by officers to acknowledge and resonate with citizens’ sadness, strengthening their relational connections. Consider: Excerpt 6
M:
如果我干扰她的生活会怎么呢？你就说吧, 毕竟两三年了。
P:
嗯, 对, 我知道。嗯, 是的, 我跟你讲,
M:
我想跟她说我错了。
M:
What if I interfere with her life? Just tell me. After all, it’s been two or three years.
P:
Yeah, right. Let me tell you.
M:
I want to tell her I was wrong.
In excerpt 6, the officer (P) was educating a man (M) who had resorted to extreme behaviors to pursue a woman. At the onset, M articulated his intention to interfere with the normal life of his ex-girlfriend, awaiting the P’s response. Rather than immediately condemning M’s behaviors, P acknowledged his emotional state with an explicit empathetic expression, “I do understand your feelings” (Martikainen et al., 2022). This strategy displayed P’s understanding from M’s perspective, which alleviated M’s negative emotions.
Implicit discursive strategies
Delegitimating
Delegitimating strategy occurs most frequently among implicit strategies. According to Van Leeuwen (2008), legitimation refers to the discursive construction of reasons or justifications for why a social action or practice is necessary, appropriate, or should be performed in a certain way. In our data, however, police officers’ delegitimating strategy indicates that they do not grant legitimacy to the citizens’ negative feelings and impulsive behaviors. It typically involves expressions that deny the validity or necessity of the citizens’ irrational behaviors (reconsider excerpt 2), as well as highlighting the negative consequences associated with such actions. In most instances, this strategy targets citizens’ sadness (9 instances), with a smaller proportion managing anger (3 instances). Consider the following excerpt: Excerpt 7
M1:
直接那个油直接倒到我的手上, 全部是, 然后我后面就直接那个油全部烫到了。看到这种情况我肯定追出去弄他了。
P:
M1:
对对对。
M1:
They poured the hot oil directly onto my hand, all over it. Then, I got burned badly. I must chase after them and beat them at that moment.
P:
M1:
Right, right, right.
In excerpt 7, M1, who ran a barbecue stall, described his conflict with the customer who caused him physical injury and agitation. The officer (P) responded to him by employing the delegitimating strategy. Instead of directly regulating M1’s annoyance, P turned to discourage M1’s irrational behaviors by emphasizing the importance of commercial harmony and highlighting the negative consequences of irrational behaviors. Eventually, M1’s annoyance was alleviated as shown by his compliance with P’s education.
Evoking the influence of family bonds
When citizens’ emotions escalate or become difficult to control, officers are likely to intentionally emphasize their shared social affiliations (e.g., parent-child) to remind them of their family bonds. This strategy, dealing with the citizens’ sadness and anger, is typically realized through expressions that underscore their familial identities and highlight the potential consequences of the citizens’ irrational behaviors on their families. Consider: Excerpt 8
M
（走到F母亲面前, 指着她）：谁抓谁, 子孙后代全部死掉好不好, 活不过今天！
P:
不要吵不要吵,
. . .. . .
M:
我都为小孩好。
F:
你为小孩好吗？你为小孩好。把小孩丢在农村里放三个月, 啊三年, 一个人自己在这里跟小三快活。
P:
行了, 冷静一下, 冷静一下。
F:
圆圆, 你害怕啊, 你害怕啊？
画外音：面对孩子, 母亲先慢慢冷静了下来. . .. . .
M
(Walking toward F’s mother and pointing at her): The one who scratches the other will have no descendants, okay? They will not survive today!
P:
. . .
M:
I’m just doing what’s best for the child.
F:
Is that so? You’re doing what’s best for the child? You left the child in the countryside for three months. For three years, but live it up with your mistress.
P:
Alright, calm down, calm down.
F:
Yuanyuan, are you scared? Are you really scared?
Off-screen voice: Facing the child, F gradually calmed down. . .
In excerpt 8, the officer (P) was mediating a dispute between a divorced couple. The man (M) became agitated with his mother-in-law because his ex-wife (F) scratched him, while F angrily accused him of having abandoned their child to pursue an affair. In response to the severe quarrel between M and F, P employed combined strategies to regulate their agitated emotional states. Specifically, he not only explicitly regulated their emotions (e.g., “calm down, calm down”), but also repeatedly emphasized their parental responsibility and the child’s well-being by asking rhetorical questions (e.g., “Is this really what you call doing something for the child?”). As a result, F quickly calmed down and displayed her concern for her son, as confirmed by the off-screen voice.
Hope-building
Hope-building strategy is employed by the officers to assist citizens who experience sadness, depression, or even hopelessness by helping them see future possibilities. This is achieved by emphasizing the three core components of the Hope theory: goals, pathways, and agency (Marques et al., 2011). Goals represent the desired outcomes individuals aim to achieve; pathways thinking refers to one’s perceived ability to generate workable routes towards those goals; and agency thinking reflects the motivational drive to begin and sustain goal-directed efforts (Snyder et al., 2003). The officers would offer practical solutions, and highlight the value of life to mitigate their negative emotions and restore their hope. Consider: Excerpt 9
G:
我不需要解决问题, 我就是恨他们家呀, 我只不过想个办法能让自己活的久一点。我靠什么活呀？
P2:
. . .. . .
P3:
别寻死寻活的, 来世上走一遭也不容易的。我跟你说, 如果你真的死了, 你爸妈知道了之后怎么办？
G
点头。
G:
I don’t want to solve any problems. I just hate his family. I’m just trying to find a way to live a little longer. What am I living for?
P2:
. . .
P3:
Don’t think of ending your life. Life is precious. It’s not easy to live in this world. If you died, how would your parents feel?
G
nods.
In excerpt 9, a girl (G) with intense hopelessness attempted to end her life after being abandoned by her boyfriend. She indicated that her only motivation to stay alive is her resentment toward her ex-boyfriend’s family. To restore G’s hope for living, the officers (P2 and P3) changed her agency thinking that her ex-boyfriend should not be the primary motivation for her well-being, and encouraged her to look toward the future by suggesting practical solutions, such as finding a job. Through these suggestions, the officers aimed to help her see the possibilities for forming new relationships. This strategy shifted G’s focus from being immersed in despair to embracing the promising future. At last, G showed a positive response to the officer’s suggestions.
Displaying good intent
Facing the citizens’ distrust and uncooperativeness triggered by sadness, anger, or fear, the police would employ the strategy of displaying good intent to help and support citizens, further mitigating citizens’ alertness as well as foreshadowing the ensuing emotion regulation. Consider: Excerpt 10
P:
. . .. . .冷静, 冷静, 冷静。
P:
In excerpt 10, the little girl (G) was hiding in a closet. When she heard the officer (P) trying to open the door, she became extremely agitated and cried intensely. To help calm her down, P employed the explicit strategy of comforting (“calm down”). Furthermore, to reduce the girl’s resistance toward the police, the officer explicitly displayed his benevolence (“we are here to help”), which constructed a trustworthy image of the police (Mayer et al., 1995). Additionally, P encouraged G to talk about her problem, facilitating the release of her negative emotions. Ultimately, G calmed down and cooperated with P.
Pinpointing misunderstanding
In line with attributive theory that focuses on an individual’s perception of the cause of events and behaviors (Davis et al., 2017), this strategy can be classified as pinpointing misunderstanding (Filipowicz et al., 2011). In our data, the police are prone to pinpoint misunderstanding as the cause of the citizens’ anger. Consider: Excerpt 11
M:
我现在就是为了这口气, 知道吧？啊, 我我我到上海过来消费的, 出了这样的事情. . .. . .
P1:
是这样的，张先生。
M:
嗯。
P1:
所以没有必要再纠结于刚才过去的事情了,
P2:
其实出来玩也是为了开心, 对吧？
M
点头。
M:
I’m angry about this, you know? I came to Shanghai for shopping. This kind of thing happened. . .
P1:
Mr. Zhang, as I just explained,
M:
Em.
P1:
Therefore, there’s no need to keep thinking about what just happened.
P2:
After all, you came out to have fun, right?
M
nods.
In excerpt 11, the police (P) came to the scene to help resolve a dispute between a man (M) and a seller. M became very angry with the seller because he was asked to pay double for the necklace he had accidentally damaged. Rather than allowing the conflict to be interpreted as a malicious act, P attributed it to a misunderstanding between M and the seller, thereby alleviating the man’s anger.
Affirming
Affirming strategy refers to the positive evaluations (such as compliments of personalities and characters) of the citizens or the third party involved in a conflict. Since positive evaluations could affirm the recipients’ positive self-view (Kwang and Swann, 2010) and signal acceptance from another person (Leary and Baumeister, 2000), this strategy is conducive to mitigating their sadness and strengthening the relational bonds (Zhao and Epley, 2021). Consider: Excerpt 12
F:
不想再见到他, 真的。我已经伤透了心了。
P:
我已经跟你说了, 前面我跟他交流过了,
F:
我是觉得他有点问题。
P:
对。我这次我跟他谈过了,
M:
妈妈我错了。
警察访谈画外音：他脱口而出, 这当时让我有点小小的感动。我觉得这孩子本性不坏, 而且他母亲一看自己儿子, 连他生日都记得住, 马上情绪失控就会哭, 这就是一种感动。
F:
I never want to see him again, really. My heart is completely broken.
P:
I’ve already told you. I talked to him earlier.
F:
I think there’s something wrong with him.
P:
Well, I did talk to him this time, and
M:
Mom, I was wrong.
Off-screen voice from P’s interview: He said it spontaneously, which made me feel touched at that moment. I felt this kid isn’t bad at heart. What’s more, the mother saw that her son could remember her birthday, and she immediately broke down in tears. That’s what touched her.
In excerpt 12, the officer (P) was reassuring a mother (F) who was beaten by her son and experiencing intense emotional distress. To help F feel better and de-escalate the mother-son conflict, P affirmed the positive aspects of the son’s personality. Additionally, P emphasized his professional identity as an experienced officer to strengthen credibility in his judgment, thereby encouraging F to trust his judgment and forgive her son. According to P’s follow-up interview, F was moved by her son’s apology, indicating that her distress had been successfully mitigated after P’s regulation.
Discussion
The study has found that two types of discursive strategies (explicit and implicit strategies) are deliberately adopted to (in)directly regulate citizens’ negative emotions. Since the police prioritize a persuasive and educational approach in their interactions with citizens (Li et al., 2024; Song and Chen, 2024), especially when citizens fail to resume positive emotions and engage in the ongoing interactions, the discursive strategies deployed by Chinese police can be regarded as their persuasive attempts (Virtanen and Halmari, 2005) to accommodate, change, and manage citizens’ negative emotions. In light of Aristotle’s (2022) rhetorical theory, which is intimately connected to persuasion practices (Ädel et al., 2024), the mechanism underlying Chinese police officers’ discursive strategies of extrinsic emotion regulation can be traced and uncovered. According to Aristotle (2022), persuasion comes about either through the character (ethos) of the speaker, the emotional state (pathos) of the hearer, or the argument (logos) itself. Specifically, ethos depends “upon the moral character of the speaker”; pathos relies “upon putting the hearer into a certain frame of mind”; and logos depends “upon the speech itself”. Along this vein, the police’s extrinsic emotion regulation in our data not only orient to pathos, but also resort to logos and ethos. When it comes to explicit strategies, they are undoubtedly pathos-oriented. Implicit strategies can be further subdivided into two orientations: logos-oriented and ethos-oriented. The predominance of discursive strategies oriented at pathos aligns with Ho’s (2020) findings that appealing to pathos receives more attention when dealing with negative emotions and managing rapport. The least frequent occurrence of ethos-oriented strategies may be attributed to the authoritative role of the police, who do not need considerable efforts to substantiate their argument or emphasize their identity.
In terms of pathos-oriented emotion regulation, the comforting strategy is most frequently employed at the initial stage of information gathering. Given that emotions significantly influence “perceptions, thinking, motivation, and interpretations of events” (Risan et al., 2016: 411), citizens’ negative emotional states can impair cognitive processes such as attention and working memory (Derakshan and Eysenck, 2009). Therefore, efforts to calm citizens and mitigate their distress are crucial, which facilitates more accurate, detailed, and comprehensive information disclosure (Safran and Greenberg, 1982) and contributes to the effective accomplishment of institutional tasks. Showing empathy is a strategy that has also been found in previous research on police discourse (Bull and Baker, 2020; Pounds, 2019; Song and Chen, 2024), which can legitimate citizens’ negative emotions and build solidarity among the police and citizens. Negotiating strategy, always occurring in conjunction with comforting strategy, displays a non-coercive method of policing prevalent in previous years (e.g., Guditus, 2021). In addition, when officers observe that citizens’ negative emotions impede the completion of institutional tasks, they will adopt the distracting strategy to divert the individuals’ attention, thereby preventing further escalation of the conflicts. This strategy in our data aligns with previous studies suggesting that distraction can effectively reduce emotional responses (Niven et al., 2011; Uusberg et al., 2014).
Just as Al-Momani (2014) reports, logos is generally manifested in the use of facts, examples, data, quotations, and explanations (or justifications), with the focus on claim/argument support. In our data, police officers could do this by referring to legitimacy (delegitimating strategy in excerpt 7), consequences on the family bond (evoking the influence of family bonds in excerpt 8), possible solutions (hope-building strategy in excerpt 9), and causes (pinpointing misunderstanding in excerpt 11). Notably, our study discovers several strategies that have not been previously documented in the literature. Wei et al. (2025) demonstrate that in livestream broadcasting contexts, comforters typically legitimate the comfortee’s feelings and actions through discursive means such as moral evaluation, rationalization, etc. In contrast, within police-citizen interactions, the predominant strategy of implicit emotion regulation is delegitimating, where officers delegitimate citizens’ negative emotions as unreasonable, ineffective, or inappropriate. We attribute this difference to the asymmetrical status and power (Heritage and Steven, 2011) inherent in police-citizen interactions. The police are symbolic of the law and of a higher status than many citizens with whom they interact by virtue of their occupational role (Sykes and Clark, 1975). Therefore, the delegitimating strategy functions not merely to regulate the citizens’ emotions, but also contributes to maintaining control, upholding procedural order, and strictly enforcing the law. Another strategy newly found in our data is evoking the influence of family bonds. By emphasizing social and moral ties (such as parental duty or filial obligation), the officers encourage participants to reflect on the impact of their irrational behaviors on family/social relations, especially vulnerable ones like children and the elderly. Notably, evoking the influence of family bonds is a strategy of Chinese characteristics since Chinese society is shaped by family culture (Chen, 2019). When reminded of their roles within a family or a community and their responsibilities, citizens are more likely to regulate their negative emotions. Besides, the affirming strategy can be directed either toward the individual concerned or toward a third party, providing a certain degree of encouragement to those who are feeling sadness. This is consistent with the finding of Song and Chen (2024).
In terms of ethos-oriented emotion regulation, the strategy of displaying good intent is devoted to establishing an accountable persona by providing a certain degree of commitment, expertise, and human quality (Ruokolainen and Aarikka-Stenroos, 2016), while exhibiting reservation and cautiousness (Ho, 2020). As Ho (2020) suggests, ethos is indicated in two discursive means in Chinese police officers’ extrinsic emotion regulation. On the one hand, the officers construct themselves as faithful servants and guardians of the people (see excerpt 10, “We are here to help”). On the other hand, the officers also display tenderness towards the citizen with an act of tag questions (see excerpt 10, “okay or not”). In this delicate way, citizens’ vigilance toward officers will be reduced while their trust in officers might be unconsciously fostered, resulting in enhanced persuasiveness and effective emotion regulation. Surprisingly, however, ethos-oriented emotion regulation is rarely deployed (9, 8.65%) by Chinese police officers when regulating citizens’ emotions, which is in stark contrast with previous studies on persuasion that highlight the prevalence of ethos in persuasive interactions (e.g., Clifton and van de Mieroop, 2010). It might be attributed to the fact that police officers possess default authorities, who generally do not need to emphasize their ethos unless their profession or expertise is challenged.
It is also noteworthy that explicit and implicit emotion regulation are not mutually exclusive in our data. The officers sometimes combine both strategies to manage citizens’ negative emotions, as evinced by extracts 8 and 10. We argue that the co-occurrence of explicit and implicit strategies is not contradictory but functions complementarily to achieve the police’s overarching goal of effective emotion regulation. Explicit strategies display the officers’ spontaneous efforts to identify citizens’ negative emotions, offering immediate acknowledgment and attention. Implicit strategies, by appealing to logos and ethos, reinforce the rationale for emotion regulation and help prevent the escalation of negative emotions. Together, the combination creates a more holistic communicative response to emotional distress.
With the pathos-logos-ethos-oriented emotion regulation, Chinese police officers draw upon diverse discursive strategies to alleviate citizens’ negative emotions explicitly or implicitly. In these combined ways, officers deliberately identify, accommodate, and regulate citizens’ negative emotions, thus prompting their emotional recovery, since it is a prerequisite of the smooth progression of police-citizen interactions. Most importantly, police officers’ emotion regulation is a full-cycle discursive practice, ranging from the preparations of the interaction, the process of ongoing interaction, to the completion of the interaction.
Conclusion
This study examines the explicit and implicit discursive strategies employed by the police to regulate citizens’ six types of negative emotions. The analysis reveals four explicit strategies, namely comforting, distracting, negotiating, and showing empathy, and six implicit strategies, namely delegitimating, hope-building, evoking the influence of family bonds, displaying good intent, pinpointing misunderstanding, and affirming. Given the persuasive and educational orientation of Chinese policing, these strategies are closely aligned with appeals to pathos, logos, and ethos.
The study contributes to the expanding body of linguistic research on emotion regulation by shedding light on the police’s discursive practices in extrinsic emotion regulation. It corroborates several strategies previously identified in police discourse (Pounds, 2019; Risan et al., 2016; Song and Chen, 2024), such as comforting, distracting, showing empathy, and affirming. Importantly, it also identifies novel strategies, including delegitimating, hope-building, evoking the influence of family bonds, pinpointing misunderstanding, and displaying good intent. The study is not without limitations. The data are derived from two police documentaries. We understand the criticism of documentaries (Turner, 2010), but they empower us through facilitating their access to the police’s daily interactions with citizens. Thus, we still consider them as a source well worthy of academic enquiry (Lorenzo-Dus, 2009). This restricted data source may limit the representativeness and generalizability of the findings. Future research could expand the scope of data collection by obtaining the police’s body-worn cameras.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We would like to extend warm thanks to anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. We are also grateful to Professor Chen Xinren of Nanjing University for his insightful comments on the drafting and revision of this paper. Any remaining errors are our own.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (No. KYCX25_0074). Additionally, both authors of this study have received funding from the China Scholarship Council (File IDs: 202506190156; 202506190196).
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.