In the conclusion, I sum up the arguments of the book by looking in two directions: first, toward language theory and second, toward domestic violence. On the side of language theory, I have made arguments about identity, indexicality and narrative, and then I have correlated them with arguments about staying/leaving narratives, emotional violence, and other facets of domestic violence. The narrative and analytical piece that holds it all together is law enforcement. In this conclusion chapter, I also review and comment on issues such as sexuality and race that I did not deal with in the book, proper.

Chapter One, “Domestic Violence, Violence Against Women, and Patriarchy,” examines heterosexual domestic violence with a female victim from a patriarchal perspective. This chapter argues that two forms of patriarchally styled violence-“patriarchal terrorism” (Johnson, 1995), which is an accounting of physical violence, and “coercive control” (Stark, 2007), which is an accounting of emotional violence-must be brought together in order to understand the depths and terror of domestic violence. This chapter, which is primarily theoretical rather than analytical, argues strongly that police officers need to pay closer attention to “verbal” or “noncriminal domestic” calls, because they involve real forms of violence.

In the introduction, I review literature on domestic violence, policing, discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, and more. This chapter is intended to provide a backdrop for the analysis that is to come. In this chapter, I situate my arguments in the existing scholarship on domestic violence and law enforcement.

Chapter Four analyzes police officer identities performed and assumed in both the victim/survivor and police officer interviews. For police, there are a number of identities emergent, constrained, and enabled by the network of social meanings and ideologies circulating in the domestic violence field of indexicality. I focus on analyzing police narratives and emergent identities. Most of the narratives told by police are either about procedure, police, and law, or about domestic violence victims. Their identities, then, largely emerge in relationship to an/other, a victim/survivor, who is storied as uncompliant with police wishes and expectations. This chapter argues that identity is formed and emerges via stories told about prior interactions and others. The identity that emerges is one of frustration and adherence to protocol but also of caring. In some moments of empathy, police demonstrate concern for victim/survivors and a desire for victim/survivors to get and stay safe.