Forensic Linguistics: Applied Sociolinguistics and the Law

The main purpose of, 'Forensic Linguistics: Applied Sociolinguistics and the Law', is to scrutinise, form a broadly sociolinguistic perspective, the language practices of crime and law. 'Crime' here includes criminal activities committed through language, such as threats, or those to which language is incidental but may become evidentially important, such as robberies. 'Law' encompasses systems of rule most obviously involving policing, courts and prisons. The object of study is therefore diverse, but specified. The book will also examine relationships between forensic linguistics (the study of language in relation to crime and law) and sociolinguistics (the study of language and society) and will consider in detail current and future applications of sociolinguistics in forensic settings.

Linguistic research has already made significant contributions to our understandings of justice, invigorating treatment of Aboriginal people throughout the Australian legal system, developing new ways of communicating rights in police custody and challenging norms of powerful and persuasive language in courts, for example. Such research has provided insights into the potential for rigorous linguistic analyses to contribute to legal systems in many ways from developing practitioner education to delivering expert testimony. However, as society changes, so its legislative expectations, requirements and frameworks change. In recent years new ways of communicating about law have developed and new responses to law in the media and society have taken shape. Likewise sociolinguistics has contributed to new ways of viewing interactants, interactions, talk and text which problematise existing and emergent activities within legal systems.

For this book, such tensions are a point of departure. Using techniques and concepts from sociolinguistics, particularly discourse analysis, new literacy studies and interactional sociolinguistics I will consider the forms and functions of spoken and written language in crime and law. However, rather than simply reviewing established literature I take two complementary perspectives - mirror images - to explore first, recognisable legal settings using sociolinguistic tools and secondly, sociolinguistic concepts and frameworks themselves using the very activity of examining legal settings. In other words I first examine linguistic aspects of settings involving crime and law such as police interview rooms and courts. I then consider what we can learn about a range of sociolinguistic topics, such as multilingualism, power and the lifespan using those settings. This dual structure shifts away from traditional research agendas in forensic linguistics which have been concerned predominantly with legal communicative contexts and relatively isolated forensic linguistic tasks, It thereby constructs a working link between sociolinguistic notions and crimino-legal speech events, texts and linguistic practices.

The book will be of interest to scholars, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates in sociolinguistics, forensic linguistics, language and law, applied linguistics and discourse within linguistics and cognate disciplines. It will also be both interesting and accessible to students and faculty in law, policing, criminology and forensic psychology. The applied focus will appeal to practitioners in legal areas: police officers, lawyers and judges are in this category. In sum, this research leave will support work that is substantial in both kind and in its likely impact. It will relocate forensic linguistic research and practice within the broader context from which it can be seen to have emerged within the last two decades, and thereby test and demonstrate its credibility as a plausible and robust applied sub-discipline. This is an enterprise of major importance given the increasing use of linguistic evidence in judicial processes and the evident enthusiasm of university students to embrace forensic linguistics.