Forensic linguistics : the application of language description in legal contexts

Malcolm Coulthard*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Published conference outputChapter (peer-reviewed)peer-review

Abstract

In this article I first divide Forensic Linguistics into three sub-disciplines: the language of written legal texts, the spoken language of legal proceedings, and the linguist as expert witness and then go on to give a small number of examples of the research undertaken in these three areas. For the language of written legal texts, I present work on the (in) comprehensibility of police cautions and of judges instructions to juries. For the spoken language of legal proceedings, I report work on the problems of interpreted interaction, of vulnerable witnesses and the need for more detailed research comparing the interactive rules in adversarial and investigative systems. Finally, to illustrate the role of the linguist as expert witness I report a trademark case, five different authorship attribution cases, three very different plagiarism cases and I end reporting briefly the contribution of linguists to language assessment techniques used in the linguistic classification of asylum seekers.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationLinguistique légale et demande sociale
Subtitle of host publicationles linguistes au tribunal
PublisherÉditions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme
Pages15-33
Number of pages19
ISBN (Print)978-2-73511317-0
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2010

Publication series

Name Langage et Société
PublisherÉditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme
Number2
Volume132
ISSN (Print)0181-4095
ISSN (Electronic)2101-0382

Keywords

  • Auteur
  • Authorship
  • Droit
  • Forensic Linguistics
  • Langage
  • Language
  • Law
  • Linguistique lgale
  • Plagiarism
  • Plagiat

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