Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
combines the formidable expertise and wisdom of two of the field’s most
respected leaders with the fresh perspective of one of its bright new scholars.
Students will love the fascinating illustrative data from a large number of real
cases from five continents.’
Diana Eades, University of New England, Australia
Part One deals with the language of the legal process, and begins with a substan-
tial new chapter exploring key theoretical and methodological approaches. In
four updated chapters it goes onto cover the language of the law, initial calls to
the emergency services, police interviewing, and courtroom discourse. Part Two
looks at language as evidence, with substantially revised and updated chapters on
the following key topics:
Second edition
Typeset in Times
by Cenveo Publisher Services
This book is affectionately dedicated to our families
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Contents
1 Introduction 1
Legal words, murder, plagiarism, trademarks and a voice hoax 2
Who is this book for? 3
Organisation of the book 4
Reading and research tasks and how they function 4
The second edition 5
PART I
The Language of the Legal Process 7
5 Trial discourse 75
Introduction – into the courtroom 76
The trial as a complex genre 77
Trial genres – from jury selection to deliberation and verdict 80
Examination and cross-examination of witnesses 82
Narrative in the courtroom 94
The expert witness in the courtroom 96
Children in the courtroom 97
Conclusion 100
Further reading 101
Research tasks 101
PART II
Language as Evidence 103
11 Conclusion 215
Contributing to society 215
Codes of conduct 216
New developments and future directions 217
The next generation 219
Closing statement 220
References 222
Index 246
List of illustrations
Figures
2.1 Concordance of all of the occurrences of then in Derek Bentley’s
statement27
7.1 Comparison of spectrograms of two utterings of ‘What
time’s the train?’ 140
Tables
4.1 Intertextual links between interview talk and legislation 73
5.1 The jury trial sequence, activities, and functions, adapted
from Heffer (2005: 71) 78
7.1 Features used by forensic phoneticians in the analysis
of speech 135
8.1 A comparison of Jenny Nicholl and David Hodgson’s
stylistic choices 159
8.2 Consistent and distinctive style markers in four email authors 172
9.1 Comparison of extracts from British secret service document
on Iraq and an academic article 183
9.2 Comparisons between the four translated texts 184
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Acknowledgements
We are deeply indebted to Krzysztof Kredens, who read and commented in detail
on an early draft of Part II and to David Woolls not only for his superb work in
harmonising the varied referencing styles of the authors with that of the publisher
but also for substantially computerising the normally labour-intensive task of
creating the index especially for the book. We also thank Peter French who not
only produced the spectrogram in Figure 7.1, but has also been a constant source
of information and encouragement for the past 25 years. Finally, we are grateful
to Dominic Watt who reviewed Chapter 7 for this edition.
Most of the material in this book has been presented over the past 20 years to
literally thousands of students on undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the
Universities of Aston, Birmingham, Cardiff, Leeds, Nottingham Trent and the
Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil, and it has benefited immensely
from their perceptive observations. We learned a great deal from innumerable
colleagues who have discussed texts and responded to ideas following papers at
conferences and university research seminars. Particular thanks for insights,
stimulation and critical comments must go to our friends in the 1990s Birmingham
Forensic Linguistics Research Group: Sue Blackwell, Janet Cotterill, Tim Grant,
Chris Heffer, Charles Owen, Frances Rock and Michael Toolan. And last, but by
no means least, Janet Ainsworth, Ron Butters, Diana Eades, John Gibbons, Roger
Shuy, Larry Solan, Peter Tiersma and Teresa Turell, whose friendship, perceptive
writings and generous personal communications have influenced the whole book.
Permissions
The UK Acts of Parliament and legislation referred to in this book contain public
sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0, available
from http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/
version/3/.
Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders. Please advise the
publisher of any errors or omissions, and these will be corrected in subsequent
editions.
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1 Introduction
Acts of Parliament
Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.legisla-
tion.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/6/contents> (accessed 15 December 2015).
Offences Against the Person Act 1861, Online. Available HTTP: < http://www.legislation.
gov.uk/ukpga/1861> (accessed 14 December 2015).
Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE), Online. Available HTTP: < http://www.
legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984> (accessed 14 December 2015).
Theft Act 1968, Online. Available HTTP: < http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968>
(accessed 14 December 2015).
Theft (Amendment) Act 1996, Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.legislation.gov.uk/
ukpga/1996 > (accessed 14 December 2015).
Legal cases
Baigent v Random House (7 April 2006) Summary of Judgment Online. Available HTTP:
<http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/judgment_guidance/judgments/summary.htm> (accessed
27 May 2007).
The State of Western Australia v Gibson [2014] WASC 240. Available HTTP: http://www.
austlii.edu.au/au/cases/wa/WASC/2014/240.html (accessed 8 March 2016).
United Biscuits Limited v Customs and Excise, VAT Tribunal LON 91/160 1991.
R v Hodgson [2009] EWCA Crim 742.