This handbook offers a comprehensive survey of the subdiscipline of Forensic Linguistics, with this new edition providing updated overviews from leading figures in the field and exciting new contributions. It is a vital resource for advanced students, researchers and scholars.

Malcolm Coulthard is Emeritus Professor of Forensic Linguistics at Aston University, UK. He was Foundation President of the International Association of Forensic Linguists and founding co-editor of the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law (IJSLL) and is co-editor of the international journal Language and Law/Linguagem e Direito.

Alison May (formerly Johnson) is Lecturer in English Language at the University of Leeds, UK. She is co-author of An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics: Language in Evidence, 2nd edn. (with Malcolm Coulthard and David Wright, Routledge, 2017) and co-editor of the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law.

Rui Sousa-Silva is Assistant Professor and researcher of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto, Portugal. He is Publicity Officer of the International Association of Forensic Linguists and co-editor of the international journal Language and Law/Linguagem e Direito.

List of illustrations

List of conventions used

List of contributors and affiliations

Notes on editors and contributors

Acknowledgements

1 Introduction

Section I The language of the law and the legal process

1.1 Legal language and legal meaning

2 Legal talk

3 Legal writing: complexity

4 Legal writing: attitude and emphasis

5 Creating multilingual law

6 Legal interpretation

1.2 Witnesses and suspects in interviews and investigations

7 Miranda rights

8 Witnesses and suspects in interviews

9 False confessors

10 Police interviews in the judicial process

11 Assuming identities online

1.3 Language in the courtroom

12 Order in court

13 Narrative in the trial

14 Advances in studies of the historical courtroom

15 Capitally speaking: language and bias in capital trials

16 Multimodality in legal interaction

1.4 Lay participants in the judicial process

17 Instructions to jurors

18 Vulnerable witnesses

19 Rape victims

20 Defendants' allocutions at sentencing

21 Aboriginal claimants

Section II The linguist as expert in the legal process

2.1 Expert and process

22 The forensic linguist

23 Trademark linguistics

24 Speaker profiling and forensic voice comparison

25 Forensic phonetics and automatic speaker recognition

26 Forensic transcription

27 Consumer product warnings

28 Terrorism and forensic linguistics

2.2 Multilingualism in legal contexts

29 Non-native speakers in detention

30 Court interpreting

31 Interpreting outside the courtroom

2.3 Authorship and opinion

32 Experts and opinions

33 Forensic stylistics

34 Text messaging forensics

35 Plagiarism

36 Computational forensic linguistics

Section III New directions

37 Corpus approaches to forensic linguistics

38 Corpora and legal interpretation

39 Police crisis negotiation

40 Investigative linguistics

41 'Prison has been a proper punishment'

42 Pranksters, provocateurs, propagandists

43 Concluding remarks

Index