Explores the role of linguistics in promoting justice and equality with regard to ethnic minorities, legal matters and civil rights.

John Baugh is the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University, St Louis. He is best known for advancing studies of linguistic profiling and various forms of linguistic discrimination that were supported variously by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the United States Department of State.

1. Introduction; 2. Linguistics, life, and death; 3. Linguistics, injustice, and inequality; 4. Some linguistic and legal consequences of slavery in the United States; 5. Linguistic profiling; 6. Earwitness testimony and unbiased formulation of auditory line-ups; 7. Dialect identification and discrimination in the United States; 8. Formulating discrimination: dimensions of a historical hardship index; 9. Linguistic harassment; 10. Linguistic contributions to the advancement of justice; 11. Shall we overcome?