Dr Janet Cotterill

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, 2023

Drawing on Brown and Fraser’s (in: Giles, Scherer (eds) Social markers in speech, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 33–62, 1979) framework for the analysis of communicative situations and Fuentes Rodríguez’s (Lingüística pragmática y Análisis del discurso, Arco Libros, Madrid, 2000; in Estudios de Lingüística: Investigaciones lingüísticas en el siglo XXI, 2009. https:// doi. org/ 10. 14198/ ELUA2 009. Anexo3. 04) model of pragmatic analysis, this paper examines three home-made recordings featuring some of the members of the terrorist cell responsible for the 2017 vehicle-ramming attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils weighted as evidence during the trial held between November 2020 and May 2021 in the Spanish National High Court. The aim of this qualitative analysis is to test whether the linguistic evidence available supports the allegation that the participation in these recordings by one of the accused, Mohamed Houli Chemlal, had been planned by his interlocutors. Results show, first, that the exchanges analyzed present features indicative of both spontaneity and (limited) planification. Second, that Houli makes key contributions to the unfolding of the interactions shown in the recordings and that he does so in a cooperative and apparently relaxed manner, which could at best provide only partial support to his allegations. It is claimed that forensic linguistic analysis can generate valuable insights within terrorism-related legal proceedings.

Discourse & Society, 2010

Journal of Linguistics

Reviewed by RAPHAEL SALKIE, University of Brighton Lawyers spend vast amounts of time arguing about the meaning of words. Sometimes the disagreement may strike laypeople as bizarre: for example, in the United Kingdom you can get three years in prison for carrying around an 'article ' for use in stealing something. The term ' article ' does not include a trained monkey, according to the case of Daly v Cameron [1954] 1 All ER 315 (O'Connor 2007 : 192). Often, though, it is perfectly understandable for courts to deliberate at length about semantics : if someone takes some steps that might lead to stealing something, but does not actually steal anything, can they be charged with 'attempting ' to steal ? It would depend on how far advanced the steps were. If the suspect was caught tunnelling into a bank vault with a crowbar in their hand (perhaps without a trained monkey), and has a history of similar crimes, things would be fairly clear. At the other extreme, take someone with no criminal record or contacts, who speculates idly with friends about how to steal the Crown Jewels : they would probably have nothing to worry about. In between lies a wide range of behaviour that might count as an 'attempt ', and it is often not easy for courts to decide where the dividing line should be drawn. Language and the law are closely linked, and recent years have seen a surge of work on the connections. The editors of The Routledge handbook of forensic linguistics have been prominent in the field, and the result is an absorbing state-of-the-art survey. The book is divided into three sections. Section I has twenty-one chapters which examine ' The language of the law and the legal process ', looking at written texts but mostly at spoken discourse in courtrooms and police stations. Section II, 'The linguist as expert in legal processes ', reviews different ways in which linguists can apply specialist expertise to legal matters, including forensic phonetics, court interpreting, author identification, plagiarism and the widespread practice-highly dubious, in my view-of using linguistic analysis to determine language of origin in asylum cases. This section contains twelve chapters in all. Finally, Section III consists of five chapters which survey 'New debates and new directions '.

Studies About Languages, 2013

Forensic Linguistics (FL) is a relatively new subfield within applied linguistics that studies the different intersections between language and the legal field, which is heavily linguistic by nature. In order to have a fair, legal and effective procedure, anyone involved in a legal process (lawyers, judges, police officers, members of a jury, etc.) benefits from possessing a certain awareness of linguistic principles. With this purpose, the expert testimony of a linguist could contribute to the understanding or recognition of possible interpretations or points of view that might have gone otherwise unnoticed. This article provides the general linguist with an overview of the broad field of FL and highlights the different ways the discipline can contribute to the criminal justice system. It presents a summary of some of the most well-known and discussed legal cases and outlines the intersections between applied linguistics (mainly pragmatics, discourse analysis, and sociolinguistics) and this emerging field in three interrelated areas: (1) language as the medium of communication between law enforcement authorities and suspects/witnesses or as the medium of legal argumentation in the courtroom, (2) language of the law (issues of intelligibility, interpretation and construction of legal language), and (3) crimes of language and linguistic evidence (use, validity, and reliability in the courtroom). Challenges and limitations of the field are also discussed.

HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 2017

2021

This paper considers the extent to which forensic linguistics can be considered a science, and outlines some ways in which it is useful in legal proceedings, including voice identification, the interpretation of police-suspect interaction, verification of police reports, and cross-cultural insights into speech patterns in a courtroom context. On the basis of the analysis, the paper concludes that Forensic linguistics can prove beneficial for the investigation of crimes, analysis of the judicial procedures, and particularly disputes in law. It can also be used for the analysis of courtroom discourse and interpret and translate the legal documents for their readability and comprehensibility. Moreover, the police cautions issued to the suspects can also be analyzed for their comprehensibility and the authorship attribution can be established for written or spoken texts. It, therefore, works as the interface between language, crime, and the law. Keywords: forensic linguistics, authorshi...

The international journal of speech language and the law, 2016

Forensic linguistics is the scientific study of language as applied to forensic purposes and contexts. It is a very new area of linguistics vis-à-vis its 2400-year history and is a recent and rapidly growing area of modern applied linguistics.

American Speech, 2006

Upon the appearance of the second edition of a text, even one as well known as J. K. Chambers's Sociolinguistic Theory: Linguistic Variation and Its Social Significance, the prospective buyer wants to know whether the book has undergone significant revision to warrant another purchase. Stephen van Bibber and Glenn Gilbert (1996) and Edgar Schneider (1999) ably reviewed the first edition of Sociolinguistic Theory (Chambers 1995), so this review will evaluate differences between the two editions, possible responses to criticism of the first edition, and improvements made in the second. The 2003 edition remains an exemplary text on theoretical approaches to language variation studies, though not on sociolinguistics broadly conceived due to the narrow focus of the book. Although they praised the book for its clear accounts of age-grading, van Bibber and Gilbert (1996) were unenthused by the first edition and criticized it heavily for its narrow focus on language variation; many sociolinguistic practices were omitted. They state that, "as a rule," language variation is treated as just one topic among many in introductory sociolinguistics texts (617); Wardaugh (1992) devotes two chapters of about sixty pages, but some devote less. One might note that, in the following decade, Lesley Milroy and Matthew Gordon published Sociolinguistics: Method and Interpretation (2003), a large percentage of which is comprised of variationist inquiries into the nature of language-and Milroy and Gordon state (xii) that their book's origins lie in Milroy's Observing and Analysing Natural Language: A Critical Account of Sociolinguistic Method (1987), a contemporary of Wardaugh's first edition of An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (1986). Yet, to van Bibber and Gilbert (1996, 618), Chambers's first edition seemed exceptionally and excessively reflective "of a particular philosophy he holds," which is "pervasive throughout the book." They doubted its usefulness as anything more than a supplementary text, delivering pointed critiques, such as, "however, because American Speech

European Chemical Bulletin (Scopus Indexed Journal), ISSN 2063-5346, 2023

Applied linguistics includes forensic linguistics as one of its components. People in this profession are responsible for examining laws, legal procedures, language in the courtroom, and evidence presented in both civil and criminal cases. Applied linguistics in this context differs from other types in that data collection is unnecessary as it is readily available. The responsibility of a linguist entails the use of a range of linguistic tools, including but not limited to pragmatics, phonetics, morphology, syntax, discourse analysis, language change, stylistics, semantics, lexicography, sociolinguistic variation and graphemics, in order to work with pre-existing data. Forensic linguists approach their work from a legal standpoint and use linguistic techniques to address legal matters. In order to be recognised as experts, linguists who provide testimony in trials must satisfy specific legal criteria. During forensic linguistic analysis, it is incumbent upon the linguist to impart knowledge to legal practitioners, including but not limited to judges, jurors, and lawyers regarding the fundamental principles of linguistic analysis as they relate to the legal issues under consideration. The increasing prominence of forensic linguistics suggests that applied linguistics is broadening its scope beyond conventional emphasis on language acquisition, instruction, and assessment, thereby constituting a favourable advancement. The study shows how language is essential to the judicial system and how it ironically fosters injustice. Therefore, the significance of critical legal analysis and the participation of linguists is demonstrated.