ABSTRACT
This chapter tells what the book is about and what it’s not about. Linguistics and law is part of a broader field, language and law. Linguistics and law is about contributions from linguistic analysis to legal outcomes and to understanding the nature of legal phenomena. Areas of law where linguistics can contribute include police-suspect talk, in detentions and after arrest; the understanding of surreptitiously made recordings; crimes of language like perjury, solicitation, and conspiracy; contracts; trademarks; and statutory and Constitutional interpretation. All these areas are discussed in the book and get summary mention in this chapter.
This chapter also includes introductory material about semantics, Gricean pragmatics, and presupposition, areas which will be important for understanding content in later chapters; the US court system; and case and statutory citation.
