ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a different perspective on language and law: how language used in situations other than 'legal' contexts – in general communication – is treated if it becomes the subject matter of litigation. It outlines the many ways in which verbal communication gets into trouble with the law, either by constituting criminal behaviour or when disputed in a civil case. There is no reason in principle why laws and regulations should not be applied to communicative acts in the same way that findings of fact are made concerning other areas of human behaviour. Free speech or freedom of expression is, in the end, a political or philosophical topic more than a linguistic one. Where the boundaries lie between protected and unprotected speech depends on analyses that depend on linguistic assessments, whether the distinctions made are formulated in terms familiar in linguistics or in an alternative, separately developed legal metalanguage.
