ABSTRACT
When Halliday wrote ‘language is as it is because of what it has to do’ a functional theory of language was born, giving us a perspective of meaning-making that is grounded in social practice and in the many varied and complex contexts in which we find ourselves. Context is dynamic and socially constructed through and by discourse – both in its linguistic and non-linguistic semiotic modes – and we know that the legal world is context-rich. It is peopled by a hierarchical mini-nation of judges, lawyers, police and law-enforcement officers and then the common man and woman, who walk, like Adam and Eve, unknowing, through this strange world. Its texts are also richly layered with meaning; its language has evolved over many centuries and its peculiar form is a result of this history and specialised use. What legal people do with lay people through legal language, legal texts and legal interaction is the focus of this Handbook. Leading scholars from the disciplines of linguistics, law, criminology and sociology examine the ways that language has and is being used, who is using it, how they are writing, where they are speaking, why they are interacting in that way and what is being accomplished through that interaction. Forensic Linguistics has now come of age as a discipline. It has its own professional
association, The International Association of Forensic Linguists, founded in 1993; its own journal, International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, founded in 1994; and a biennial international conference. There are three major introductory textbooks – Coulthard and Johnson (2007), Gibbons (2003) and Olsson (2nd ed. 2008a) – and a growing number of specialist monographs: Cotterill (2003), Eades (2008b), Heffer (2005) Heydon (2005) and Rock (2007), to mention just a few. Modules in forensic linguistics and/or language and the law are taught to undergraduate and Masters level students in a rapidly increasing number of universities worldwide and, at the time of writing, there are three
specialist Masters degrees at the universities of Aston, Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) and Cardiff, and an annual international summer school at Aston training the next generation of forensic linguists.
