Language in Evidence: Forensic Linguistics

Catalog description

This course explores issues of language usage in legal settings through the lens of forensic linguistics, both in the United States and abroad. We begin by examining the language of the legal process and reviewing key theoretical and methodological approaches. Next, we explore issues that arise from specific settings where language may have legal implications, such as initial calls to emergency services, police interviewing, and courtroom discourse. Finally, we look at language as evidence by means of considering the work of the forensic linguist, forensic phonetics, authorship attribution, the linguistic investigation of plagiarism, and the linguist as expert witness.