J. Linguistics 47 (2011), 709–753.

f Cambridge University Press 2011

REVIEWS

J. Linguistics 47 (2011). doi:10.1017/S002222671100017X

f Cambridge University Press 2011

Malcom Coulthard & Alison Johnson (eds.), The Routledge handbook of

forensic linguistics (Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics). London :
Routledge, 2010. Pp. xxvii+673.

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 court-
rooms and police stations. Section II, ‘The linguist as expert in legal pro-
cesses ’, 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 dubi-
ous, 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 ’.

709
 JOURNAL OF LINGUISTICS

Most of the book is concerned with criminal law – understandably, since

crime is more dramatic than civil legal matters, and perhaps more funda-
mental. As the fictional barrister Rumpole says, ‘Crime is about life, death
and the liberty of the subject ; civil law is entirely concerned with that most
tedious of all topics, money’ (Mortimer 1988: 1). What civil and criminal law
have in common, however, is a concern with things that we often prefer not
to think about: conflict, bitterness, the sordid parts of life. The language of
the law reflects this unpleasantness.
Where crime is concerned, the first section of the legal system to get
involved is the police. Indeed, it would be fair to describe the police as the
people who we pay to run towards – instead of away from – conflict and
unpleasantness. The book under review looks at many features of linguistic
interaction between the police and the public. In most democracies, when the
police arrest someone they have to inform them of their right to silence.
A chapter by Janet Ainsworth about the way in which these rights have
been enshrined in law in the United States (‘ Curtailing coercion in police
interrogation: The failed promise of Miranda v. Arizona ’) argues that the
so-called Miranda rights have failed in reality to protect suspects from
police coercion, partly for linguistic reasons. This point is taken up by the
editors in the final chapter of the book, ‘Future directions in forensic
linguistics ’ (605–606) ; compare Cotterill 2000 on similar problems in the
United Kingdom. Incidentally, have you ever wondered why a common
version of Miranda includes the words ‘anything you say can and will be
used against you in a court of law ’? What is ‘can and will ’ supposed to
mean, and is it any different from ‘ may ’ in the British version ‘anything you
do say may be given in evidence ’ ? I only ask. (One might also suggest that
the expression ‘given in evidence ’ is an odd archaism, fossilised in 1912 by the
Judges’ Rules, see Sprack (2006 : 24) ; the Miranda expression ‘used against
you in a court of law’ is, in my view, much better.)
The next stage in a crime investigation is the interview at the police station.
In a chapter on lawyers’ interventions during police questioning (‘ ‘‘ I advise
you not to answer that question’’ : Conversation analysis, legal interaction
and the analysis of lawyers ’ turns in police interrogations of suspects’),
Elizabeth Stokoe & Derek Edwards cite the following question by a police
officer to a person arrested on suspicion of grievous bodily harm :
‘I know you’ve been advised not to answer it, but I mean, it is your chance
to, uh, you know, tell us your side o’the story, if you wish to do so : so in
your opinion, if someone gets kicked in the head, three times, quite hard,
what injuries d’you think that person is going to get ?’ (160) [some tran-
scription details omitted – RS]
By saying ‘if you wish to do so ’ in this extract, the officer is technically
reminding the suspect of their right to silence. Nevertheless, in context this
reminder is slimy, as is the rest of the police officer’s question. If the suspect

710
 REVIEWS

gives the obvious answer – words to the effect of ‘damage to the skull and
possibly the brain ’ – then this would be evidence of a criminal state of mind
(mens rea) and might have serious consequences. Note also the chatty tone,
with ‘I mean ’ and ‘ you know ’ as informal fillers, and the invitation to ‘tell us
your side o’the story ’, as if this is all about balance and fair play. In fact, the
question is not about ‘the story ’ at all but asks the suspect to give an opinion
on a hypothetical scenario. On the other hand, some people in police custody
routinely tell lies, and do their best to be unhelpful in other ways. The police
have an unpleasant job to do, and they have to obtain evidence that can be
used in court. Nevertheless we have the right not to be bullied or manipu-
lated by the police.
Once you have been arrested and charged with a crime (note that these
are both illocutionary acts, just two of the many that are performed only in
legal contexts – think of convicting, sentencing, taking the oath, and so on)
eventually you may appear in court. The vast majority of criminal cases in the
United Kingdom take place in the relatively undramatic venue of a magis-
trates’ court, a point unfortunately not stressed in this book, which has no
index entry for ‘magistrate ’. Serious cases are tried in a Crown Court, where
strict rules about who may speak and what they are allowed to say are en-
forced. Prosecuting lawyers are not allowed to testify themselves, but only
to call witnesses and question them – usually in a way which brings out a
narrative in which the defendant is guilty. Defending lawyers typically cross-
examine these witnesses, in order to cast doubt on the accuracy and narrative
coherence of their story ; often they also construct an alternative narrative in
which the defendant is innocent. Chris Heffer has a useful chapter on this
in the book, entitled ‘ Constructing crime stories in court ’.
The strategies used by lawyers in cross-examination form one of the most
interesting hubs of research in language and the law. Unfortunately there is
no single chapter devoted to this topic, though several touch on it, notably
Elizabeth Holt & Alison Johnson in ‘Socio-pragmatic aspects of legal talk :
Police interviews and trial discourse ’, Susan Ehrlich in ‘The discourse of
rape trials ’, Michelle Aldridge in ‘Vulnerable witnesses in the Criminal Justice
System ’, and Tatiana Tkačuková on ‘Cross-examination questioning : Lay
people as cross-examiners ’. There are also interesting chapters on closing
speeches in court, pleas for leniency, and jury instructions (standardised
words uttered by the judge just before the jury withdraws to consider its
verdict). As Peter Tiersma shows in ‘Redrafting California’s jury instruc-
tions ’, juries have often struggled to comprehend what the judge says.
Tiersma cites the odd use of stipulate in ‘statements of counsel are not
evidence ; however, if counsel have stipulated to a fact, accept that fact as
having been conclusively proved ’ (256); and the unusual word preponderate
in ‘if the evidence is so evenly balanced that you are unable to say that the
evidence on either side of an issue preponderates, your finding on that issue
must be against the party who had the burden of proving it’ (257).

711
 JOURNAL OF LINGUISTICS

The written language of legal documents has also traditionally been

difficult to understand, a matter dealt with in two excellent complemen-
tary chapters on legal writing, one by Vijay K. Bhatia on specificity
(‘ Specification in legislative writing: Accessibility, transparency, power and
control ’) and one by Gail Stygall on complexity (‘ Complex documents/
average and not-so-average readers ’). Bhatia takes a 1904 law on selling
alcoholic drinks, which has a single sentence consisting of 156 words, and
shows that three different simplified versions are easier to read but less spe-
cific, leaving out crucial exceptions and qualifications. Stygall examines
documents used to inform people of changes to their pension scheme or their
credit card terms and conditions: the latter include an obscure reference to
‘ any credits and payments that are applied against the balance of the trans-
action category on that day’ (57). She gives some relevant background on
literacy levels in the United States, concluding pessimistically that plain
English standards on their own are not enough to bridge the gap between
legal documents and their readers.
Turning now to the section on the linguist as expert, several chapters
carefully summarise the reliability of current work in areas such as speaker
identification, authorship attribution and plagiarism. Alongside these are dis-
tressing warnings by two linguists with outstanding track records as expert
witnesses. In ‘The expert linguist meets the adversarial system ’, Lawrence
M. Solan describes the unpleasant experience that can await linguists who
testify in court, where the opposing lawyer will try to ‘rip him or her to
shreds’ (396). In ‘Linguistics and terrorism cases ’, Roger W. Shuy describes
how anti-terrorism investigations in the United States ‘sometimes focus their
efforts on uneducated, gullible … suspects, who are likely to be easier to catch
and convict ’ and who are often ‘newcomers to the country … with limited
English ’ (559). He describes in detail the 2008 case of Marwan El-Hindi, now
serving fourteen years in prison for terrorism, and comments : ‘if the prose-
cutors had called on linguists to analyze these conversations [involving an
undercover agent who pretended to be a recent convert to Islam] before the
case went to trial, El-Hindi might never have been indicted’ (575).
One way to address these problems is discussed by Peter R. A. Gray, a
senior Australian judge. In ‘Cross-cultural communication’, a nicely written
chapter, he presents a different procedure that is used in some Australian
courts. If each side wants to call an expert, the two of them confer before-
hand and produce a joint document setting out the matters on which they
agree, along with those where they do not agree and the reasons why. In
court, the two experts are sworn in together after all other witnesses, and
debate the areas of disagreement ; only when they have concluded are the
lawyers allowed to question them. Known as the ‘Hot Tub procedure ’, it
has the advantage of enabling scientific debate to take place separately from
the more brutal process of cross-examination. This sounds like good practice
which should be tried in other countries.

712
 REVIEWS

Staying with linguists as experts, a chapter by Deborah Cao looks at some

of the key problems in ‘ Translating legal language ’, Krzysztof Kredens &
Ruth Morris deal with interpreting outside the courtroom in ‘‘‘ A shattered
mirror?’’ : Interpreting in legal contexts outside the courtroom’, Sandra Hale
examines what happens in the courtroom in her contribution, ‘ The need to
raise the bar : Court interpreters as specialized experts’, and Fiona English
looks at the fraught issue of ‘Assessing non-native speaking detainees’
English language proficiency’. Some of the problems these authors highlight
come from widespread misconceptions about language in the general public.
When judges tell court interpreters to render the ‘ literal meaning’ of what
is said and nothing more, as if that was a clear notion, or when police
officers use language which a non-native English speaker might well struggle
to understand, they are hardly unique – though where ‘life, death and the
liberty of the subject ’ are at stake, perhaps we should expect them to do
better.
Excellent as this handbook is, it could have been even better. There are
many crimes which can be committed purely by saying the wrong words. It
would have been interesting to have a linguistic perspective on such offences
as offering a bribe, conspiracy, incitement to racial and religious hatred,
divulging official secrets, libel and blasphemy (which was, astonishingly, only
abolished as a crime in the United Kingdom during the last decade). Free
speech, where British law makes a problematic distinction between causing
‘offence ’ (okay) and causing ‘harm ’ (not okay) is another topic that could
have been covered. Some contributions on language and legal reasoning
might have persuaded more law professionals to take an interest. As studies
such as Bench-Capon & Sartor (2003) and Ellsworth (2005) have noted, there
are many linguistic issues in the way that lawyers and judges attempt to
justify their decisions. Legal textbooks such as Slapper & Kelly (2011) have
lengthy sections on judicial reasoning, with the discussion of ‘statutory
interpretation ’ – how courts interpret the written law – raising difficult
problems in semantics and pragmatics. Another missing area in this book
is the interface between the philosophy of language and jurisprudence, as
exemplified in Green (2003) and Soames (2008).
A brief final point : the term ‘ forensic linguistics ’ in the title of this book
is not one that all specialists in this area like to use – ‘ legal linguistics ’,
‘language and the law ’, ‘ speech, language, and the law ’ are others. None of
them is ideal. One of the editors of the handbook, Malcolm Coulthard, can
certainly lay claim to the title of ‘forensic linguist ’. His analysis of alleged
fabricated statements was crucial in rectifying some of the worst miscarriages
of British justice in recent times, including the Bentley, Bridgewater and
‘Birmingham Six ’ cases. Whether legal interpreting also comes under this
heading, however, is doubtful. However, if the term ‘ forensic linguistics ’
helps to increase the academic and professional standing of the different
fields represented in this book, I am all in favour of it.

713
 JOURNAL OF LINGUISTICS

R EF ERE NCES
Bench-Capon, Trevor & Giovanni Sartor. 2003. A model of legal reasoning with cases in-
corporating theories and values. Artificial Intelligence 150.1–2, 97–143.
Cotterill, Janet. 2000. Reading the rights: A cautionary tale of comprehension and comprehen-
sibility. Forensic Linguistics 7.1, 4–26.
Ellsworth, Phoebe C. 2005. Legal reasoning. In Keith J. Holyoak & Robert G. Morrison (eds.),
The Cambridge handbook of thinking and reasoning, 685–703. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Green, Michael S. 2003. Dworkin’s fallacy, or what the philosophy of language can’t teach us
about the law. Virginia Law Review 89.8, 1897–1952.
Mortimer, John. 1988. Rumpole and the age of miracles. Harmondsworth : Penguin.
O’Connor, Paul. 2007. Blackstone’s police manual, 10th edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Slapper, Gary & David Kelly. 2011. The English legal system, 12th edn. London: Routledge.
Soames, Scott. 2008. Interpreting legal texts: What is, and what is not, special about the law. In
Scott Soames, Philosophical essays, vol. 1, 403–423. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Sprack, John. 2006. A practical approach to criminal procedure. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Author’s address: School of Humanities, University of Brighton, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9PH, UK
r.m.salkie@brighton.ac.uk
(Received 13 May 2011)

J. Linguistics 47 (2011). doi:10.1017/S0022226711000181

f Cambridge University Press 2011

David Embick, Localism versus globalism in morphology and phonology

(Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 60). Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2010.
Pp. xii+218.

Reviewed by BRIDGET SAMUELS, University of Maryland

For an entire century, since the heyday of Ferdinand de Saussure and

Nikolai Trubetzkoy, linguists have failed to reach consensus on the question
of what constitutes an acceptable explanation for the existence (or absence)
of a particular phonological pattern, and in particular whether considera-
tions about the suitability of phonological output from the standpoint
of markedness play a direct role in the process through which such
outputs arise. This debate has been played out on many stages and cast
in many terms (see Chapter 2 of Samuels (2011) for a historical overview
of thinking on markedness, teleology, functionalism, and naturalness in
phonology). However, the debate has largely been confined to phonological
and phonetic argumentation concerning phonological and phonetic evi-
dence. In Localism versus globalism in morphology and phonology,
David Embick broadens the debate, bringing morphological evidence to
bear on the issue, in an attempt to reconcile what he sees as an unsustainable
situation of disagreement or ‘schism’ between the Distributed Morphology
(DM) view of morphosyntax and the Optimality Theory (OT) view of
(morpho)phonology.

714