Language and the Law

Peter Gibbons
Need of Laws?
To Control human behaviour
Penalties for those who break the law.
To discourage people from doing murder
and theft.
Aspects of Law: Legal code and Legal
process
TRIALS
•Linguistic
events
•Thus language
is central to
the Law and
the law is
inconceivable
without
language
 Development of
Language of Law
LAW AND RELIGION
 Religion has had influences in developing many law frameworks
Like, Ecclesiastical system of Islam,
Roman Law(Inquisitorial system) developed from ancient Roman law
and is found in much of continental Europe, East and South East Asia.
Common Law(Adversarial system), originated in England and Wales and
can be found where English speakers have ruled. 

Inquisitorial : in which the

court, or a part of the
court, is actively involved Adversarial:the
in investigating the facts role of the court is
of the case primarily that of
an impartial
referee between
the prosecution a
nd the defense. I
Development of Language of
Law
 The development of the language of the law reveals
1) the move from speech to writing
2) specialization and technicality
3) the use of power
1.the move from speech to
writing
 the move from speech to writing Anglo
Saxons(old English)
 Murder,witness,guilt,thief (words)
 Anglo Saxons had wills (it was actually what one
desired to happen when one died)
 Curses
2. specialization and
technicality
 technical terms that are not part of everyday
language
 everyday words are used in a specialized sense, for
instance 'contempt,' 'execution' (of a document),
 influence of Latin (e.g., 'habeas corpus') and French
(e.g., 'tort') in the development of technical language 
 very long noun phrases the need to package complex
and precise meanings
3. the use of power
 lawyers and layfolk,
 between police and public,
 and between prison staff and prisoners
LEGAL COMMUNICATION AND
REMEDIES
 Technicality
• avoid nominalizations,' 'avoid passives,' 'avoid more
than two embeddings,' 'ensure that the order of ideas
is coherent and logical,' 'avoid technical
language' (lexico-grammatical modification)
• Use of legal interpreters or translators (to interpret or
translate in trials and proceedings as the judges do not have the
right to do the translation themselves in courts of law)
LANGUAGE AND LEGISTLATION
1. Language rights
2. The right to silence
3. Language crimes
1. Language rights

The Indian constitution provides

certain rights to the minorities to
preserve language, religion,culture
They use these minority languages
in education, and administration
in order to safeguard them.
2. The right to silence
 The ‘right to silence’ is a principle of common law
and it means that a suspect or an accused is NOT
guilty because he has refused to respond to
questions put to him by the police or by the Court.
3. Language crimes

 The use of swearing, offensive, or abusive language

in a public place is a crime.
  Racial vilification, is a language act that has been
made illegal in most developed nations with the
exception of the U.S.
(Vilification :to offensive and abusive comments which
either express or incite serious hatred and contempt for
individuals on the
grounds of their race ,colour ,or ethnicity of a person or
group of people)
FORENSIC LINGUISTICS
 Studies the use and abuse of language
 Studies the use of linguistic evidence in legal
cases(how to identify the author of suspective
message
 The emergence of forensic linguistics dates back to
the 1950‟s and 1960‟s. However, it was in 1968 ,Jan
Svartvik observed it during the analysis of a
statement given to police in 1953.
 The case was Timothy John Evans
FORENSIC LINGUISTIS
 Specialists
 called upon to provide their opinions regarding a
wide range of issues like,
 questioned documents,
 handwriting (which can either be text-based or in the
form of signatures).
FORENSIC LINGUISTISCS
 Areas of forensic linguistics
1.Phonetics
2.Handwriting and type
3.Words
4.Grammar
5. Discourse
6.Sociolinguistics
1. Phonetics
 voice identification.
 The ability to identify the voice of culprit.
 Schiller and Koster “The ability of expert witnesses to
identify voices: A comparison between trained and
untrained listeners”
• interline spacing
• parallelism of lines
• location of handwriting in relation to the printed
document
• class of allograph (cursive, manuscript (disconnected),
printing and composites of cursive and printing)
proportions
• writing size
• intra and inter-word spacing
•use of abbreviations
• legibility (quality of the writing)
• presence of pen stops and pen lifts
• line quality, and pen control characteristics (as
evidenced by pen pressure differentials in the line trace)
3. Words
 The use of habit words.
 This technique involves word counts of various
types, and the measurement of the co-
occurrence of fairly common words such as 'the
+ adjective + noun'; it is proposed that individuals
vary considerably from each other on such
features.
 It uses a statistical technique 'cusum‘( uses paired
and matched sums of number of words in consecutive
sentences of the text.)
5.discourse
 important evidence in the judicial appeal of the
Birmingham Six, which showed on the basis of the nature
of the discourse
 that the police records of interviews contained
fabrications.
 For instance, they contained repeated reference to a "
white plastic bag“ in the beginning &then used only "bag"
thereafter, which would be normal in spoken discourse.
(also examined a range of other features). The Birmingham
Six were subsequently released and paid compensation.
6. Sociolinguistic
 Accent difference
 people can assume a dialect or accent that is not
their own.
 none of them could consistently disguise their
vowels in such a way as to prevent their identification.
It seems to be very difficult, but perhaps not impossible, to simulate
another accent to a degree where it is accepted as native by experts.