Reviewed by Amy Gurvis, Northeastern Illinois University

According to its editors, the main purpose of this book is ‘to provide a guide to the multidisciplinary nature of Forensic Linguistics—understood in its broadest sense as the interface between language and the law—that could be of interest for scholars, graduate students and professionals working in Applied Linguistics’ (1).

John Gibbons and Teresa Turell summarize the collection of fourteen papers in the introduction (1–4). The remainder of this volume is organized into three sections: ‘The language of the law’ (7–111), ‘The language of the court’ (115–211), and ‘Forensic linguistic evidence’ (216–99). In Section 1, Peter Tiersma (‘The nature of legal language’) discusses the language of regulation and legislation and examines the growth and use of legal languages. In ‘Language education for law professionals’, Jill Northcott addresses the difficulties encountered in teaching English legal language to second language learning legal professionals. Chris Heffer, in ‘The language and communication of jury instruction’, presents an examination of the language used in jury instructions and its comprehension. Then, Phil Hall examines ‘Policespeak’. Concluding the section is ‘Legal translation’, in which Enrique Alcaraz Varo examines the challenges and issues of English legal translation.

Section 2, ‘The language of the court’, begins with ‘Questioning in common law criminal courts’ written by John Gibbons, which examines the differences between everyday questioning and courtroom questioning. Then, in ‘Bilingual courtrooms: In the interests of justice?’, Richard Powell discusses the variable of code choice in courtrooms and its potential effect on justice. Dennis Kurzon, in ‘The silent witness: Pragmatic and literal interpretations’, addresses how silence can be used in the courtroom and how different countries interpret it. In ‘Language and disadvantage before the law’, Diana Eades presents an argument about the imbalance of power in the courtroom that linguistically disadvantaged groups, such as the deaf, encounter throughout the justice system. ‘Interpreting for the minority, interpreting for the power’ by Ester S. M. Leung concludes the section, by examining how interpreting and translating testimony can maintain the power of the status quo.

Section 3, ‘Forensic linguistic evidence’, starts with Tim Grant’s ‘Approaching questions in forensic authorship analysis’, which examines the analysis and challenges of the written authorship process, breaking it into four stages and discussing the inability of any one identification technique to address all of these stages. In ‘Trademarks and other proprietary terms’, Ronald R. Butters discusses the linguistic criteria that define trademarks. Then, William G. Eggington addresses ‘Deception and fraud’ by analyzing the text of a deceptive email. Finally, in ‘Plagiarism’, M. Teresa Turell tackles different types of plagiarism, methodologies used, and their subsequent challenges.

The book provides an extensive look into the field of forensic linguistics and could easily serve as a textbook for a course. It could also be used as an informative resource to anyone interested in language and the law in any capacity.