Sociolinguistics and the legal process is an especially welcome contribution to the field of language and the law (a field also referred to as forensic linguistics), artfully situating the field within the broader framework of sociolinguistics. Diana Eades brings to this book a wealth of personal research experience in this field, together with an in-depth knowledge of its scholarly literature, gained partly through her role as co-editor of the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law. Engagingly written, the book is intended to be primarily a textbook for upper-division undergraduates and graduate students, but it is much more than that. Covering language and law from a multiplicity of theoretical and substantive vantage points, Eades succeeds in producing a textbook that not only explains the field in all of its many facets, but also is thorough and up-to-date in its review of the scholarly works on which it is built. The book is far more than a mere synthesis of the work of others; it is a vehicle for presenting Eades' own stance on a number of important issues that are being debated in the field. Happily, in allowing her voice to be heard, Eades avoids doctrinaire positions. While her own work is grounded in interactional sociolinguistics, she covers research findings that run the gamut of sociolinguistic analytical approaches from the ethnography of speaking/ethnography of communication, to discourse analysis (subsuming within it conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, and critical discourse analysis), variationist sociolinguistics, sociology of language, and critical sociolinguistics.

The book consists of five parts, divided into eleven chapters. Part 1, the introductory section, comprises one chapter, “Using sociolinguistics to study the legal process.” For students who have not yet had a course in sociolinguistics, this chapter gives an excellent yet brief overview of sociolinguistics, its basic principles (e.g. that variation is a basic characteristic of spoken language, and that such variation can be studied along either a diachronic or synchronic dimension; that sociolinguistics on the whole focuses on description and avoids prescription in characterizing both written and spoken language). Included in this review are definitions of very basic sociolinguistic notions, such as register, and even general linguistic concepts, such as “level of language” (i.e. phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon, semantics, and pragmatics). Wisely, the chapter also defines the concept “legal process” and explains what sociolinguistics can contribute to the study of it. Eades follows this section with one focusing on the nature of spoken language in the legal process, pointing out a “pervasive assumption in the legal process that written communication is more important than spoken communication” (9), and demonstrating the impact of written legal language on spoken legal language. In addition to outlining the various approaches to analysis used by sociolinguists, Eades includes an important section in which she explains the differences among the various different legal systems used around the world (e.g. common law; civil, or continental law; customary, or informal law). Finally, the first chapter includes a useful section reviewing the transcription conventions typically used by sociolinguists. Since the book is aimed at student readers, and Eades refers the readers to a large number of studies for further reading, and in addition includes numerous textual extracts from these publications throughout her book, an orientation to transcription conventions is indeed very useful. Equally useful for the beginning student of sociolinguistics and of the legal process are the legal and sociolinguistic glossaries that Eades includes as appendices to the book. The legal glossary is particularly useful in that it includes a number of terms commonly found in the United Kingdom and its former colonies (e.g. Australia, Eades' home base), which would not be well known to readers socialized in other legal systems (e.g. caution, the equivalent of the US Miranda warnings; barrister and solicitor, both meaning ‘lawyer’ or ‘legal practitioner’ but having very distinct roles to play).

Part 2 of the book devotes five chapters (2 through 6) to courtroom hearings. Ch. 2 deals with courtroom talk: who the participants are, the constraints on courtroom talk, rules of evidence, and access to data for researching courtroom talk. Each of these and the remaining chapters of the book (excluding Ch. 11, the conclusion) end with assignments for students. These assignments will be of great help to the instructor who adopts the book, in that they provide students with thought-provoking questions for class discussion and suggestions for independent research. They represent one of the many valuable resources the book has to offer.

Ch. 3 focuses on trials. It covers linguistic issues surrounding jury selection, opening statements, witness examination (specifically, lawyers' questions, witnesses' answers, the power of words, strategies in cross-examination, closing arguments, judges' summaries and instructions to the jury). Chs. 4 and 5 deal with disadvantage before the law. Ch. 4 focuses on second language speakers and interpreters, examining such issues as how the need for an interpreter is assessed (usually judges make this assessment, and they generally do not have the requisite linguistic training to carry out such an evaluation), theoretical arguments against the use of legal interpreters, understanding the role of the interpreter, linguistic challenges in courtroom interpreting (challenges of a semantic, grammatical, pragmatic, and cultural nature, and additional challenges for creole speakers), what happens when second language speakers communicate with judges without an interpreter, and the particular problems that deaf sign-language users face in the courtroom.

Second language speakers are not the only people who face special challenges in the courtroom, Eades points out. She devotes Ch. 6 to “vulnerable witnesses,” specifically children and second-dialect speakers. Eades points to the body of research showing that children are especially vulnerable to unclear and confusing questions and to “Do you remember” questions. Beyond that, children are generally more prone to suggestibility than adults, that is, they are easily influenced by suggestion (87). For this reason, in some countries courts have made special provisions for children's testimony, such as allowing children to testify on closed circuit television in order to spare them the trauma of facing the suspect (89). Second-dialect speakers are at a disadvantage for other reasons. Eades demonstrates how cultural differences between speakers of a standard dialect and second-dialect speakers (e.g. Australian Aboriginal people) can work against the latter in a courtroom setting. Specifically, cultural presuppositions about language use in court, about actions taken outside of court, and about courtroom discourse structure can serve to disadvantage second-dialect speakers and make them more vulnerable to attorneys' questioning strategies.

Ch. 6, which concludes Part 2 of the book, on courtroom hearings, examines courtroom talk and societal power relations. In revisiting the topic of courtroom power, Eades looks at the relationship between courtroom talk and (i) the liberty of the individual, (ii) patriarchal power, and (iii) neocolonial talk. She reviews research showing that despite the power that a lawyer, for example, has over a witness, because of the inherently asymmetrical relationship that they are placed in, witnesses have the power to resist manipulative questions, and that “the power imbalance in the courtroom is not static and it is not absolute” (107). Nevertheless, in trials involving women who have accused men of raping them and police officers who are defending themselves against accusations of mistreatment of ethnic minority members of a neocolonial society, both women and ethnic minorities are shown to lose out to those doing the questioning.

Part 3 of the book turns to the subject of police interviews. Ch. 7 concentrates on communicating the suspect's rights, examining research on the police caution and the Miranda rights, including linguistic and sociolinguistic efforts to rewrite those rights, and presenting arguments for and against scripted cautions. The chapter includes the issue of coercion by the police, fabricated confessions that result from such coercion, and the nature of policespeak. The research Eades reviews includes the phenomenon of suspect resistance to linguistic coercion by the police.

Ch. 8, which concludes Part 3, looks specifically at the issue of police interviews with members of minority groups. Here Eades reviews the research on the experience of second language speakers: the use and nonuse of interpreters in police interviews, linguistic challenges in interpreting suspects' rights, the experience of deaf sign language users, that of creole speakers and second-dialect speakers, children, and intellectually disabled people. In short, Eades' major concern in this chapter is with the experiences of disadvantaged groups.

Part 4 of the book examines less frequently researched areas within the field of language and the law: lawyer-client interactions (Ch. 9) and informal and alternative legal processes (Ch. 10). Ch. 9 deals specifically with “how lawyers and their clients talk to each other, the relationship between text and talk in lawyer-client interactions, and how lawyers transform their clients' stories for the legal process” (189). Ch. 10 reviews such topics as telling your story in informal courts, talking about social problems in such contexts, and the experience that people have had in small claims courts and arbitration settings. In this chapter Eades sheds light on the microdynamics of mediation talk, looking at different ways of disputing and the issue of mediator impartiality. A section on alternative criminal justice practices (e.g. restorative justice practices, therapeutic courts, and indigenous sentencing courts) is particularly illuminating, as it is an area of forensic linguistics that is less well researched.

Eades' concluding chapter on “What (else) can sociolinguistics do?” covers such topics as the linguist as expert witness, emphasizing the point that expert witnesses are not meant to be advocates but rather, impartial experts. Sociolinguists such as Eades investigate inequality, finding not only “wider social issues of racism and inequality,” but just as importantly, that “the role of language use in the failure to deliver justice is often more subtle” (241). It is in this chapter—with its discussion of the relationship between language ideologies and inequality and the pervasive, widely shared belief held by legal practitioners in western societies that language “is a medium that maps human thought onto an objective external reality and it does so transparently” (Ainsworth Reference Ainsworth2008:14 as cited in Eades, p. 243)—that Eades brings home to the reader the full force driving her book, namely, that “The sociolinguistic study of language use can play a valuable role in explaining how language works and doesn't work in the legal process, and in contributing to the understanding of how the law delivers justice and fails to deliver justice” (256). Eades does an admirable job of persuading us of this overarching thesis. Sociolinguistics and the legal process thus would be an excellent text for any upper division undergraduate or graduate course in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, legal studies, or forensic linguistics and is to be highly recommended to instructors looking for textbooks for such courses.