In many respects, this book is an important addition to a growing number of books and articles on language used in law (e.g., Pavlenko, Reference Pavlenko2008; Shuy, Reference Shuy1998). Coulthard, a discourse analyst, and Johnson, a former police officer now a lecturer in English, sketch a comprehensive picture of the many intersections language makes with what they term institutions such as law enforcement and the legislative branches of governments. Thus, the reader is exposed to transcripts that stand as official recountings of police interrogations, courtroom cross-examinations, and emergency police calls as well as to examples of legislation (written laws).
The wealth of examples of language in use, along with the breadth of topics discussed, are the strengths of this book. In 10 chapters, the authors touch on forensic phonetics, idiolects (as related to understanding who has written or produced a particular text), legal genres, and the role of linguists as expert witnesses, among other things. Whereas their main analytical focus of legal texts is through discourse analysis, Coulthard and Johnson also use lexical, pragmatic, and narrative analysis to point out specific features of texts. Their focus is the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia.
As applied linguists are occasionally called upon to consult, testify, or both, on language issues in legal cases (as I have been), this book seems a necessary addition to one’s professional library. Certainly its breadth of treatment mirrors the variety of cases on which nonspecialist applied linguists may consult, which might range from giving opinions on whether a suspect knew enough English to confess to a crime to giving opinions on whether a manager was coercing a worker. The first impression suggests that this book might be used to bring to life discourse analysis and speech acts for lightly experienced applied linguists, perhaps those in their second year of graduate study.
That said, the book suffers from poor editing, which makes it frustrating to read. The table of contents seems logical, but within chapters and subchapters the logic breaks down. It is not clear why certain examples are presented and, more importantly, what readers are to do with them. That is to say, interpretations of the transcripts seem disjointed and sometimes do not seem to clearly contribute to the larger themes of a chapter or subchapter.
The procedures used by the authors to reach their interpretations are often not described. For experienced applied linguists who might wish to confirm their decisions to use particular analyses in their work, this is disappointing. Coulthard and Johnson seem remarkably opaque with descriptions of their analytical procedures (cf. Shuy, Reference Shuy1998), which may add to the impression of sketchy and incomplete interpretations.
In terms of using the book as a graduate-level text, there are statements throughout this volume that seem to refer to previously established concepts not to be found despite close reading. Some terminology appears (e.g., transition relevance places); however, it is not well defined, nor followed up on, nor necessarily needed. My review copy used to write this review is studded with penciled question marks and statements such as How?, Why?, Why are we talking about this?, So what about topic movement? You mentioned it so why did you drop it?, and Is this foregrounded at all?. I understand that the authors’ stated purpose is to introduce learners to new terminology, but it seems to lack sufficient context within the text to be understood. Anyone planning to use this as a course text should expect to do a lot of explaining.
I had hoped to assign this book to introduce applied linguistics graduate students to realistic applications of different types of linguistic description and discourse analysis (hence my appreciation of the many transcripts). The imprecise organization and writing precludes its use as a dedicated course text, unfortunately. One notable exception is the chapter “Idiolect and Uniqueness of Encoding,” which contains a clear definition of idiolect and detailed procedures on detecting idiolect and authorship. This chapter alone follows through with the implied promise of this book, which seems to be to raise certain issues and problems and to build readers’ interpretive skills. The entire book does the former, but only one chapter does the latter.
This book represents a step forward in terms of the range of topics covered in forensic linguistics. It is truly an introduction in this respect. However, for this work to be of greater utility to applied linguists and their students, the authors need to consider carefully their theories of how readers’ interpretive discernment and skills might be developed.
