In Linguistics in pursuit of justice, John Baugh takes us on a journey to explore how linguistics can be used to advance justice and equality throughout the world. Topics that are discussed include forensic linguistics, the linguistic legacy of slavery, linguistic profiling, dialect discrimination, and linguistic harassment.

Baugh begins in ch. 1 by introducing his personal and historical experiences in witnessing discrimination against black people and his interest in connecting language and justice. In ch. 2, he introduces the birth of forensic linguistics, followed by two legal cases where poor African Americans, speaking with a strong inner-city dialect, were charged with murder, and where he offered evaluation of linguistic evidence. These cases explain that linguistic evaluation could determine the difference between life and death. Ch. 3 moves to a broader range of issues of language usage and (in)justice, including speech act theory, everyday linguistic dimensions of injustice, audience design, educational inequality, and linguistic human rights. A comparison is made between Hitler's speech to declare war and Gandhi's salt march speech asking for equality to illustrate that motives of speech and perceptions of justice might differ depending on audiences. Ch. 4 focuses on the linguistic legacy of US slave descendants. By examining terms referring to US slave descendants and a discourse analysis of the Dred Scott Ruling, Baugh argues that ‘all those “whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves” shall become full members of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States’ (64). Ch. 5 moves to discuss linguistic profiling from a global perspective and offers contemporary considerations such as educational bias and immigration. Baugh stresses that technology has made linguistic profiling easier and more complicated.

Chs. 6 and 7 draw on experimental findings to argue that the reliability of earwitness testimony should be tested and used with great care in legal cases, and different dialects can be easily identified by people. Ch. 8 then provides a historical hardship index, illustrating that language needs to be integrated with other dimensions of discrimination, such as race, gender, and sexual orientation. Ch. 9 shifts focus to linguistic harassment and demonstrates how alternative linguistic research methods, such as the ethnography of communication, can be used to evaluate and expose linguistic harassment instances. Finally, ch. 10 outlines linguistic contributions to the advancement of justice, including foundational contributions made by Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, Leonard Bloomfield, and Uriel Weinreich, and methodological contributions brought by various linguistic approaches and contributions from specific studies. In the final chapter, ‘Shall we overcome?’, Baugh reflects on how linguistic tools can help with pursuing, overcoming, obtaining, achieving and sustaining justice, cautioning that linguistic tools must not be used for harmful purposes, but only for good intentions to advance justice.

Overall, this book provides a detailed survey of how linguistic science can be used to promote justice. It is a must-read for anyone, not only in the field of linguistics, but also in other disciplines, who want to promote justice and equality in the world.