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Forensic Linguistics?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Michael Canale ,
Raymond Mougeon  and
Terry J. Klokeid
Michael Canale
Affiliation:
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Raymond Mougeon
Affiliation:
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Terry J. Klokeid
Affiliation:
Saskatchewan Indian Federated College
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Extract

The application of linguistics to legal issues—what some have labelled “forensic linguistics”—has become increasingly common, varied and consequential (see Brackenridge 1981 for a brief overview). Recently, we three served as language experts in Toronto’s first bilingual jury trial (Regina vs. Lapointe and Sicotte, 1981). Since each of us was assigned a different linguistic problem and since our roles were partially adversary ones (two of us worked for the defence and the other for the prosecution), we were able to draw upon a variety of linguistic concepts and analyses as well as to assess their effectiveness when applied to legal issues. The present paper reports not only on the nature of our involvement but, more importantly, on our joint perception of disturbing language-related problems in the legal process and of equally disturbing inadequacies in the responses that linguistics can currently offer to many of these problems.

Type
Remarks/Remarques
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , Fall 1982 , pp. 150 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1982

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Footnotes

*

This paper was first presented at the 1982 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association at the University of Ottawa in June. We are grateful to those members of the Association who shared their own experiences in applying linguistics to legal issues and who encouraged us to write up our own experiences; we thank Jack Chambers, Dan Wilson and David M. Perlmutter for particularly stimulating discussions. All errors and opinions here are, of course, our own responsibility.

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