New Challenges in Forensic and Legal Linguistics

Dear Colleagues,

Applied linguistics is experiencing significant growth in the fields of justice, security, and law. Depending on the legal contexts, and the links between universities and institutions, forensic and/or legal linguistics are not developed in the same way, which raises critical questions for applied linguistics. The aim of this Special Issue is therefore to bring together relevant contributions about the current state of forensic linguistics, to document possible outcomes, as well as contexts of study and cooperation, and to highlight future issues and challenges for the field. We encourage researchers to present the most recent developments in the field (in particular in connection with recent cases), explore new avenues of research, and discuss the plurality of theories and methods applied. Indeed, a variety of approaches (corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, terminology) are used, and it could be useful to consider their issues and implications from an applied approach point of view.

This Special Issue will cover a variety of topics, and we invite participants to submit a proposal on, but not limited to, the following strands:

• Forensic linguistics (Coulthard, M., Johnson, A., and Wright, D. 2016);
• Authorship attribution (Grant, 2010; Fobbe, E. 2020);
• Language and law (Hutton, C. 2009);
• Language as evidence (Longhi 2021, 2022);
• Courtroom and police interviews discourses (Haworth, 2012; Kredens, K., and Morris, R. 2010);
• Cyberviolence (Makouar, N. 2022).

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editors ([email protected] and [email protected]) or to the Languages editorial office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

Tentative completion schedule:

• Abstract submission deadline: 20 January 2023
• Notification of abstract acceptance: 20 February 2023
• Full manuscript deadline: 20 September 2023

References:

Fobbe, E. (2020). Text-Linguistic Analysis in Forensic Authorship Attribution. JLL, 9, 93.

Grant, T. (2010). Text messaging forensics Txt 4n6: Idiolect free authorship analysis?. In The Routledge handbook of forensic linguistics (pp. 536-550). Routledge.

Hutton, C. (2009). Language, meaning and the law. Edinburgh University Press.

Kredens, K., & Morris, R. (2010). Interpreting outside the courtroom*‘A shattered mirror?’Interpreting in legal contexts outside the courtroom. In The Routledge handbook of forensic linguistics (pp. 483-498). Routledge.

Coulthard, M., Johnson, A., & Wright, D. (2016). An introduction to forensic linguistics: Language in evidence. Routledge.

Haworth, K. (2013). Audience design in the police interview: The interactional and judicial consequences of audience orientation. Language in Society, 42(1), 45-69.

Longhi, J. (2021). Using digital humanities and linguistics to help with terrorism investigations. Forensic science international, 318, 110564.

Longhi, J. (2022). Linguistic Approaches to the Analysis of Online Terrorist Threats. In Language as Evidence (pp. 439-459). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Makouar, N. (2022). Immigration Statistics in French Online Comment Boards: Mistrust Discourse, Anti-migrant Hate Speech. In Cyberhate in the Context of Migrations (pp. 115- 133). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Prof. Dr. Julien Longhi
Dr. Nadia Makouar
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• forensic linguistics
• legal linguistics
• applied linguistics
• language as evidence