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International Journal of Language & Law
Number of Followers: 3

This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 2194-7414
Published by International Language and Law Association

[1 journal]

The Role of Linguistics in Veracity Evaluation
- Authors: Martina Nicklaus, Dieter Stein
  Abstract: Although the issue of veracity of statements in forensic contexts arises from evidence given in language, an appreciable share of applied professional linguistics in the practical process of veracity evaluation hardly exists. The article aims to provide a survey of key theoretical and methodological issues in the field of veracity evaluation from the linguistic point of view – a currently popular field where fast results are expected and a lot of publicity is to be gained. The article starts out by looking at the very notion of “truth” and what can happen to it on the way from real-life experience to a verbal report. It then gives an overview of psychological and other approaches to verifying the truth or otherwise of verbal reports. These approaches variously include linguistic cues in their lists of diagnostic features. Dissatisfaction with and inconsistency of the results of psychological tests is partly due to a lack of professional sophistication in defining linguistic cues, as well as a disregard for the role of genres in determining normality expectations for the occurrence of linguistic cues. The paper argues for the inclusion of linguistic cues on a systematic basis, as well as for the further refinement and sophistication in the definition and application of linguistic categories in psychological tools of analysis.Cite as: Nicklaus & Stein, JLL 9 (2020), 23–47,
  DOI : 10.14762/jll.2020.023
  PubDate: 2020-04-30
  Issue No: Vol. 9 (2020)
Defamation as a Language Crime: A Sociopragmatic Approach to Defamation
Cases in the High Courts of Justice of Spain
- Authors: Victoria Guillén Nieto
  Abstract: The investigation of language crimes is one of the expert areas of forensic linguistics as a forensic science that analyses language as evidence. This paper focuses on a particular type of language crime: defamation. This is an offence perpetrated, primarily, with malicious language—either written language (libel), spoken language (slander), or technospeech (Garfield, 2011: 17)—that involves social emotions and intentional false communication and harms a person’s dignity, prestige, and reputation in the social community. Since the 1980s, linguists have tried to shed light on defamation as a language crime from various linguistic theories such as speech act theory, semantics, discourse analysis, and pragmatics, as shown in works by Durant (1996: 195–210), Hancher (1980: 245–256), Kniffka (2007: 113–148), Shuy (2010) and Tiersma (1987: 303–350). In this paper, we take a different path in suggesting a sociopragmatics-based approach to the analysis of defamation, with special reference to impoliteness (Culpeper, 2011; Spencer-Oatey, 2005: 95–119). The questions we discuss are: (1) Is the theory of impoliteness appropriate for evidencing actionable offence in cases involving defamation' (2) How do the High Courts of Justice of Spain appraise defamatory meaning' (3) Does conventionalised formulaic impoliteness promote guilty verdicts' And (4) Does non-conventionalised impoliteness support acquittals' This piece of research is grounded in empirical data, particularly in a corpus of 150 judgments for cases of defamation given by the High Courts of Justice of Spain between 2013 and 2017.Cite as: Guillén Nieto, JLL 9 (2020), 1–22,
  DOI : 10.14762/jll.2020.001
  PubDate: 2020-04-09
  Issue No: Vol. 9 (2020)

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