Abstract
I describe and discuss a series of court cases that focus upon on decoding the meaning of slang terms. Examples include sexual slang used in a description by a child and an Internet Relay Chat containing a conspiracy to murder. I consider the task presented by these cases for the forensic linguist and the roles the linguist may assume in determining the meaning of slang terms for the Courts. These roles are identified as linguist as naïve interpreter, lexicographer, case researcher, and cultural mediator. Each of these roles is suggestive of different strategies that might be used from consulting formal slang dictionaries and less formal Internet sources, to collecting case specific corpora and examining all the extraneous material in a particular case. Each strategy is evaluated both in terms of the strength of evidence provided and its applicability to the forensic context.
References
Bell, A. 1984. Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13(2). 145–204.10.1017/S004740450001037XSearch in Google Scholar
Cheshire, J., P. Kerswill, S. Fox & E. Torgersen. 2011. Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(2). 151–196.10.1111/j.1467-9841.2011.00478.xSearch in Google Scholar
Cole, C. E. 2010. Review of Making meanings, creating family: Intertextuality and framing in family interaction, by Cynthia Gordon. Journal of Family Communication 10(3). 211–213.10.1080/15267431003699611Search in Google Scholar
Cunningham, C. D., J. N. Levi, G. M. Green & J. P. Kaplan. 1994. Plain meaning and hard cases. Yale Law Journal 103(6). 1561–1625.10.2307/797094Search in Google Scholar
Dumas, B. K. & J. Lighter. 1978. Is slang a word for linguists? American Speech 53. 5–17.10.2307/455336Search in Google Scholar
Eades, D. 1982. You gotta know how to talk …: Information seeking in south‐east Queensland aboriginal society. Australian Journal of Linguistics 2(1). 61–82.10.1080/07268608208599282Search in Google Scholar
Eble, C. C. 1996. Slang & sociability: In-group language among college students. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.Search in Google Scholar
Fox, G. 1993. A comparison of “policespeak” and “normalspeak”: A preliminary study. In J. M. Sinclair, M. Hoey & G. Fox (eds.), Techniques of description: Spoken and written discourse, 183–195. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Green, J. 2010. Green’s dictionary of slang. Oxford: Oxford University Press (accessed 9 May 2015).Search in Google Scholar
Green, J. 2015. The timelines of slang. http://thetimelinesofslang.tumblr.com.Search in Google Scholar
Greenlee, M. 2010. Sociolinguistic issues in gang-related prosecutions: Homies, hearsay, and expert standards. In M. Coulthard & A. C. Johnson (eds.), The Routledge handbook of forensic linguistics, 281–302. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Grieve, J. 2015. Research blog. https://sites.google.com/site/jackgrieveaston/treesandtweets (accessed 9 May 2015).Search in Google Scholar
Hale, S. 2010. Court interpreting. In M. Coulthard & A. C. Johnson (eds.), The Routledge handbook of forensic linguistics, 440–459. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Kießling, R. & M. Mous. 2004. Urban youth languages in Africa. Anthropological Linguistics 46(3). 303–341.Search in Google Scholar
Landau, S. I. 1984. Dictionaries: The art and craft of lexicography. New York: Scribner.Search in Google Scholar
Lewandowski, T. 2012. Uptalk, vocal fry and, like totally slang: Assessing stylistic trends in American speech. Stylistyka 21. 209–219.Search in Google Scholar
Noaks, L. & I. Butler. 1995. Silence in court? Language interpreters in the courts of England and Wales. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 34(2). 124–135.10.1111/j.1468-2311.1995.tb00831.xSearch in Google Scholar
O’Mahony, B. M. 2010. The emerging role of the Registered Intermediary with the vulnerable witness and offender: Facilitating communication with the police and members of the judiciary. British Journal of Learning Disabilities 38(3). 232–237.10.1111/j.1468-3156.2009.00600.xSearch in Google Scholar
Solan, L. 1998. Linguistic experts as semantic tour guides. Forensic Linguistics 5(2). 87–106.10.1558/sll.1998.5.2.87Search in Google Scholar
Stenström, A. B. & A. M. Jørgensen (eds.). 2009. Youngspeak in a multilingual perspective. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.184Search in Google Scholar
Walsh, M. 1997. Cross cultural communication problems in Aboriginal Australia. Canberra: North Australia Research Unit, The Australian National University.Search in Google Scholar
© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
