Language in the American Courtroom

One of the most promising connections that linguistics can make to other fields is to the legal arena, primarily because much of the work in law is done in language and it is often largely about language, either spoken or written. For example, lawsuits, indictments, pleadings, briefs, legal opinions, and, of course, laws and statutes are all revealed and preserved in written language. Courtroom appearances and testimony, although presented orally, end up in written form and even oral evidence gets transformed into written transcripts. We begin with the observation that language and law are close bedfellows.