Abstract:

Initiatives by groups such as the 'Plain English Movement', which strive to render legal language comprehensible to the lay-person caught up in legal or judicial processes, might eventually include an appraisal of the problem of the language of expert evidence, which almost inevitably involves a trade-off between accessibility and scientific precision. The expert sitting quietly in the laboratory analysing forensic evidence, and then writing up a report, is often both physically and psychologically far removed from the court. Further, under the adversarial system 'the court' is not a single, simple entity, it involves a disparate array of participants: judge, jury, prosecutor, informant, defence counsel, opposing expert, pen writer or transcriber, defendant, and increasingly, interpreter. Each of these participants has the right to hear or view evidence in a form which ensures that it and its significance will be thoroughly understood. In this paper, I discuss the form and nature of forensic language both as a linguist and as an expert witness.

Author: Kate Storey-White