Forensic linguistics

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Forensic linguistics, legal linguistics, or language and the law, is the application of linguistic knowledge, methods, and insights to the forensic context of law, language, crime investigation, trial, and judicial procedure. It is a branch of applied linguistics.

There are principally three areas of application for linguists working in forensic contexts:^[1]

• understanding language of the written law,
• understanding language use in forensic and judicial processes, and
• the provision of linguistic evidence.

The discipline of forensic linguistics is not homogeneous; it involves a range of experts and researchers in different areas of the field.