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Language Crimes: The Use and Abuse of Language Evidence in the Court Room
Book by Shuy, Roger W.
Hardcover
First published February 1, 1993
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September 21, 2016
Really more like 3.5 stars.
"Language Crimes" as a phrase mostly refers to crimes that are inherently language-based: bribery, extortion, etc. The author is a linguist whose specialty involved examining taped conversations. Somehow he gets hooked up with lawyers, and his specialty now seems to be examining tapes that the FBI has made in sting operations.
Most of the book is example-based, and that gets a little old. I wish he had spent more time talking about general stuff. (Not that he doesn't at all--just that I wanted more.) Also, his examples can get self-serving. Like his interpretation is so obviously right. And yet, whether the judge/jury came to the same conclusion he did seems to be basically a coinflip.
He's a pretty good writer, though a little dry. And there's lots of interesting stuff here--I definitely learned a lot. About the difficulty of questioning children, about what happens when two people in a conversation have different agendas.
This book is a little out of date. (A surprising number of his examples come from AbScam, which we're supposed to be familiar with. And John DeLorean. Even in 1993, the year it was published, those seem a stretch.) I'll probably try another of his books, as the subject is interesting.
"Language Crimes" as a phrase mostly refers to crimes that are inherently language-based: bribery, extortion, etc. The author is a linguist whose specialty involved examining taped conversations. Somehow he gets hooked up with lawyers, and his specialty now seems to be examining tapes that the FBI has made in sting operations.
Most of the book is example-based, and that gets a little old. I wish he had spent more time talking about general stuff. (Not that he doesn't at all--just that I wanted more.) Also, his examples can get self-serving. Like his interpretation is so obviously right. And yet, whether the judge/jury came to the same conclusion he did seems to be basically a coinflip.
He's a pretty good writer, though a little dry. And there's lots of interesting stuff here--I definitely learned a lot. About the difficulty of questioning children, about what happens when two people in a conversation have different agendas.
This book is a little out of date. (A surprising number of his examples come from AbScam, which we're supposed to be familiar with. And John DeLorean. Even in 1993, the year it was published, those seem a stretch.) I'll probably try another of his books, as the subject is interesting.
Displaying 1 of 1 review