Applied Linguistics and Law: A Review of Forensic linguistics Research Trends, Challenges, and Innovations
Abstract
The connection between applied linguistics and law has grown into an exciting and diverse field of research that combines theory, real-world studies, and practical applications in legal settings. Over the years, this area has evolved from focusing on isolated aspects of legal language to becoming a well-established interdisciplinary field known as forensic linguistics. Today, it draws on insights from sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, psycholinguistics, and even computational methods to study legal texts, spoken interactions, and institutional communication. This review offers a detailed overview of the current state of research in this area. It explores the field’s historical roots, theoretical foundations, methodological developments, and the practical challenges it faces. We trace the journey of forensic linguistic methods initiating from early work on confessions and trademark disputes to modern techniques like corpus-based analysis and computational tools for authorship attribution and legal translation. We also look at the complexities of courtroom discourse, police interviews, and the communication barriers faced by non-native speakers in legal contexts. Along the way, we address ongoing debates about the reliability and admissibility of linguistic evidence in court and stress the need for interdisciplinary collaboration to make legal processes fairer and more accurate. Finally, the report highlights emerging trends such as the use of quantitative tools (e.g., corpus linguistics, stylometry), improvements in expert witness protocols, and the growing impact of globalization and multilingualism on legal language. By bringing together key findings from influential studies and recent innovations, this review not only maps current research directions but also points to future opportunities for bridging theoretical advances with practical legal reforms.
Keywords: Applied Linguistics, Forensic Linguistics, Legal Discourse, Courtroom Interaction, Corpus Linguistics, Authorship Attribution, Multilingual Legal Communication.
