Forensic Linguistics is the study of language and the law, covering topics from legal language and courtroom discourse to plagiarism, and as a discipline, it has come of age as argued and indicated in The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics. The Handbook has a collection of thirty-seven original chapters written by the world’s leading academics and professionals, to provide a comprehensive guide to this interdisciplinary and relatively new field. It provides a unique and excellent work of reference to the leading ideas, debates, topics, approaches and methodologies in forensic linguistics.

The collection has many essays in wide ranging areas and many with empirical data analysis from different jurisdictions, including discussions of legal language, both written and spoken, the analysis of language use by participants in police investigations, interviewing and interrogation, courtroom genres, the analysis of the language used by lay participants in the judicial process, essays on the linguist as expert in legal processes, multilingualism in legal contexts, authorship and opinion, and legal interpreting and translation. It has three major sections: the language of the law and the legal process, the linguist as expert in legal processes, and new debates and new directions. The handbook will be useful to linguists interested in language and law, legal professionals and law enforcement professionals.