Resumen de Introduction: Theory and practice in forensic linguistics
Victoria Guillén Nieto, Dieter Stein
The chapter first establishes some basic conceptual distinctions regarding activities in the field of law and language. It argues that legal linguistics and forensic linguistics are very separate pursuits in significant respects and must not be conflated under the same umbrella. The chapter briefly looks at the development of forensic linguistics. It aims at situating forensic linguistics in the context of forensic science and trace theory, stressing the logical and procedural steps in turning a potential trace of a crime into a status of evidence at court. As a scientific pursuit, forensic linguistics has to answer questions about how to guarantee its status as a truly scientific discipline on a par with other science-based disciplines, like forensic medicine or biology. Forensic linguistics raises questions about the training requirements for the expert linguist and scientific methodological approaches to language as evidence. Finally, the chapter provides an overview of the book’s contents, situating them in the grid of the preceding perspectives.
