At first I wasn't going to post this here because I was afraid it could get political. Then I decided that we are all grownups and surely know how to keep our conversations on the right track, so here goes.

As has been posted elsewhere here, Illinois has been struggling with our "governor issue." I won't repeat the difficulties he has had. However, just yesterday I read in Language Log a very interesting post in "Language and the Law" about how linguistics should be intricately used when reviewing and analyzing the tapes. The author makes some good points, such as:

quote:

Are feedback markers, like “uh-huh” and “okay” treated as agreements rather than as indicators that the speaker is simply uttering noises that tell the speaker to keep talking?

I wonder if, when analyzing tapes which could send people to prison, they hire linguists? I am doubtful, and yet I think they should. There are definitely some nuances that could be taken either way.

Mark Liberman, whose post that was, has made quite a number of posts about his work in Forensic Linguistics. Just go to the Language Log home page and put "Forensic Linguistics" in the search box.

Oh, I am sorry; I hadn't realized it was Mark Liberman who wrote that. I looked at the "filed by Roger Shuy" and thought he was a lawyer with a linguistic aptitude. Actually, the latter might have been a better choice for writing it, as it has legal implications. I did send the link to some lawyers I know, and they had thought part of it was curious, such as thinking the tapes could have been altered. We are talking about the U.S. Attorney's office, after all.

Anyway, sorry for misleading people. BTW, where did you see that the author was Mark Liberman? I just went back to the link and still can't find it. It's probably right in front of my nose!

Sorry, my mistake, I misread it with the author of the post above it.

You are right of course it was Roger Shuy. All the same Shuy does work sometimes in court as a forensic linguist and has posted about it before.

Here's an example.

I found that Roger Shuy is a linguist who taught at Georgetown for a number of years. He is not a lawyer, though. I wonder if there is a field of linguistic law or vice versa.