The Language of Perjury Cases

The Language of Perjury Cases outlines the contributions that linguistics can make to both the gathering of evidence and the way that evidence is analyzed in perjury cases. Roger W. Shuy describes eleven representative lawsuits--involving bankruptcy unions hunting licenses doctors priests and Senators--for which he served as a consultant. Shuy''s linguistic analysis illustrates how grammatical referencing speech acts discourse structure framing conveyed meaning intentionality and malicious language affected the outcome of these cases.