Lawyers need to have a basic understanding of linguistics and psychology. This book has developed from Professor Jackson’s course in Law, Linguistics and Psychology at the University of Liverpool. Based on his own original research, both theoretical and empirical, in the semiotics of law, Professor Jackson argues that any account of legal sense commences with the processes of sense construction in general. This is the first volume to synthesize relevant areas of linguistics, psychology and semiotics, and to show their contribution to our understanding of law. The many examples from the legal system include not–guilty verdicts, provocation in criminal law, enacting statutes, witnessing and courtroom examination, gender issues, judicial summings-up, legal drafting, and jury deliberations. CONTENTS: Some Fundamentals of Language Systems Some Fundamentals of Language Use Sociolinguistics: The Who, When and How of Language Legal Language Semiotics Theories of Cognitive Competence The Development of Cognition and Language Moral Development Personality and Emotion Witnessing Processing Facts in Court Judge and Jury Emilios Christodoulidis, reviewing the book in Legal Studies 16/3 (Nov. 1996), 424–26 writes: “... quite masterful. This is a work quite awesome in its undertaking that is due to become a significant book of reference of the still rather undertheorised field of legal semiotics. In an era when interdisciplinarity has become the word of the day, Jackson has offered us a work that is truly that.” Published by Deborah Charles Publications