The book examines the social consequences of courtroom talk through detailed investigation of the cross-examination of three Australian Aboriginal boys in the case against six police officers charged with their abduction. Critical sociolinguistic analysis shows how courtroom talk, with its related assumptions about how language works, can serve to legitimize neocolonial control over Indigenous people.

As a linguistically-grounded, critical examination of consent, this volume views consent not as an individual mental state or act but as a process that is interactionally-and discursively-situated. It highlights the ways in which legal consent is often fictional (at best) due to the impoverished view of meaning and the linguistic ideologies that typically inform interpretations and representations in the legal system. The authors are experts in linguistics and law, who use diverse theoretical and analytical approaches to examine the complex ways in which language is used to seek, negotiate,...