Language is Power

On November 30th, Slate Magazine published an article on its Crime Blog examining the use of “consensual” conversations with police.  How about a Friendly Frisking? focuses on the myth and reality of how language plays a role between civilians and police officers.  J.D. Trout, PhD, Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at Loyola, and Janice Nadler, JD, PhD, Professor of Law, Northwestern University, studied how language supports a power dynamic that favors the police. Nadler, an expert on consensual language in law enforcement and Trout, an expert on the pragmatics of language, integrate theory and evidence to tell a compelling story of this relationship.  You may review the Slate article, along with the original article published in the Oxford Handbook of Language and Law, 2012.