Language in the Courtroom: Current Advances and Future directions

As a burgeoning field of study, Forensic Linguistics or the study of language and law has exponentially grown in scope over the past 30 years or so. Focusing on courtroom discourse, this paper performs a systematic review of recent studies and approaches the existing studies in three dimensions: textual, ideational, and interpersonal. After synthesizing theoretical insights from the literature, it applies such insights to perform the analysis of the opening statement, a highly influential phase of courtroom talk in terms of the potential impact on the outcome of a trial, and yet currently under-theorized in the literature. The study concludes with possible research areas for further studies.