Call for papers

Call for papers

6th European Conference of the International Association for Forensic and Legal Linguistics (IAFLL 2026)

Montpellier: June 22-25, 2026

Theme: Language, power, justice: contemporary issues in legal and forensic linguistics.

The aim of this conference is to shed light on the interconnected issues of language, power, and law by examining, through a range of linguistic approaches, the methods, corpora, and theoretical frameworks used to analyse the linguistic mechanisms employed in oral and written productions relating to the legal and judicial sphere. 

Contemporary justice is currently experiencing significant challenges due to major societal and technological transformations, which have given rise to a number of ethical and linguistic questions. Indeed, in a context where social issues abound – such as discrimination, hate speech, disinformation, vulnerabilities, and growing inequalities – the ongoing digitisation of procedures, the utilisation of artificial intelligence for interpretation and translation, the automation of interviews, and the use of predictive decision-making tools based on natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning are profoundly reshaping the relationships between actors, the manner in which citizens access the law, and their relationship with the judicial institution and language. 

Moreover, the prevailing climate of distrust towards judicial institutions, where the phenomenon of "penal populism" is prevalent, is contributing to the reconfiguration of the relationship between citizens and justice. This populism is characterised by demands for harsher penalties, expedited justice processes, and even the interrogation of procedural guarantees. At the same time, critical discourse is developing towards the judicial system, which is accused of both excessive severity and bias.

In this context, the fields of legal and forensic linguistics are of particular importance for examining the relationships between language and law, language and evidence, and language and judicial truth. 

Forensic linguistics is a field of applied research that plays a major role in the analysis of discourse produced in a judicial context. Such analysis may be used to identify the linguistic characteristics of a disputed document, to detect discursive manipulation, or to contribute to the assessment of the credibility of testimony.

In order to address these issues, it employs a range of analytical tools drawn from theoretical and linguistic analysis tools (including, but not limited to, legal phonetics, conversational analysis and pragmatics). As such, it also questions the role of the linguistic expert in the trial and the biases that can affect the interpretation of statements in a judicial setting. 

Legal linguistics, which examines the language of law in its normative and institutional dimensions, studies the uses, functions, and issues of language in the production and interpretation of law.

From this perspective, the emergence of new discourses opens up the possibility of better understanding the links between the production of law, its interpretation, and its reception by citizens. For instance, the concept of narrative justice introduces a complementary analytical approach by highlighting the narratives, discourses and representations through which law is expressed, recounted and legitimised. This prompts us to consider how individuals (victims, litigants, lawyers, or judges) recount their experiences and structure their discourse. This narrative shift profoundly questions the discursive treatment of the experience of law, the legitimization of certain voices, and the narration of law itself.

The conference will also examine the explicit links between these two fields. Legal linguistics interrogates the language of law in its normative and institutional dimensions, while forensic linguistics analyses concrete language uses in judicial practices. These two approaches are worthy of critical discussion, with the first shedding light on the manner in which law structures language and legal interpretation, and the second examining the manner in which language becomes evidence or an issue in concrete judicial situations. This articulation could enable an enhanced comprehension of language as an essential conduit between law and society, rules and narratives, legal texts and the words of litigants.

The objective of the conference is to explore the language practices employed by legal professionals and litigants, interactions that occur within the courtroom setting, and media representations of legal proceedings. Additionally, the conference seeks to provide a platform for discourse pertaining to legislative discourse and other related discourses concerning law and justice. The event aims to foster a space for dialogue between theoretical linguistics, applied linguistics, and the language of law, as well as to address issues pertaining to law and legal language. 

We invite proposals for individual papers and poster presentations on topics related to forensic linguistics and language and the law, including but not limited to: 

Law on language: Language & Human Rights; Language policy and linguistic rights; Language crimes, Legal responses to hate speech or the spread of disinformation

Spoken interaction in legal contexts: Courtroom, police and prison discourse; Investigative interviewing; Interpreting & translation in legal contexts; Vulnerable people & the legal system; Language minorities and the legal system

Linguistic evidence and investigative linguistics: Forensic phonetics and speaker identification; Forensic stylistics; Authorship analysis; Determining meaning in forensic contexts; Plagiarism detection and analysis; Trademark disputes; Consumer product warnings; Deception and fraud

Abstracts of no more than 300 words, including references, should be sent via https://iafll2026.sciencesconf.org/submission/submit?lang=en by 30th November, 2025.