Organizations acting on behalf of society are expected to act fairly, explaining themselves and their procedures. For the police, explanation is routine and repetitive. It's also very powerful. This book provides an unusual opportunity to see different speakers and writers explaining the same texts in their own words in British police stations.

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Reviews

' this book is an extraordinary tour de force. It is a classic piece of applied linguistics, in that it uses theory and methods from a range of fields to analyse and address a social issue. It makes compelling use of authentic interview data to reveal how and why communication does and does not happen. It steps well beyond conventional linguistic theories to address cautioning as a social process. It is compulsory reading for anyone who is interested in cautioning.' John Gibbons, Journal of Sociolinguistics

'...this book is a laudable effort to study "documents-in-action". The originality of this book lies in the fact that it is not just a discussion of how to improve the comprehensibility of "difficult" texts, but also an investigation of how these texts function in the real world.' - Martha Komter, Information Design Journal

'Communicating Rights makes a significant contribution not only to the field of language and the law but also to the UK justice system. Author Frances Rock should be applauded for her balanced yet sharp analyses of written and spoken rights communication, supported by her extensive repertoire of sociolinguistic tools for discourse analysis...I would recommend this book to scholars and legal professionals as a classic in rights communication.' Ikuko Nakane, The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law

Authors and Affiliations

Cardiff University, UK

Frances Rock

About the author

FRANCES ROCK is a Lecturer in the Centre for Language and Communication Research at Cardiff University, UK. She has previously taught at the Universities of Roehampton and Birmingham.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: Communicating Rights
Book Subtitle: The Language of Arrest and Detention
Authors: Frances Rock
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230286504
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Palgrave Language & Linguistics Collection, Education (R0)
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-230-01331-5Published: 13 November 2007
eBook ISBN: 978-0-230-28650-4Published: 13 November 2007
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVIII, 359
Number of Illustrations: 24 b/w illustrations
Topics: Fundamentals of Law, Sociolinguistics, Linguistics, general, Criminology and Criminal Justice, general, Communication Studies

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Table of contents (14 chapters)

Front Matter

Rights and Research: Orientation and Theory

Front Matter

Writing Rights

Front Matter

Speaking Rights

Front Matter

Righting Rights

Front Matter

Back Matter

About this book

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Authors and Affiliations

Cardiff University, UK

About the author

Bibliographic Information

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