Slang and discrimination in the UK Criminal Justice System

This study investigates whether the use of slang in the UK Criminal Justice System (CJS) might lead to an individual being negatively discriminated against. It uses a Web-based realtime response method to test participants’ reactions to a (fictitious) defendant’s use of slang terms in a police interview. Participants will be presented with a scenario in which a barrister sees the need to read out a portion of a defendant’s police interview transcript in court. While participants are hearing the barrister reading out the transcript, they will use the real-time response tool to indicate the changes in their response to the question: ‘Does this piece of evidence work for or against the defendant?’. The transcript for the experimental group will have inserted into it slang terms, most of which are identifiable as Multicultural London English (MLE) slang. The control group’s transcript will have the equivalent Standard English lexis in place of the slang terms. Given the stigmatisation of slang, it is hypothesised that respondents’ judgements will change in a negative direction when slang terms are heard. A significant difference in the expected direction will strongly suggest that slang has a negative effect. Within the experimental group, stronger effects are expected for MLE slang. After the completion of this task, a subset of the original participants will be presented with a graphic representation of their responses, and asked to comment on why their responses changed at certain points. For the experimental group, this aims to test whether participants’ attitudes towards slang tend towards implicit or explicit levels of awareness. The experiment allows conclusions to be drawn about the effect of socially-marked lexis, on judgements of culpability and the extent to which these judgements are conscious or unconscious; and the potential consequences of such judgements within the CJS.