Ponton and Canepa examine metaphor use in texts from the Cambridge Law Journal. However, the authors do not approach metaphor from a conceptual viewpoint but regard it as a component of good verbal style in the Aristotelean sense, as a figure of speech being of vital constitutive importance in legal discourse.

Douthwaite selects the television series Inspector George Gently as an exemplification of critical crime fiction in order to lay bare the ideological workings of that sub-genre and of the linguistic techniques it employs to position readers/viewers, offering an overview of the constructional techniques deployed together with close readings of the texts to bear out the arguments. A continual comparison is made with Graham’s novels and the Midsomer Murders television series to demonstrate how differences in constructional techniques and the use of linguistic devices aiming to position viewers constitute a clear difference between the goals of conservative and critical crime fiction.

Mayr investigates song lyrics (proibidão) glorifying gang leaders in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. With her CDA approach and her use of Appraisal Theory she argues that proibidão, in fact, serves ideologically to recontextualise gang violence and legitimise favela criminals.

Ibrahim and Tabbert continue on the topic of victims with an exploration of a selected passage by Iraqi Kurdish poet Sherko Bekas’ The Small Mirrors. The authors employ the framework of Critical Stylistics (Jeffries 2010) that is particularly suited to detect ideological meaning in texts.

Douthwaite takes Graham’s novel Written in Blood and the Midsomer Murders TV series as a prototypical representative of conservative crime fiction to lay bare the ideological workings of that sub-genre and of the linguistic techniques it employs to position readers/viewers, offering close readings of the texts to bear out the arguments. In so doing he deploys all the analytical tools stylistics offers the analyst.

Statham analyses dialogue in a sequence from the TV series The Sopranos. He illustrates the complexity of communication by analysing how textual features work together with camera perspective, shot, gaze and action to orchestrate a character’s realisation of betrayal.

Kövecses offers a cognitive exploration of the concept of the (not necessarily criminal) Other, approached from a metaphorical and metonymic angle. He argues that our human way of categorisation, in particular the ’internal-subject’ versus ’external-other’ relationship, is at its core a metaphorical way of perceiving the Other in conceptual categories. Douthwaite analyses a short story to show the application of the concepts identified by Kövecses apply concretely to crime and to crime-related texts.

Thomas analyses an American YouTube video titled ’Bed Intruder’, reporting on an attempted rape, and some of its adaptations by means of a Text World Theory approach.

Gregoriou presents a study of characterisation in a crime fiction novel on child trafficking. Her choice of analytic tools (speech presentation, naming strategies, transitivity, modality and metaphor analysis) narrows the focus to an in-depth exploration of these selected five, bringing to light character Muna’s mind style.

Ras looks at how British and American tax authorities (FSA, SEC) are portrayed in newspaper reports on corporate tax fraud. She combines CDA with corpus linguistics and analyses naming choices and transitivity as well as conceptual metaphors in a large dataset (corpus). Her objective is to demonstrate how power is wielded (in this case by large corporations) to influence the workings of the legal system.

Fludernik asks what ‘confinement “means” experientially’ and sets out to investigate the ‘carceral imaginary’ in the use of conceptual metaphors when talking both about prisons (by inmates and outsiders) as well as about everyday experiences understood as confining.

Tabbert analyses a schizophrenic offender‘s own account of his crime. She uses the stylistic toolkit to identify patterns in his language use and links them with symptoms shown by people suffering from schizophrenia. The chapter illustrates how isolating this mental illness is, leading even to committing a crime while reaching out for social companionship.

Introduces the volume, identifying themes, methodology and goals; positions it in relation to other works; and outlines the chapters and their running order as well as those features that unite chapters or lead from one to the next.

Furlong presents crime fiction writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes character. She uses Relevance Theory to examine how Holmes is adapted to Russian and Japanese culture, that is to say, what features of the original are being regarded as relevant both by the creator of an adaptation as well as by the audience, and what features the adaptations add to the source text and how these are related to the culture and sociopolitical situation in the receiving culture.