Chapter 1 provides a general introduction to the book, outlining the need for police investigators to engage in online identity assumption and justifying a linguistic contribution that can be made in terms of the variety of ways in which linguists and forensic linguists have approached questions of language and identity. We set out the context of online sexual abuse, in particular the abuse of children.

Finally, Chapter 7 discusses the implications of our work for the operational task of identity assumption, and for the more theoretical concerns around the linguistic individual and language and identity more generally. We conclude the chapter with our thoughts for the directions similar research might take in the future.

The theoretical underpinning to the concept of identity is the central topic of Chapter 5, where we examine particular facets of identity such as the performance of age, relationships and communities of practice. Keeping in mind our view of identity as being continuously negotiated through discursive practices, we focus here particularly on how age is treated as a relevant identity category by participants, and how relationships between adult offenders and child victims are performed. We probe the question of how these performances are situated in the wider social context, and in relation to other, more recognisable types of relationship that might be relied upon as resources.