La presse d'extreme droite face au revisionnisme en France 1978-1990

Between 1978 and 1990 five newspapers close to Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National had the choice of defining their stand on so-called révisionnisme which in its extreme form denied the existence of the Shoah, considering it to be the fabrication of a Jewish conspiracy. Within révisionnisme, a négationniste discourse affirmed that the gas chambers never existed, while a relativiste discourse denied that the Shoah was an act of genocide. However, most of the extreme-right newspapers did not adopt the cause of révisionnisme, even if they sometimes evinced an indulgence towards it. Only the weekly Rivarol and the militant François Brigneau who worked for Minute, Présent and National Hebdo and wrote the most on the subject openly espoused révisionnisme. The reasons for their stance included neo-fascist views, belief in a Jewish conspiracy. Their stance was in keeping with ideas commonly expressed in French neo-fascist circles that made for a révisionnisme of exculpation. On the other hand, the French Catholic intégriste milieu close to the Front National, which is represented by the newspapers Présent and Aspects de la France, was not generally révisionniste, notwithstanding the occasionnal expressions of relativisme by persons in the schismatic lefebvriste movement or close to Présent. This rejection of révisionnisme by Catholics on the extreme right was conditioned by various factors: the nature of Maurras's nationalisme intégral and anti-Semitism transmitted by I' Action française; the Catholic Church's modified position on the Jews; and the (offensive) atheism of the upholders of révisionnisme. This same révisionnisme extended beyond latter-day Nazi sympathisers. In its French version, it served to unite elements of the extreme right and the extreme left, as witness the role played by La Vieille Taupe, the extreme left group which was (and is) the leading publisher in France of tracts favouring révisionnisme.

Duppying yoots in a dog eat dog world, kmt:determining the senses of slang terms for the Courts

I describe and discuss a series of court cases which focus upon on decoding the meaning of slang terms. Examples include sexual slang used in a description by a child and an Internet Relay Chat containing a conspiracy to murder. I consider the task presented by these cases for the forensic linguist and the roles the linguist may assume in determining the meaning of slang terms for the Courts. These roles are identified as linguist as naïve interpreter, lexicographer, case researcher and cultural mediator. Each of these roles is suggestive of different strategies that might be used from consulting formal slang dictionaries and less formal Internet sources, to collecting case specific corpora and examining all the extraneous material in a particular case. Each strategy is evaluated both in terms of the strength of evidence provided and its applicability to the forensic context.