KAUFMAN: Of where they might use Urban Dictionary? Usually, if it's a term on which a whole case turns, the court will not turn to Urban Dictionary. And then you would have a couple of choices. And then the defense might say, oh, no, that's not what it means. The question is who's the more authoritative source? So a police officer could say that. But you mentioned in testimony, if something is being edited, a transcript of a wire tap or something like that, isn't somebody required to say - a police officer on the stand and say, and in this context, what did the word to jack mean? And these people will actually testify in court as to what a slang word means, and their point is that Urban Dictionary, because it's so of the moment, it's so instantaneous, that it might really only reflect one small population's view of what a word meant and really shouldn't be used as a crowd source - as a court source.ĬONAN: Yeah. They also prefer to see it in a variety of sources. The way dictionaries prefer to work is they prefer to wait over time to see how a word plays out. Well, we talked to people who actually do run dictionaries, including dictionaries of slang. And the lower-voted definitions of terms, they're usually inaccurate, so that's a mixed bag.ĬONAN: Leslie Kaufman, some of the people you talked to expressed concerns about Urban Dictionary. So occasionally, you know, it's inaccurate and, of course, there's a ton of definitions often for certain words in Urban Dictionary. I mean, occasionally, they have word definitions that like, you know, high popularity due to the fact that they're funny. You know, when I hear somebody say something, I'll look it up on Urban Dictionary occasionally. LASTOWKA: I've used it to find out what words have meant, you know, in an internet-based discussions. And there are some concerns about it, but it seems like it's a pretty solid source of evidence. And I think that Urban Dictionary is a pretty reliable way to find out what people think a particular word means. I mean, it's a question of fact what a particular meant in a particular context.
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And I don't know how to explain it except for the crowd does sort of weed out what's false.ĬONAN: Greg, is there any standard for finding definitions for terms, well, that are unusual - street language? So it's not authoritative, but as it turns out, as words rise in popularity, they do actually have a kind of truth to them. And all you have to do is get five other people who are also online and who have signed up as editors, which you can do by a click of a button, to say it's a word. They could, in theory, make it up and sometimes they do. So crowd source basically means anyone who wants can write a definition of any word. But crowd sourced, doesn't that cause problems? So what is the answer? And so, they found a great resource online, which is Urban Dictionary.ĬONAN: Yeah, it's a crowd sourced dictionary, obviously.
The nature of what they do, criminal cases, so on and so forth, have a lot of slang in them.
Judges and the courts see a lot of words before they make dictionaries. You wrote a piece on this for The New York Times and reported that lawyers and judges do pretty much like anyone else would do, they use the internet. Welcome to you too.ĬONAN: And let's start with Leslie Kaufman. He joins us by phone from his home in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He's professor of law at Rutgers University and an expert on technology and the law. Good to have you with us today.ĬONAN: And also on the line with us is Greg Lastowka. Email us: Leslie Kaufman is digital media reporter for The New York Times and joins us from studios at that newspaper. When you come across a slang term you don't know or maybe worry that the jury may not know, how do you find an authoritative definition? 80. We'd like to hear from lawyers and judges in our audience today. Slang changes quickly, might be regional, even local, and agreed definitions are not going to be found in Webster's or the OED. Judges and juries may not understand that to jack can translate as to steal, or that dap refers to a fist bump, usually used as a greeting.
The use of slang in court can be tricky, especially in criminal cases.
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