forensic linguistic essay

What Are Forensic Linguistics?

Definition and Examples

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

The application of linguistic research and methods to the law, including evaluation of written evidence and the language of legislation. The term forensic linguistics was coined in 1968 by linguistics professor Jan Svartvik.

• "The pioneer of forensic linguistics is widely considered to be Roger Shuy, a retired Georgetown University professor and the author of such fundamental textbooks as [Creating] Language Crimes . The field’s more recent origins might be traced to an airplane flight in 1979, when Shuy found himself talking to the lawyer sitting next to him. By the end of the flight, Shuy had a recommendation as an expert witness in his first murder case. Since then, he’s been involved in numerous cases in which forensic analysis revealed how meaning had been distorted by the process of writing or recording. In recent years, following Shuy’s lead, a growing number of linguists have applied their techniques in regular criminal cases . . .." (Jack Hitt, "Words on Trial." The New Yorker , July 23, 2012)

Applications of Forensic Linguistics

• "Applications of forensic linguistics include voice identification, interpretation of expressed meaning in laws and legal writings, analysis of discourse in legal settings, interpretation of intended meaning in oral and written statements (e.g., confessions), authorship identification, the language of the law (e.g., plain language), analysis of courtroom language used by trial participants (i.e., judges, lawyers, and witnesses), trademark law, and interpretation and translation when more than one language must be used in a legal context." (Gerald R. McMenamin, Forensic Linguistics: Advances in Forensic Stylistics . CRC Press, 2002)
• "On some occasions the linguist is asked to provide investigative assistance or expert evidence for use in Court. Within the linguistics literature there has been considerable focus on the rules for admission of authorship identification evidence to criminal prosecutions, but the role of the linguist in providing evidence is broader than this. Much of the evidence provided by linguists does not involve authorship identification, and the assistance a linguist may offer is not restricted to only providing evidence for criminal prosecution. Investigative linguists can be considered that portion of forensic linguistics which provides advice and opinions for investigative and evidential purposes." (Malcolm Coulhard, Tim Grant, and Krzystof Kredens, "Forensic Linguistics." The SAGE Handbook of Sociolinguistics , ed. by Ruth Wodak, Barbara Johnstone, and Paul Kerswill. SAGE, 2011)

Problems Facing Forensic Linguists

• "[There are] certain problems facing an insider forensic linguist . Eight such problems are:

1. short time limits imposed by a law case, as opposed to the more familiar time limits enjoyed in everyday academic pursuits; 2. an audience almost totally unfamiliar with our field; 3. restrictions on what we can say and when we can say it; 4. restrictions on what we can write; 5. restrictions on how to write; 6. the need to represent complex technical knowledge in ways that can be understood by people who know nothing of our field while maintaining our role as experts who have deep knowledge of these complex technical ideas; 7. constant changes or jurisdictional differences in the field of law itself; and 8. maintaining an objective, non-advocacy stance in a field in which advocacy is the major form of presentation."

• "Since forensic linguists deal in probabilities, not certainties, it is all the more essential to further refine this field of study, experts say. “There have been cases where it was my impression that the evidence on which people were freed or convicted was iffy in one way or another,” says Edward Finegan, president of the International Association of Forensic Linguists. Vanderbilt law professor Edward Cheng, an expert on the reliability of forensic evidence, says that linguistic analysis is best used when only a handful of people could have written a given text." (David Zax, "How Did Computers Uncover J.K. Rowling’s Pseudonym?" Smithsonian , March 2014)

Language as a Fingerprint

• "What [Robert A. Leonard] thinks about of late is forensic linguistics , which he describes as 'the newest arrow in the quiver of law enforcement and lawyers.'
• "'In a nutshell, just think of language as a fingerprint to be studied and analyzed,' he enthuses. 'The point to be made here is that language can help you solve crimes and language can help you prevent crimes. There is a tremendous pent-up demand for this kind of training. This can be the difference between someone going to jail over a confession he didn’t actually write.'
• "His consultation on the murder of Charlene Hummert, a 48-year-old Pennsylvania woman who was strangled in 2004, helped put her killer in prison. Mr. Leonard determined, through the quirky punctuation in two letters of confession by a supposed stalker and a self-described serial killer, that the actual author was Ms. Hummert’s spouse. 'When I studied the writings and made the connection, it made the hair on my arms stand up.'" (Robin Finn, "A Graduate of Sha Na Na, Now a Linguistics Professor." The New York Times , June 15, 2008)
• "The linguistic fingerprint is a notion put forward by some scholars that each human being uses language differently, and that this difference between people can be observed just as easily and surely as a fingerprint. According to this view, the linguistic fingerprint is the collection of markers, which stamps a speaker/writer as unique. . . .
• "[N]obody has yet demonstrated the existence of such a thing as a linguistic fingerprint: how then can people write about it in this unexamined, regurgitated way, as though it were a fact of forensic life?
• "Perhaps it is this word 'forensic' that is responsible. The very fact that it collocates so regularly with words like expert and science means that it cannot but raise expectations. In our minds we associate it with the ability to single out the perpetrator from the crowd to a high degree of precision, and so when we put forensic next to linguistics as in the title of this book we are effectively saying forensic linguistics is a genuine science just like forensic chemistry, forensic toxicology, and so on. Of course, insofar as a science is a field of endeavour in which we seek to obtain reliable, even predictable results, by the application of a methodology, then forensic linguistics is a science. However, we should avoid giving the impression that it can unfailingly — or even nearly unfailingly — provide precise identification about individuals from small samples of speech or text." (John Olsson, Forensic

Linguistics: An Introduction to Language, Crime, and the Law . Continuum, 2004)

Roger W. Shuy, "Breaking Into Language and Law: The Trials of the Insider-Linguist." Round Table on Language and Linguistics: Linguistics, Language and the Professions , ed. by James E. Alatis, Heidi E. Hamilton, and Ai-Hui Tan. Georgetown University Press, 2002

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• Ekphrasis: Definition and Examples in Rhetoric
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An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics.pdf

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Cambridge Elements

• Forensic Linguistics
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About the series

Elements in Forensic Linguistics  include 1) descriptive linguistics work, documenting a full range of legal and forensic texts and contexts; 2) empirical findings and methodological developments to enhance research, investigative advice, and evidence for courts; and 3) explorations and development of the theoretical and ethical foundations of research and practice in forensic linguistics.

Authors use their  Element  to fully explore an area of activity in forensic linguistics or  language and law, or provide a synthesis of a number of empirical projects around a theme. Each Element allows authors space beyond the constraints of a typical journal article, but with a focus and sharpness that will carry a clear impact for readers.

Across these approaches, we publish in five main topic areas:

• Investigative and forensic text analysis;
• The study of spoken linguistic practices in legal contexts;
• The linguistic analysis of written legal texts;
• The interdisciplinary strand that is inclusive in our definition of forensic linguistics that will provide a platform for innovative research in related fields;
• Explorations of the origins, development and scope of the field in various countries and regions.

Elements in Forensic Linguistics  provide high-quality accessible writing, bringing cutting-edge forensic linguistics to higher-level students and researchers as well as to practitioners in law enforcement and law. 

As well as for students and researchers of linguistics and forensic linguistics,  Elements  will be accessible to and of interest to those working in the disciplines of law, criminology, sociology, and legal and forensic psychology.  Elements  will provide these audiences with full methodological descriptions, data sets, and coding schemas, where relevant.

Elements  will also be relevant to practitioners in law and allied legal professions as well as across law enforcement, investigative, and security contexts.  Elements  will include applied and relevant examples that can inform and contribute to practitioners’ work in all fields.

Elements in this series

Forensic Linguistics in China

• Yuan Chuanyou , Xu Youping , Lu Nan

Legal-Lay Discourse and Procedural Justice in Family and County Courts

• Tatiana Grieshofer

The Language of Romance Crimes

• Elisabeth Carter

Authorship Analysis in Chinese Social Media Texts

• Shaomin Zhang

Spoken Threats from Production to Perception

• James Tompkinson

Online Child Sexual Grooming Discourse

• Nuria Lorenzo-Dus , Craig Evans , Ruth Mullineux-Morgan

Forensic Linguistics in Australia

• Diana Eades , Helen Fraser , Georgina Heydon

A Theory of Linguistic Individuality for Authorship Analysis

• Andrea Nini

Series topics:

Investigative and forensic text analysis, will include but not be limited to research and validation studies on:

• authorship analysis, including comparative authorship analysis and sociolinguistic profiling;
• threat, abuse, harassment, and other forms of malicious communication;
• the determination of meaning of investigatory and evidential texts.

The study of spoken linguistic practices in legal contexts, will include but not be limited to research on:

• points of first contact between practitioners and lay-persons in legal contexts, including emergency call handlers, and communications of rights and legal liabilities;
• police interviews and interrogations, and other interviews and interactions providing evidence for legal decision making;
• courtroom interactions and judicial language and judgements.

The linguistic analysis of written legal texts, will include but not be limited to research on:

• the language of statutes and written judgements;
• the language of wills, contracts, and legal-lay documents;
• the processes of legal drafting;
• linguistic contributions to the interpretation of legal meanings in statutes, intellectual property, and other contractual agreements.

The interdisciplinary strand, will include but not be limited to research on:

• studies in forensic speech and audio science;
• studies in computational linguistics;
• studies in forensic psychology;
• studies with broader sociological and criminological concerns; which include linguistic methods or ideas, and which are deemed to be of interest to the broad discipline of forensic linguistics.

The 'Origins’ sub-series, will include but not be limited to descriptions of:

• the history of forensic linguistics and language and law in particular countries or regions;
• well-known or seminal cases that set the stage for the field;
• history and review of current law and legal practice of relevance to forensic linguistics;
• progress seen in various aspects of the field with predictions for the future.

Contact the editors

If you are interested in publishing for the series, please contact the editors Tim Grant [email protected] and Tammy Gales [email protected]

About the editors

Tim Grant is Professor of Forensic Linguistics, Director of the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics, and past president of the International Association of Forensic Linguists. His recent publications have focused on online sexual abuse conversations including Language and Online Identities: The Undercover Policing of Internet Sexual Crime (with Nicci MacLeod, Cambridge, 2020). 

Tim is one of the world’s most experienced forensic linguistic practitioners and his case work has involved the analysis of abusive and threatening communications in many different contexts including investigations into sexual assault, stalking, murder, and terrorism. He also makes regular media contributions including presenting police appeals such as for the BBC Crimewatch programme. 

Tammy Gales  is a Professor of Linguistics and the Director of Research at the Institute for Forensic Linguistics, Threat Assessment, and Strategic Analysis at Hofstra University, New York. She is the Vice President (and President-elect) of the International Association for Forensic and Legal Linguistics (IAFLL), and is on the editorial board for the peer-reviewed journals Applied Corpus Linguistics and Language and Law / Linguagem e Direito. 

Her research interests cross the boundaries of forensic linguistics and language and the law, with a primary focus on threatening communications and the use of corpus linguistics in statutory interpretation. She has trained law enforcement agents from agencies across Canada and the U.S. and has applied her work to both criminal and civil cases.

Forensic Linguistics

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• First Online: 27 November 2018
• pp 1729–1741
• Cite this reference work entry

• Lorna Fadden 5 &
• Sandra Ferrari Disner 6  

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Forensic Linguistics is a branch of Applied Linguistics involving the examination of language evidence in a criminal or civil matter and it can be carried out for two broad purposes. First, language analysis can be applied during investigations to assist in the identification of suspects or witnesses, or in determining the significance of utterances or writing to a case. Second, spoken or written language samples may be submitted as evidence in court, along with the testimony of a linguistic expert. Language evidence may bear heavily on the case itself, where the language in question constitutes a language crime: threats, coercion, bribery, hate speech, and hate literature, or language evidence might be more peripherally related to a case and it may necessitate a linguist to clarify the meaning of what is spoken or written, the manner in which it is delivered, and the role of context in the interpretation of the message.

This entry begins with some historical background,...

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Department of Linguistics, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, Canada

Lorna Fadden

Department of Linguistics, University of Southern California, 3601 Watt Way, GFS 301, Los Angeles, CA, 90089-1693, USA

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Gerben Bruinsma

VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

David Weisburd

Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel

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Fadden, L., Disner, S.F. (2014). Forensic Linguistics. In: Bruinsma, G., Weisburd, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_534

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Introduction

Laws are a major contributor of how people behave and how they relate to each other. Our relationships with the people who live around us are molded by the existing laws.

Man’s everyday activities ranging from buying of commodities to selling of products and everything else is done and made formal through a binding law. Law can be written or oral which ever seems convenient to use by the parties involved. Some people sign contracts which are a form of law while others agree orally which itself can also be a form of law if there were people who were specifically invited to witness.

The law represents a society value system imposing both the required rights and obligations, punishing those who behave against the society will. However, to make these laws succeed and function properly; there is a language which is used (legal language) which enables the exchange of information as well as the understanding of the involved parties easier.

From an institution perspective, law can be described as a linguistic institution. Everything in law is communicated through a specific language (coded) and the concepts of understanding the law itself are coded through the same language. Almost every legal process involves the use of a language.

The legal processes indicated above ranges from proceedings in the courts to investigations conducted by the police and also to the management of prisoners. This is a clear identification that contacts through which we as people are able to communicate with other people are guided and controlled by the language. The language has to be common for the message to be understood since without a common language, people could never understand each other.

Studies investigating the relationship between law and language have been ongoing for several years now with how language is used to get the required information in solving a legal issues being a subject of major interest. It is with the increased interests that the field of forensics linguistic has been introduced to the law sector.

Forensics linguistics involves studying of a language to identify people or parties involved in a certain issue whether criminal and civil in order to solve their problem amicably without some parties being wrongly judged while others are wrongfully acquitted for crimes committed. Forensics linguistics is thus summarized as the use of language in court proceedings or legal issues either to present a case or get evidence from one party (Gibbons, 2).

What is forensics linguistics?

The study of languages is defined as Linguistic. It involves differentiating one language from the other. To understand the different languages, linguistics uses several techniques which include among others the phonetics, morphology and phonology.

Sometimes, each of the above techniques can require different people since they also qualify to be independent fields within linguistics (McDavid, S& McDavid, R 238). Other than the three noted subfields, a new subfield which has gained popularity among the scholars lately has been the forensic linguistics.

A part from forensics linguistics being qualified in the analysis of language, most of them possess other analytical skills such as mathematics, statistics science and the law itself which they have to deal with. The possession of these analytical skills makes analyzing and understanding of both written and spoken language. In return, this increases the chances of making a sound judgment when it is decision time. Forensic language involves the use of legal questions in order to get the important information needed.

Questions as to who initiated the conflict, who wrote a threatening letter to his father, who swore he could do what?

Are examples of questions which are investigated in this field? Professionals in this field address the aspects of the language and the analytical arsenal of linguistics from existing theories such as the speech act theory and thematic theory. To understand the law, one has to understand the language used in a court of law. For example what are statutes, arrest warrants, subpoenas which are among the legal terms mostly used in legal proceedings?

The work of forensic linguistic spans over a wide area ranging from issues dealing with trademarks, plagiarism of the written materials to confessions and hate crimes. In summary, we can indicate that the field of forensic linguistics involves analyzing legal issues through rigorous and scientifically recognized principles of linguistic analysis. It is only after successful analysis that the results are then translated into legal evidence.

What’s the job of forensics linguistics?

A forensic linguistic contributes into solving problems related to linguistic concerns through different ways. They use different techniques since there is no single uniform method of retrieving the required information. For example, forensic linguistics helps in making legal documents easily readable and more comprehensive.

These legal documents include contracts, jury instructions, and agreements among others. By concentrating their efforts in the job at hand, the often complicated language within these documents is simplified and the complicated phrases within the document are made easily understandable by the people previously may not have ad the ability.

Forensic linguistics also help lawyers (attorneys) in explaining clearly to the court of law the legal terms using more commonly used terms as a result making communication between the involved parties even much easier. For example, sometimes linguistics forensics are invited to courts of law or them to testify and clarify the meaning of certain written or spoken words if a dispute arises into the true meaning of the words.

Settling trademark disputes is another function the forensic linguistics engages in. if two parties are in dispute about a certain trademark, it is the work of forensic linguistics to determine who really owns the right to use the trademark. They also investigate the authorship attribution (who wrote or who spoke) of a language.

This includes those who issues threats or those who leave behind suicide notes .In case of suicide notes, the forensic linguistics determines who really wrote the notes. Did the victim write the note or did some other people write the note after killing the man. By analyzing his writing styles and comparing them to other pieces the victim has ever written, these experts are even able to determine whether the note was written through coercion or it was free will.

As part of their job, they help the law enforcing officials in authenticating everything which might be used in solving a dispute whether spoken or written. to achieve genuine end results, forensics linguistic studies the presented information (written or oral) by observing whether there are comparisons or differences which can be noted. They have learnt the art of determining whether the same person made the different recordings.

By analyzing the presented piece of information, forensic linguistics can be able to decide the background of the person and where he comes from. Just by listening or reading the confessions, the forensics linguistics is able to determine whether the confessions were made through use of force or whether the confessions were voluntary. They achieve this through the comparison of the person’s normal speech or normal method of writing to the presented confession.

What they usually look for when investigating documents include similarities in the meaning of the information and how the words or the information is arranged easing the process of identification of the author. Whether there is a possibility that they were written by the same person. Another aspect through which they are able to discover authors of presented articles is through detection of plagiarism.

Plagiarism involves the collection and the comparison of different pieces of information in a bid to determine whether they were written by the same author (they assume that if the author is one, there is likelihood of using similar terms in the different documents). Finally, A forensic linguistic does his job by studying how law enforcers (policemen) interrogate criminals and if notices some difficulties, they assist enabling the two parties communicate effectively by making use of easily understandable terms .

Phonetic linguistic is related and part of forensic linguistics

With the increased importance of video and audio recordings in most of the court proceedings, forensic phonetic has emerged as a new field of importance. Phonetics is defined as the study of the sounds which people make as they pass information from one party to the other when speaking.

The use of the mouth, vocal chords and the nasal cavity is what phonetics study and analyze. Experts in phonetics (phoneticians) research how different people speak. They are therefore able to differentiate and recognize it from others. They analyze similarities and differences of one language from the other through the various sounds people make. McDavid, S& McDavid, R 238).

Just as in the forensic linguistics, phoneticians are also experts from other fields such as physics, medicine, and psychology among other related fields. It is through their expertise in these fields that they are able to conduct their work efficiently. For example, those with expertise in physics are able to study speech sounds by analyzing the sound waves.

They then research into how our body parts such as the brain, ears and nerves respond to different sounds. In the application of this field to legal issues, a phonetician performs forensic speech analysis to determine its source. For example, there have been instances when crimes are committed by criminals whom the victims never saw but they heard their speech.

If they are any audio speech recordings, phoneticians analyze the speech and help in identifying who the real culprits behind the crimes were. They analyze the recorded speech by also trying to clarify what the culprit clearly said. Through their analysis, they are also able to authenticate recordings by studying it intently so as to make sure that the recordings were never altered to favor a particular party.

Though sometimes they use computers to analyze the spoken words, most of the times they listen intently to the audio recordings and try to figure out who were involved. They listen to an audio recording several times, each time trying to analyze and figure out certain qualities within the speech. Their role is not to define what was said but to identify who said what.

Phoneticians analyze the sounds made through four aspects which are: analyzing the sounds made by the vocal chords out of the sound made fro the recorded speech (for example was the voice rough, did the speaker breathe deeply and so on).

The second aspect involves listening to the sounds made by the speaker’s mouth and the nasal cavities. He or she notes the vocal qualities; the pronunciation of vowels is also analyzed and other characteristics which can be able to show the cultural, social and geographical background of the one making the speech.

Lastly, phonetic linguistic analyzes various individual speech characteristics such as the speaker pronunciation of the speaker consonants or whether the speaker slurs or lisps certain words. In addition to all these, phoneticians also conduct the acoustic analysis. This form of analysis involves the digitizing recorded speeches in order to feed them in computer software which is able to measure the frequencies of pitch and vowel sounds.

Examples of crimes and murders through facebook where written message was used to convict the suspects

Social networks are channels through which people meet and discuss almost everything virtually through the internet. People exchange photos, phone numbers and files and even set business agreements through these social networks. There are several social networks in the world which include Facebook, twitter, My Space, my Blog and many other social networks.

Though the social networks have their advantages by providing a platform for all the positive activities mentioned above there has been reported cases of malpractices in which people have lost their information and even lost their loved ones through these social networks.

Concentrating more on Facebook since it more common among the ordinary people, we shall give examples of instances where crimes have occurred through the assistance of Facebook. Due to loss of privacy, social networks are easy to be hacked and the Hackers use social networks to send malwares to unsuspecting users in the internet.

These malwares either launch spam files which are obscene and which if opened infects the computer leading to its crashing. Facebook has also been used as an avenue of committing fraud (MacAfee, 1). For example, in Facebook there has been use of Koobface which is a malicious file that hackers use to spread the codes of viruses and worms to other people computers crushing computer programs.

The crush of computers can lead to loss of important information leading to losses. Hackers also use social sites such as Facebook to access peoples passwords whereby after accessing them, they are able to open the victims account without his knowledge and access precious information which he can use for example in stealing banks and committing crimes.

Another crime which is also prevalent when using social sites and has been experienced in Facebook includes; impostors whom most of the times are jailbirds or sex pests. They tend to lure teenagers especially girls into their traps by organizing meetings in secluded places.

When the unsuspecting individuals agree and decide to meet these criminals, some of them are kidnapped and their families are asked for ransom or after meeting, the victims are raped and then killed. An example is a report which was in the in Independent Newspaper of a case where a serial rapist lured a teenage girl into his trap by posing like a young man, but after their meeting, the girl discovered that the man was not the young man he posed to be.

Discovering problems could arise, the serial rapist informed the girl that she was the son’s father and that his son had informed him to collect her. After the girl agreed to enter into the vehicle, they went with the man only for the man to rape her before killing her and disposing her body. (Hughes& Brown, 1).

There has also been a case of love gone sour through social networks. It is reported that a man was arrested and jailed for killing a former girlfriend after seeing her in a photo with her new lover on Facebook. The man informed the girlfriend through Facebook chat that he would like to meet the girlfriend and they solve their issues although the girlfriend was hesitant at first, she agreed after long pleading and it was when the two met that he decided to kill her stabbing her with a knife several times on her body (Raif, 1)

Linguistics is the scientific study of languages and when used in solving crimes or legal matters, then it is referred to as forensic linguistics. A forensic linguistic contributes into solving problems involved in linguistic concerns through different ways which include observing the patterns, similarities or any inconsistencies in the speech or the written information.

On the other hand, a phonetic linguistics uses mouth, vocal chords and the nasal cavity to study and analyze a language. The emergence of the two fields in linguistics has played a key role in solving crimes by indicating positively without allegations of favoritism towards a particular side.

Works Cited

Gibbons, John. Forensic linguistics: An introduction to language in the justice system. 2003. Willey- Blackwell. New York.

Hughes Mark, “ Facebook fears after sex offender logged on to murder ”. The Independent UK. 2010. Web.

Mcaffee, “ A Parent’s Guide to Social Networking Sites: Five Lessons to Keep Your Kids Safe when they socialize online”. 2009. Web.

McDavid, Susan, and McDavid Richard. Career opportunities in forensic science. 2008. InfoBase Publishing. New York.

Raif Shenai, “ Man jailed for killing girlfriend after Facebook row ”. 2010. Press Association. Web.

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• DOI: 10.1017/S0266078400010014
• Corpus ID: 55906161

Forensic linguistics

• John Olsson , June Luchjenbroers
• Published in English Today 1 October 1997
• Linguistics

153 Citations

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School of Arts, Languages and Cultures

Introduction to Forensic Linguistics

This course introduces Linguistics and Forensic Linguistics to interested parties outside of academia.

Forensic linguistics is the application of Linguistics, the science that studies human language, to forensic problems.

Civil or criminal cases sometimes include language evidence, such as a disputed email or text message, or the meaning of a word or phrase, or the modality of production of a document. Drawing on what we know about how human language works, linguists can provide expert witness evidence that can help the investigators or the triers of fact.

This course will introduce the student to core concepts of the field of Linguistics and apply this knowledge using real case examples.

Course aims

• To understand what Linguistics is and what a linguist does
• To understand what is and what is not forensic linguistics
• To learn the state of the art of forensic linguistics in its core areas of application.

Topics covered

• What is Linguistics?
• What is Forensic Linguistics?
• Language as evidence
• Identifying the author of a disputed document
• Profiling the author of an anonymous document
• Language crimes
• Disputed meanings
• Conclusion and assessment

Teaching and Learning

This course will be delivered online, asynchronously through a combination of videos, readings, and independent activities. Interaction with the lecturer will be via email or appointment for support or additional questions on the content. A final assessment is included at the end of the course to demonstrate that the student has met the learning outcomes for successful completion of the course.

Although there are no formal language requirements, those applicants for whom English is not their first language should note that the course is delivered entirely in English. Therefore a good level of written English will be needed to complete the course.

Fees and how to apply

This course will be next available in 2025.

For further information and to register your interest in applying please email:  [email protected]

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ARTICLES ABOUT

The language detectives: solving puzzles with forensic linguistics.

What do Jack the Ripper’s letters, the Unabomber’s manifesto and President Trump’s tweets have in common? They’ve all been extensively analyzed using forensic linguistics — the application of linguistic knowledge in legal and criminal contexts. In other words, professionals you could conceivably consider “language detectives” have scrutinized these works, looking for clues that might indicate authorship or link them to other writings.

The field of forensic linguistics has recently come back into the spotlight, thanks in part to an anonymous New York Times op-ed by a senior administration official that criticized Trump from an “insider’s perspective.” Of course, it led everyone with a social media account to wildly speculate on who the author could be. Not everyone is equipped to do so, however. That’s where the forensic linguists come in.

Experts like Robert Leonard and Shlomo Argamon  have been quoted recently warning against unscientific speculations and say it would take more time and more documents to even attempt to identify the op-ed writer. They argue that fixating on specific words like “lodestar” — which Twitter users were quick to point out is a word Vice President Mike Pence uses regularly — is pointless because the author could have used it intentionally to throw people off their trail.

But forensic linguistics isn’t a brand new discipline, and this certainly isn’t the first time the field has made headlines. Before we get into how it’s been used to crack important cases, let’s examine how the process of language sleuthing actually works.

A Way With Words

Forensic linguistics is broadly defined as the study and application of language in a forensic context. But what does this mean in practice?

Leanne Bartley, a lecturer in applied linguistics at Swansea University who has done quite a bit of research in the forensic linguistics field, explains: “Forensic linguistics encompasses a fairly wide range of topics, including legal jargon, authorship attribution, courtroom interpreting, lay participants in the judicial process, false confessions — to name but a few.”

Bartley has focused her studies primarily on sexual assault cases. She examines how language is used by survivors to describe what happened to them and, conversely, how it can be used to bring about wrongful convictions.

“This latter area is something I intend to continue to explore in order to work toward minimizing the occurrence of miscarriages of justice in the future,” Bartley says.

When describing her process in such cases, Bartley says she starts by trying to pinpoint the focus of the discourse. For instance, did the prosecuting attorney say, “the defendant sexually assaulted this girl” or “this girl was sexually assaulted”?

In the latter statement, Bartley says, “There is no explicit mention of the alleged attacker, thus shifting the focus away from the party responsible and, in turn, potentially affecting the way in which the listener (i.e. juror) construes what happened.”

But that’s just one example of how forensic linguistics can play a role in important court cases. Krzysztof Kredens, co-director of the Centre for Forensic Linguistics , told us about a case he worked on in 2012, in which he was asked to determine whether a non-native English speaker with limited proficiency in the language could have produced a specific complex business document.

Kredens says he “examined the purported author’s emails to establish a linguistic profile, and then analyzed the lexical and syntactic structures of the disputed document.” After comparing the two, he concluded that it was unlikely the non-native English speaker wrote the document.

Murder, They Wrote: The Unabomber And Jack The Ripper

Highly publicized murder trials have been some of the most well-known cases involving forensic linguistics. In fact, the case of the Unabomber is credited with the rise of forensic linguistics. Starting in 1978, the person who became known as “the Unabomber” sent homemade bombs to random people over a 17-year period, which resulted in 23 injured victims and three deaths. For a while, there were few leads on who the perpetrator could be.

It was forensic linguist James Fitzgerald who convinced the FBI to make the Unabomber’s 35,000-word “manifesto” public in 1995. With the help of tips from the public and a careful analysis of the Unabomber’s writing style, Fitzgerald was able to link the essay to Ted Kaczynski. Fitzgerald’s work brought about a search warrant for Kaczynski’s cabin, where they found enough evidence to convict him.

You can find another case of forensic linguistics that provides insight into England’s most notorious murderer: Jack the Ripper. Because the Jack the Ripper’s serial killings took place much earlier (London, 1888) than the Unabomber’s attacks, the forensic linguistic component happened recently.

In early 2018, Andrea Nini , a forensic linguist at the University of Manchester, looked into letters allegedly signed by Jack the Ripper that were sent to the press, the police and other groups in the aftermath of the murders. Many of the letters were considered copycat hoaxes, but after studying two of the earlier letters, known as the “Dear Boss” letter and the “Saucy Jacky” postcard, Nini concluded that there is “very strong linguistic evidence that these two texts were written by the same person.”

And no, Jack the Ripper didn’t use the word “lodestar” in all of his writing; usually, the findings sound pretty mundane. One example of a linguistic similarity Dr. Nini found between the two letters was the use of the phrasal verb “to keep back,” meaning “to withhold.” He also found distinct similarities in the lexicogrammatical structures (the relationship between grammar and vocab).

Despite these recent developments that highlight an important use case for forensic linguistics, the Jack the Ripper case remains unsolved to this day.

Modern-Day Changes, Challenges And Rewards

Technological advances are reshaping the field of forensic linguistics in ways that are both helpful and more difficult.

Kredens explains: “With the spread of social media, a lot of crime has moved online and there is definitely an increase in demand for forensic linguistic analysis.” But at the same time, he says, there are more and more tools at their disposal. “I think the future will also bring advances in computational analysis that will help us make sense of what’s going on in cases involving a lot of data.”

And while working as a forensic linguist certainly comes with its fair share of challenges, including having to explain their findings to laypeople and withstand often heated cross-examination from attorneys, it’s a very rewarding line of work. Whether helping get justice for victims, clearing the names of those wrongfully convicted or even just identifying the author of a controversial article, there is a tangible and satisfying sense that you’re doing something worthwhile.

“I always think that the most rewarding part of any job or any situation is when you see that, no matter how small, you made a difference,” Bartley says. “I feel that forensic linguistics can do that.”