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Forensic Texts
© Forensic Linguistics Institute, 2000-2009.
Linguists often use corpora of language to study lexical and other patterns. One important type of
patterning that has emerged is the collocation. In a slight departure from the traditional view of
collocations we have devised an alternative way of perceiving patterns in text. It’s called ‘colorcation’
and we use a simple piece of software called Colorcation to check a text’s patterning. Below is an
outline of how it works.
1: Paste a text into the control
2: Lexical significance equals
visual prominence
3: Click on any word to visualize
its distribution through the text
4. What else can you do with the
software?
You can observe the distribution
of long words, short words and
variations of words found in the
text. You can also observe the
distribution of several words
simultaneously.
5. You can also compare
collocations across texts:
In these two ‘confessions’
we find similar words and
phrases in the higher
frequency range across
two texts
Is colorcation any more than
an interesting way of
perceiving intra-textual and
inter-textual relationships?
Why not download the
software and decide for
yourself?
