Forensic linguistics is the study, analysis and measurement of language in the context of crime, judicial procedure, or disputes in law.

So what is forensic linguistics really?

The study of any text or item of spoken language which has relevance to a criminal or civil dispute, or which relates to what goes on in a court of law, or to the language of the law itself. Thus the linguist may be called upon to analyse a very wide variety of documents, e.g. agreements relating to ancient territorial disputes, the quality of court interpreting, an allegation of ‘verballing’ (claims by defendants that their statements were altered by police officers), a disputed will, a suicide note, a ransom demand, etc.

How does it work?

There is no single answer to this question, so perhaps it would be best to give some examples:

Example 1: A man is convicted of a crime. Part of the conviction comes from the confession he made while being questioned. After being convicted the man launches an appeal against his conviction, saying that the police forced him to make the confession or that they altered it in some way.

Action: The defence lawyer sends the text to a forensic linguist. The forensic linguist must analyse this text to see (i) whether it contains signs of police register (formal, institutional language routinely used by police officers in their reports); (ii) whether it has the hallmarks of speech and/or dictation, as opposed to 'writtenness'.

Note: Given that the future career/s of one or more police officers may be involved in such a decision — on the one hand — and/or the liberty of a possibly innocent person on the other, the linguist needs to exercise extreme caution before giving an opinion.

Example 2: A suicide letter is found near a body. It looks real enough, but how can we tell whether the suicide note is genuine?

Action: The police or the coroner send the text to a forensic linguist, and the linguist compares the text with (i) a corpus of suicide notes in his/her collection, (ii) other known (undisputed, etc.) writings of the victim, (iii) the writings of any suspect (e.g. husband, wife, partner, relative, or someone who might benefit from the victim's death).

Note: Given that the liberty of an individual may be involved in such a decision, the linguist needs to exercise extreme caution before making a deliberation in such a case. Suicide letters are rarely easy to analyse, and do not readily conform to 'types'.

Example 3: A woman receives some nasty emails sent from a 'hotmail' account (and therefore apparently untraceable). She is about to start a business and suspects that the emails are from a former business partner, or someone in his family, or — alternatively — someone who is jealous of her forthcoming success.

Action: The forensic linguist will request the victim to send copies of emails and other texts from all possible suspects, and he/she will then compare these texts of known authorship with the texts of disputed authorship.

Note: Given the anxiety of the victim in this case, it is important that the linguist does not 'promise' to 'prove' anything, and so raise false hopes of settling the matter. On the other hand, the linguist needs to bear in mind that the commercial and personal reputations of a number of people may be at stake.

Example 4: A politician receives hate mail through the postal service. He has no idea who has sent it to him. It threatens to ruin his career.

Action: The politician or his representative sends the texts to the forensic linguist for analysis. The linguist will assess the texts for (i) signs that the threats are real, (ii) signs that the claims made by the hate mailer are genuine/false, (iii) level of education, profession, age of the sender. The linguist may then suggest a set of parameters (like a profile) to the victim and ask for texts from people who correspond to these parameters.

Note: As with all authorship, and other forensic inquiries, the linguist needs to exercise extreme caution before pronouncing an opinion.

Example 5: A company secretary disappears, apparently taking hundreds of thousands of pounds. A short while later the boss starts getting letters blaming someone else. Are these letters genuine? Can we compare the language of the letters with known texts by the company secretary and others to see who is sending them?

Action: The forensic linguist will look at examples of the secretary's known writing, as well as texts by other leading figures in the organisation, and then compare these with the anonymous texts.

Note: In cases like this it is important not to pre-judge the issue, or to be over-confident that a solution can be found. The linguist needs to look at all the facts before coming to a view.

Example 6: A young man is found dead at his home while his family are away. There is a note in the victim's handwriting claiming he was forced to take his own life by two masked gunmen, but did he stage manage the entire scene so his family could claim his life insurance?

Action: The forensic linguist needs to evaluate the text with a view to assessing the veracity of the victim's claims, and he/she also needs to look at other known texts by the victim.

Note: As mentioned before suicide texts are not easy to analyse. In particularly difficult cases, nothing is as it seems. The linguist must ignore all external evidence, e.g. rumours of disputes between members of a family, hearsay about vendettas, revenge, etc.

Example 7: A husband and wife couple own an attractive motel in the countryside. Out of the blue their local chamber of commerce starts getting letters impugning their reputation, and claiming that they are 'Nazis'.

Action: There are two tasks for the forensic linguist: (i) from a list of suspects on whose behalf texts will be submitted, attempt to attribute the authorship of the anonymous letters, and (ii) evaluate the contents of the letter for their veracity (i.e. can we determine whether the 'Nazi' allegation has any substance in it on the basis of the language?).

Note: The evidence of the texts must be paramount. The linguist needs to ignore any information to do with commercial rivalry, family disputes, etc.

Example 8: A trade union dispute arises in a large, multi-national corporation. There are two unions, one is well established, the other is relatively new. The existing trade union believes that the management want to get rid of them because the new union appears much more compliant and ready to fall in with management policies on overtime. Rank and file members of the 'old' union start to receive letters criticising their union. These letters purport to be from among their own membership. They suggest a move to the new union, and are viciously critical of the old union's leadership. Are the letters genuinely from a trade union member, or are they from someone in the management team?

Action: The forensic linguist needs to collect texts from all of the main suspects and analyse them (i) for signs of authorship and (ii) for signs of management register vs trade union register. To carry out this latter task the linguist will need to build two corpora (plural of corpus). For our purposes a corpus is a specialised body of texts conforming to certain pre-defined 'norms'). The first corpus will be of texts known to have been written by industrial and commercial managers on the one hand, and the second corpus will be of texts known to have been written by trade union officials.

Note: The linguist must ignore his/her own political sympathies and make a professional judgement based entirely on the texts in the case.

Example 9: The secretary of a large and popular dog club in the Mid-West receives a series of hate mail letters. These appear to show intimate details of the workings of the club's management committee. For this reason it is suspected that they must have been written by a member of that committee.

Action: The forensic linguist needs to collect samples of the writings of all of the committee members and analyse them for signs of authorship. If possible these texts should all relate to the business of the club.

Note: As with all authorship cases, the linguist must build the case on detail. The linguist will go for more than just the obvious signs, e.g. punctuation, layout, etc. We should always hesitate before believing that a particular feature, which we think we have identified, is unusual, unique, etc. Wherever possible, verify such information from other sources.

Example 10: The dean of a law school identifies sections of plagiarised texts from the essays of two final year students. The trouble is the dean does not know which of the two students copied from the other. Can forensic linguistics do this?

Action: The forensic linguist will request copies of each questioned essay, and also other, prior, work of the two candidates. The linguist's task is twofold: (i) look for stylistic similarities between the text which is common to both candidates and their previous known work, and (ii) try to identify which text might pre-date the other. There are several ways of doing this including lexical analysis, conceptual density, and the degree to which the suspect section of the text 'fits' with the rest of the essay in each case — in other words, do the ideas and language contained in the suspect section appear to be closer to those of Candidate A or Candidate B?

Note: Given that the future career of one or more people may be involved in such a decision, the linguist needs to exercise extreme caution before giving an opinion.

Example 11: A man is questioned in connection with the death of an elderly relative. Police are not satisfied with his answers, and suspect that he knows more than he is saying.

Action: The linguist requests copies of the interview tapes and assesses them for their veracity, using statement analysis techniques.

Note: This technique requires a great deal of experience of listening to and transcribing interview tapes, and a sound knowledge of linguistics, especially phonetics and conversational analysis.

Example 12: A woman claims she was drugged at a night club and then 'date raped'. What can forensic linguistics do to ascertain whether her claim is genuine or not?

Action: The forensic linguist requests the officers to ask the victim to write down the entire events as she recalls them, from the time she got up in the morning of the day she went to the club through to the following morning.

This statement is then analysed (i) by comparison to the language of other sexual assault incidents; (ii) the part of the victim's statements which relate to her daytime activities are assessed in relation to the statements she makes about her visit to the club. The linguist looks for signs of evasion, prevarication, too much or too little detail, etc. The linguist then makes an evaluation as to whether the assault claim is genuine or not.

Note: This task requires experience of witness statements, in particular of assault and sexual assault and abuse allegations. Given the sensitivity involved in this kind of case, the linguist must be extremely cautious before making his/her evaluation. In such cases, the victim should always be given the benefit of any doubt the linguist may have. The linguist should not hesitate to express any doubts he/she may have.

Other cases have included analysis of blackmail letters, ransom demands, witness intimidation threats, extortion letters, tenant intimidation by a landlord (and the reverse), stalker texts, the language of patent applications, and many others.

 

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