FORENSIC LINGUISTICS

Defined
The study and research of language in various legal contexts (language and the law)

Journal:

The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law (1994 ~ )

Professional Associations:

International Association of Forensic Linguists

International Association for Forensic and Phonetic Acoustics
Names
Prof. Malcolm Coulthard (ret. Univ. of Birmingham. Past Director of the Centre for
FL, Aston Univ.)
Prof. Roger Shuy (ret. Georgetown Univ.; FBI Consultant)
Adj. Prof. John Olsson (Nebraska Wesleyan Univ.; on-line courses in FL)
Prof. Tim Grant (Director of the Centre for FL, Aston Univ.)

Forensic Linguistic Consulting Services: www.forlingua.com

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Various applications: linguistic minorities and linguistic
analysis of legal discourse human rights
structure and semantics of statutes social organisation of conversation in
and legal instruments legal settings
legal terminology forensic text analysis
comprehensibility of legal instruments forensic phonetics
legal translation and interpreting trade name and domain name
speech style in the courtroom disputes
structure of cross-examination critical incident discourse analysis
sociopragmatic aspects of (police negotiators)
interpreting in court language and policing (professional
language and disadvantage before development)
the law

Forensic Linguistic Consulting Services: www.forlingua.com

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My Work:
Forensic Discourse Analysis with NSWP:
Critical Incident (Crisis Negotiation) Discourse Analysis
NSWP Negotiators Accreditation Courses
Counter Terrorism and Special Tactics Command
Security Management Unit NSWP
NSWP Academy, UNSW & CSU communicative competence and
stress project
Casework: Questioned Authorship: forensic stylistics analysis for
two writing samples (questioned text vs database of comparison
texts)

Forensic Linguistic Consulting Services: www.forlingua.com

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Further study:
the International Summer School in Forensic Linguistic Analysis -
http://www.forensiclinguistics.eu/

The Centre for Forensic Linguistics at Aston University MA/PhD -

http://www.forensiclinguistics.net/study.html

Cardiff University MA in Forensic Linguistics -

http://courses.cardiff.ac.uk/postgraduate/course/detail/p117.html

Forensic Linguistic Consulting Services: www.forlingua.com

 FORENSIC LINGUISTICS
Research Areas:
voice identification
analyzes the acoustic qualities of the voice, to differentiate or prove voice
ownership of a voice (aka forensic phonetics).

linguistic proficiency
ability to comprehend or produce language e.g. did a suspect understand the
Miranda warning or police caution?

dialectology
uses linguistic features to determine which dialect of a language a person
speaks (e.g. to differentiate or prove that a defendant has a different dialect
from that on an incriminating tape recording).

Forensic Linguistic Consulting Services: www.forlingua.com

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linguistic origin analysis
Determining a person's native language, often for granting or denying applications for
political asylum. Very similar to forensic dialectology & is very controversial.

author identification
determining who wrote a particular text by comparing it to known writing samples of a
suspect; sometimes also called forensic stylistics. The term author attribution analysis
is also sometimes used. Handwriting analysis also.

discourse analysis
analyzing the structure of a written or spoken utterance, often covertly recorded, to help
determine issues such as who is introducing topics or whether a suspect is agreeing to
engage in a criminal conspiracy

Forensic Linguistic Consulting Services: www.forlingua.com

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Expert (Witness) Evidence
Forensic linguists have given expert evidence in a wide variety of cases,
including areas such as:
abuse of process, where police statements were found to be too similar to
have been independently produced by police officers
authorship of hate mail
authorship of letters to an Internet child pornography service
contemporaneity of an arsonist's diary
comparison between a set of mobile phone texts and a suspect's police
interview
reconstruction of a mobile phone text conversation

Forensic Linguistic Consulting Services: www.forlingua.com