An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics

Nishanth Vijayan
IIT Ropar - 12 September 2014

Jitin Madhu

What is Forensic Linguistics ?

Forensic linguistics is the name given to a number of sub-disciplines within
applied linguistics, and which relate to the interface between language, the law
and crime.
Forensic linguistics takes linguistic knowledge and methods and applies these to
the forensic context of law, investigation, trial, and punishment.

International Association of Forensic Linguists (IAFL)

The study of the language of the law, including the language of
legal documents and the language of the courts, the police, and prisons;

A Brief History & Trivia

Origin
The phrase first appeared in 1968 when Jan Svartvik a linguistic professor,
used it to find anomalies in statements made by Timothy John Evans,
a man who was falsely accused of murder & was hanged.

Rapidly emerging branch of linguistics:

Even though the branch is relatively new , it has gained immense

popularity and grown rapidly , because of its great applications.
Journal: International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law.
Growing number of books and articles
Immense amount of research work being done.

Since 1990s; it has own academic organization:

The International Association of Forensic Linguistics (IAFL)

IAFL
Formed in 1992
Journal
International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law
(formerly Forensic Linguistics), a peer-reviewed journal that publishes
articles on any aspect of forensic language, speech and audio analysis.
Aims of the IAFL include:

Furthering the interests of linguists engaged in research on the development

and practice of forensic linguistics;
Spreading knowledge about language analysis, and its forensic applications,
among legal and other relevant professionals around the world;
Collecting a computer corpus of statements, confessions, suicide notes,
police language, etc., which could be used in comparative analysis of disputed texts.

Example

Timothy Evans
1950 - hanged for the murder of his
wife
and child.

1968 - Jan Svartik analysed Evans

witness
statement and suggested the
language
was inconsistent.
Resulted in The Murder (Abolition
of Death Penalty) Act 1965.

Derek Bentley
1953 hanged for his part in the
murder of a
policeman.

1998 Court of Appeal set aside

the conviction
in part because of Malcolm
Coulthards
evidence that his statement
was not
verbatim record of spoken
monologue
as claimed at the original
trial.

Example Derek Bentley

Bentley was hanged 28th January, 1953, for his part in the murder of a policeman.

On 30th July, 1998 he was pardoned, partly on the basis of the evidence of Malcolm Coulthard
who demonstrated linguistic anomalies in his statement.

In the original trial it was claimed by the prosecution that the statement was produced by

Example Bentley's Statement

[] My mother told me that they had called
and I then ran after them. [] We all talked
together
and then Norman Parsley and Frank Fasey
left. Chris Craig and I then caught a bus to
Croyden.
[] There was a little iron gate at the side.
Chris then jumped and over I followed.
Chris then
[]
The policeman
then pushed
meroof
downand
theI
climbed
up the drainpipe
to the
stairs
and I did
more.
I knew
followed.
Up not
to see
thenanyChris
had
not we
said
were
anything.
going
to break
place,
did roof
not know
We both
got into
out the
on to
the Iflat
at the
what
weresomeone
going to get
- just
anything
top.weThen
in the
garden
on the
that
was side
opposite
going. I did not have a gun and I did not
know Chris had one until he shot.
I now know that the policeman in uniform is
dead. I should have mentioned that after the
plainclothes policeman got up the drainpipe
and arrested me, another policeman in
uniform
followed and I heard someone call him 'Mac'.
He was with us when the other policeman

Example
Linguistic Anomalies in his statement:

then occurs
1 in 500 words in general language,
1 in every 930 words in undisputed witness statements,
1 in every 78 words in police witness statements and
1 in 57 words in this statement.
I then occurs

Common Applic
Forensic Ling

Forensic Linguistic Areas

Using Linguistics for

Courtroom statements interpretation.

The nature of tape recorded conversation used as evidence.
Unclear jury instructions
Defamation
Trademark infringement
Voice identification (Speaker Profiling)
The adequacy of warning labels.
Authorship of written documents.

1. Trademark Infringement

One company may feel that another companys trade name is too much
like its own.

The more generic or descriptive the name the more likely such a name
can be used by other companies
The more unique or fanciful the name the more likely such protection
will be.
Its the names that fall between descriptive and fanciful that find their
way to litigation.

1. Trademark Infringement

Offended party has to show that the other partys name

Looks like
Sounds like
and Means
the same as their own.

To a Linguist

Looks like suggests graphology

Sounds like suggests phonology
Means the same suggests semantics

1. Trademark Infringement

Famous Examples

Avita
McSleepvs
Hipoglos
Bonamine
Listogenvs
Latouraine
Snarnoff
Citisen
SEICO
Monilex
ExBier

vs
Aveda
vs McDonald
vs
Fasaglos
vs
Dramamine
vs Listerine
vs
Lorraine
vs
Simirnoff
vs
Citizen
vs
SEIKO
vs
Soulinex
vs
Becks Beer

1. Example Hipoglos vs Fasaglos

Use of Morphological evidences

Hipoglos was an old and established brand of baby cream, a name

derived from a technical term for fish oil. A new brand came onto the
market called Fasaglos and an infringement lawsuit was filed by
Hipoglos.
Forensic Linguistic experts testified that -glos is not a productive
morpheme in Spanish; in other words, it is not used generally as the last
part of words to make new words-it had been taken directly
from Hipoglos. The evidence was accepted, and the tradename
Fasaglos was rejected.

2. Product Liability
Products that has caused injury to a consumer

Suppose an attorney has a product liability law suit in which a

person has suffered physical harm alleged to have been caused by
inadequate package instructions or warning labels.

Linguistic role

A linguist is called upon to analyze the language of the warning label to

determine:
Whether or not the warnings follow the guidelines of the relevant regulatory
agency
Whether or not they are clear, unambiguous, and optimally effective.

Most Common Example

Drug utilization instructions

3. Speaker Identification
Example
For example, suppose a caller leaves a threatening message on an
answering machine.
Linguistic usage

Using only the characteristics of that voice in comparison with tape

recordings of voices of various potential suspects.
If the tapes are of sufficient quality, spectrographic analysis is possible.
If not, the linguist may rely on training and skills in phonetics and
dialectology to make the comparison

4. Authorship of Written Documents

The identification of whether a given individual said or wrote something relies on

analysis of their idiolect or particular patterns of language use.

Linguistic profiling is the practice of identifying the social characteristics of an individual

based on auditory cues, in particular dialect and accent.

Linguistics profiling is done in two parts:

Language indicators
Regional and social dialect
Age
Gender
Education
Occupation

4. Authorship of Written Documents

Stylistic analysis:
Comparing the documents style with those of other documents written by
possible suspects.
Stylistic analysis centers on a writers habitual language features over which
the writer has little or no conscious awareness
Patterns of clause embedding
Mechanical errors
Punctuations
And print features such as underlining, bolding , or italicizing.
Linguistic profiling has been most effectively used to narrow down a suspect list
rather than to positively identify a suspect. This is not to say that such positive
identification is impossible.

4. Examples
Danielle Jones

Jenny Nicholl

Last seen 18th June 2001.

Last seen 30th June 2005.

After her disappearance a series of text

messages were sent from her phone.

After her disappearance a series of text

messages were sent from her phone.

Linguistic analysis showed that the later

messages were sent by her Uncle,
Stuart Campbell.
Campbell was convicted of Danielles
murder 19th December 2002 in part
because of the linguistic evidence.

Linguistic analysis showed that the later

messages were sent by her classmate,
David Hodgson.

Hodgson was convicted of Jennys

murder 19th February 2008 in
part because of the linguistic
evidence.

5. Emergency Calls

Determining genuineness of call

Hesitations, signs of evasiveness, and incomplete or overly short answers ->

possibility of false / hoax call.
A genuine call has distinctive interlocking and slight overlap of turns.
Intonational emphasis, voice pitch and the extent to which there is cooperation
between the caller and the recipient are also very important in analysing an
emergency call.
Incidents have occurred were the culprit of a crime himself makes emergency
calls to report the crime in order to appear innocent. Such incidents can be
identified to a certain extend with the help of linguistics analysis of emergency calls.

6. Suicide Letters

Determining credibility of suicide letters

A suicide note is typically brief, concise and highly propositional with a degree
of evasiveness.
Suicide notes generally have sentences alluding to the act of killing oneself, or
the method of suicide that was undertaken.The contents of a suicide note could
be intended to make the addressee suffer or feel guilt.
Genuine suicide letters are short, typically less than 300 words in length.
IAFL maintains and has made available to linguists , a corpora of suicide letters .
Used by forensic liguistics researchers to determine patters in them.

Linguistic Fingerprinting a Novel Concept

A linguistic fingerprint is a concept put forward by some scholars that each human
uses language differently, and that this difference between people involves a collection
of markers which stamps a speaker/writer as unique; similar to a fingerprint.
Under this view, it is assumed that every individual uses languages differently and
this difference can be observed as a fingerprint.
The concept of linguistic fingerprinting is attractive to law enforcement agencies
as it would radically change investigations.

THANK YOU

Nishanth Vijayan

IIT Ropar - 12 September 2014

Jitin Madhu