Forensic Linguistics function in Evidentiary and Investigative Contexts

Recently, forensic linguistics has been an arena of significance in many fields of study especially in judicial systems, legal and forensic matters, investigation, and open-source intelligence across the globe. The term typically refers to legal and professional analysis of recorded or written language by experts (forensic linguists) to provide expert and correct interpretation. It is particularly used in legal matters especially in the court and criminal justice systems. In the court system, forensic linguistics is heavily applied to examine language evidence – either recorded in voice or handwritten in civil matters or crimes. The analysis or examination is carried out for two major reasons. First, the analysis is utilized when relevant investigations are carried out with a focus to help in identifying witnesses or suspects in specific cases or scenes, or the determination of the significance of writing or utterance to a case. Secondly, forensic linguistics plays a pivotal role when written or spoken language samples are presented to a court as evidence. In such contexts, forensic linguists provide expert testimonies of correct interpretation of the samples. As such, language analysis is significant in any judicial matters and systems provided the questionable language constitutes crimes. In most cases, crimes such as threats, hate speech, bribery, hate literature, coercion among others necessitate the use of a linguist expert for correct and most importantly professional interpretation. Evidently, the concept of forensic linguistics is ascribed to provide the truth from recorded speeches or voices and written languages in the face of a crime or relevant legal investigation matters. This paper will posit on the different ways and methods that forensic linguistics is applied to investigate and provide professional interpretation of recorded and written languages in evidentiary and investigative contexts.

Forensic Linguistics as a Form of Application of Specialized Linguistic Knowledge in Legal Proceedings: Development History and Current State

The article provides the periodization of the development of forensic linguistics as one of the primary forms of application of specialized linguistic knowledge in legal proceedings. The author distinguishes four main stages: the 1st stage – the emergence of forensic linguistic expertise, the 2nd stage – its formation, the 3rd stage - development, and the 4th stage - improvement. Finally, at a more generalized alternative periodization (before-the-expert/philological and expert stages), the author reveals pressing issues of developing this kind of expertise and the prospects for its evolution.

Forensic Linguistics function in Evidentiary and Investigative Contexts

the main aim of this paper is to provide insights into the vital role of FL in Evidentiary and Investigative Contexts. the paper contains many segments; Authorship analysis and attribution, Plagiarism Detection, Speaker identification, and voice comparison, Language as evidence in civil cases (Trademark, Brand name Law, Defamation).

An Assessment of methods and techniques used in Forensic Linguistics

The following paper aimed to evaluate the techniques and methods adopted in forensic linguistics. The paper is divided to 5 sections the first section discussed a brief background of the topic while the second chapter aimed to review literature from previous studies. The third section depicted the methods and techniques incorporated in carrying out this research. The fourth section analysed the data gathered for this paper while the last section concluded the paper. It is seen in this research that Courtroom speech, courtroom translation and interpretation, comprehensibility of texts and legal documents, including police cautions issued to offenders or suspects, and the use of linguistic evidence in court procedures are all part of forensic linguistics.

Forensic Linguistics : Problems in Conducting Linguistic Examinations

In the modern world, the issues of countering extremism are becoming more Vital and urgent, the most dangerous form of which is flourishing terrorism, which has become a global threat as can be judged from the data of public opinion polls, if ten years ago the fight against terrorism was not considered an important component to an ordinary citizen. Skillful politicians, orators are well aware of the full power of the influence of the word. This power is often used for selfish purposes. To identify signs of speech offenses, to effectively combat them, cohesive and organized actions of law enforcement agencies and courts are needed. Besides, the most important stage in this struggle is the actual detection of the “extremist infection”, which strikes such a delicate sphere of social relations in itself”. So, just, for example, let us note that national and racial hostility is acquiring increasing importance in society. The idea of religious exclusivity, implying the predominance of one group over another due to the imperfection of the latter, encourages aggressive people to various appeals, appeals, teachings, and threats. All these actions are aimed at disseminating negative information, are aimed at involving more and more new supporters in the ranks of the aggressors, therefore, they must be strictly suppressed . One of the features of the propaganda described above is that it is carried out with the help of the media. And quite often the very fact of a speech violation, visible, as it seems, with the naked eye, upon closer and detailed examination, causes a lot of bewilderment and controversy. Meanwhile, to detect an offense and crime, to pass a sentence, the court must be not only sure of the existence of a crime but also be aware of the extent of its danger to society. That is why practically all-important cases on the problems of extremism, racial, national hostility are considered with the obligatory involvement of linguistic experts.

Police Speak and Narrative Storytelling in Knives Out Movie Script

This research investigates a tragic murder case from Knives Out movie of Harlan Thrombey case, Harlan Thrombey was found dead horribly in his room by Fran. Fran was a servant in the Thrombey Family, and the investigator immediately investigated the case and emphasized the outline of the law, crime, language, and criminal cases in the field of forensic linguistics. This research aimed to describe Policespeak and Narrative Storytelling in Knives Out Movie Script (A Forensic Linguistic Perspective). The method used by the researcher is descriptive qualitative, the data source of the researcher is taken from the movie script and then collects every discovery through any existing data and analyzed by interpreting and describing the data. This result was to focus on how the police speak and narrative storytelling depicted in the movie “Knives Out 2019” by “Rian Johnson” was focused in terms of its forensic linguistics. In many investigative languages ​​that have not been revealed by the investigator in their interviews with each of the witnesses. This research describes the context of the data using Narrative and Storytelling and also how police detectives interview witnesses using Policespeak, including control over topic and interactional focus, establish motive, establish knowledge, rapport building, and control of topic navigation by interpreting and describing data using police speak and narrative storytelling theory to reveal the language of the police investigation. From the findings that Harlan Thrombey found died cause he was suicide, Harlan took the knife to kill himself however Harlan knew about which one will kill him by criminal, someone changed his morphine into overdoses and that was Ransom, his nephew.

A stylometric investigation across genders and individual authors based on a specialized Vietnamese corpus

Recently, there has been renewed interest in stylometry, a branch of forensic linguistics evaluating linguistic features which affect an author’s writing style. However, no known empirical research has attempted to explore relationships between word-level features in Vietnamese texts and writing style, both across genders and individual authors. Using two series of correspondence analysis, the current study thus seeks to analyze the most significant linguistic features across genders and individual authors based on a rich-annotated specialized Vietnamese corpus. In terms of genders, the most significant associations on writing style were identified for the combination of personal pronouns and negative words, whereas the seperated feature sets have less discriminating ability. For individual authors, negation words demonstrate their significant associations, and personal pronouns again have insignificant relationships with individual writing style. As a result of these investigations, suggestions were identified for future research.

Linguistics and Deception Detection (DD): A Work in Progress

Linguistic Deception Detection DD is a well-established part of forensic linguistics and an area that continues to attract attention on the part of researchers, self-styled experts, and the public at large. In this article, the various approaches to DD within the general field of linguistics are examined. The basic method is to treat language as a form of behaviour and to equate marked linguistic behaviour with other marked forms of behaviour. Such a comparison has been identified in other fields such as psychology and kinesics as being associated with stress linked to the attempt to deceive, typically in such contexts as examined here. Representative authentic examples of some of the most common linguistic indicators of deception that have been identified are discussed, dividing them into two general categories which we here introduce: language as revealer and language as concealer. We will argue that linguistic analysis for DD should be conducted relative to the subject’s individual linguistic patterns of behaviour, not on absolutes related to broad generalisations about what is supposedly normal or unmarked in the population at large. We will also briefly discuss some structured methods for linguistic analysis for DD and the prospect that technology and artificial intelligence will provide the means to automate and digitalise the linguistic DD process. We maintain that caution is advisable when considering these, as DD will, in all probability, always remain a work in progress, with the need for a flexible human evaluator ready to take into account many different aspects of the individual subject and the case in question.