Forensic Linguistics

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1. Forensic Linguistics By- Prof.R.R.Borse , Asst.Prof ., Eng.Dept ., B.P.Arts,S.M.A. Sci ., K.K.C.Com.College,Chalisgaon [email protected]

2. Wikipedia:- Forensic linguistics, legal linguistics, or language and the law, is the application of linguistic knowledge, methods and insights to the forensic context of law, language, crime investigation, trial, and judicial procedure. It is a branch of applied linguistics.

3. There are principally three areas of application for linguists working in forensic contexts : 1. understanding language of the written law , 2. understanding language use in forensic and judicial processes, and 3. the provision of linguistic evidence.

4. One of the main goals of Forensic Linguistics is to provide a careful and systemic analysis of language. The results of this analysis can be used by many different professionals. For example, police officers can use this evidence not only to interview witnesses and suspects more effectively but also to solve crimes more reliably. Lawyers , judges and jury members can use these analyses to help evaluate questions of guilt and innocence more fairly. And translators and interpreters can use this research to communicate with greater accuracy. Forensic Linguistics serves justice and helps people to find the truth when a crime has been committed.

5. The following video shows how Forensic Linguistics can be used by law enforcement to help them identify suspects and bring criminals to justice: https:// youtu.be/acHg0L5ky30

6. The Birth of Forensic Linguistics Jan Svartick analyzed the statements given by Timothy John Evans . It was in regard to re-analyzing the statements given to police at Notting Hill police station, England, in 1949 in the case of an alleged murder by Evans. Evans was suspected of murdering his wife and baby and was tried and hanged for the crime. Yet , when Svartick studied the statements allegedly given by Evans, he found that there were different stylistic markers involved, and Evans did not actually give the statements to the police officers as had been stated at the trial .

7. Moving to the US and the beginnings of the field of forensic linguistics, the field really began with the 1963 case of Ernesto Miranda . His case led to the creation of the Miranda Rights and pushed the focus of forensic linguistics on witness questioning rather than police statements . Various cases came about that challenged whether or not suspects truly understood what their rights meant – leading to a distinction of coercive versus voluntary interrogations.

8. The fact that someone has been arrested does not necessarily mean that he or she is guilty ; and even when a suspected person did commit a crime, the police are still bound by law to make sure that the laws of the country are respected and protected. To help ensure that these regulations and procedures are always respected, police are required in many countries to read out formal text. In the United States, this text is called the “Miranda Warnings”. Forensic Linguists who specialize in the analysis of “Miranda Rights” can show how variations in how the text is read can alter the way it is understood. They might also investigate how translations of the text might change the original legal intention.

9. “Miranda Rights” https:// youtu.be/Z-VW8Ldw6YI

10. In the United Kingdom, the legal defense for many criminal cases questioned the authenticity of police statements. At the time, customary police procedure for taking suspects' statements dictated that it be in a specific format, rather than in the suspect's own words. Statements by witnesses are very seldom made in a coherent or orderly fashion , with speculation and backtracking done out loud. The delivery is often too fast-paced, causing important details to be left out.

11. Forensic linguistics can be traced back as early as 1927 to a ransom note in Corning, New York. As the Associated Press reported in "Think Corning Girl Wrote Ransom Note" "Duncan McLure , of Johnson City uncle of the (kidnapped) girl, is the only member of the family to spell his name ' McLure ' instead of 'McClure.' The letter he received, supposedly from the kidnappers, was addressed to him by the proper name, indicating that the writer was familiar with the difference in spelling ."

12. Means… That includes the study of text types and forms of analysis. Any text or item of spoken language can potentially be a forensic text when it is used in a legal or criminal context . This includes analyzing the linguistics of documents as diverse as Acts of Parliament (or other law-making body), private wills, court judgments and summonses and the statutes of other bodies, such as States and government departments.

13. It examines language as it is used in cross-examination, evidence presentation, judge's direction, police cautions, police testimonies in court, summing up to a jury, interview techniques, the questioning process in court and in other areas such as police interviews.

14. Means… Police officers use specific language to elicit (get) certain responses from civilians. Because of a police officers' social stature, and the way they often phrase "requests" as "commands", people may be confused as to what their rights are when they are being questioned by police. Officers use linguistic tactics including putting the blame onto the victim and asking questions with ambiguous phrasing to elicit specific responses from people.

15. Forensic Linguistics is commonly divided into two major areas - Written language: for example, the language used in regional, national, and international law, today and in the past; transcripts of police interviews with witnesses and suspects; criminal messages used in cases of terrorist threat, suicide, kidnapping, blackmailing, etc.; the translation of legal documents from one language into another; the examination of text material to answer questions about who may or may not have been the author. The written language examined by a Forensic Linguists can be in many different forms: phone messages, notes, handwritten letters, posting in social media, etc. Spoken language: the language used by interpreters during official interviews of witnesses, suspects, and victims; the language used by offenders or victims during a crime. The focus of this area is not simply what was said, but how it was said.

16. Linguists who primarily investigate written language look at features such as spelling, sentence construction, word-choice, and punctuation, etc. By comparison, linguists who principally examine spoken language focus on accent, dialect, pronunciation, tone of voice, speed and rhythm of speech , etc. As the name implies, most experts working within Forensic Linguistics have a degree in linguistics, the study of language. However, a great many of Forensic Linguists also have a degree or advanced training in other academic fields such as Law, Psychology, Sociology, Computational Sciences and Criminology.

17. Emergency /Hoax/Fake call:- In an emergency call, the recipient or emergency operator's ability to extract primarily linguistic information in threatening situations and to come up with the required response in a timely manner is crucial to the successful completion of the call. Emphasis on intonation, voice pitch and the extent to which there is cooperation between the caller and the recipient at any one time are also very important in analyzing an emergency call. To check if the caller might be making a false or hoax call . A genuine call has distinctive interlocking and slight overlap of turns. If the caller uses a rising pitch at the end of every turn, it might represent a lack of commitment ; the recipient's use of a rising pitch indicates doubt or desire for clarification. The call ideally moves from nil knowledge on the part of the recipient to a maximum amount of knowledge in a minimum possible period of time.

18. Ransom demands or other threat communication:- Threat is a counterpart of a promise and is an important feature in a ransom demand. Ransom demands are also examined to identify between genuine and false threats . An example of a ransom note analysis can be seen in the case of the Lindbergh kidnapping, where the first ransom note (sometimes referred to as the Nursery Note) stated: "We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the Polise the child is in gut care" (sic ). From the sentence, the kidnapper makes the claim that the child is in good hands but to make such a claim, the note would have to be written before the perpetrator enters the premises. Therefore, the claim is false (at the time of writing) since the kidnapper had not even encountered the child when he wrote the note . Kidnappers may write statements that later end up being true, such as "your child is being held in a private location" being written ahead of time. The style of writing used in ransom notes are examined by forensic linguists in order to determine the writing's true intent, as well as determining who wrote the note. Forensic linguists look at factors such as syntactic structures, stylistic patterns, punctuation and even spelling while analyzing ransom notes . In the case of the Lindbergh ransom note forensic linguists compared similarities of writing styles from the note to that of writing of the suspect, creating a better chance at discovering who wrote the note.

19. Suicide letters:- A suicide note is typically brief, concise and highly propositional with a degree of evasiveness. A credible (real) suicide letter must be making a definite unequivocal proposition in a situational context. The proposition of genuine suicide is thematic, directed to the addressee (or addressees) and relevant to the relationship between them. 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.

20. Social media:- Social media statements are often context specific, and their interpretation can be highly subjective. Forensic application of a selection of stylistic techniques in a simulated authorship attribution case involving texts has been done in relation to Facebook,whats app, etc. Analysis of social media postings can reveal whether they are illegal (e.g. sex trade,anti-social,casteist ) or unethical (e.g. intended to harm) or whether they are not (e.g. simply provocative or free speech).

21. Use of linguistic evidence in legal proceedings:- Linguists have provided evidence in :- Trademark and other intellectual property disputes Disputes of meaning and use Author identification (determining who wrote an anonymous text by making comparisons to known writing samples of a suspect; such as threat letters, mobile phone texts or emails) Forensic stylistics (identifying cases of plagiarism) Voice identification, also known as forensic phonetics, used to determine, through acoustic qualities, if the voice on a tape recorder is that of the defendant) Discourse analysis (the analysis of the structure of written or spoken utterance to determine who is introducing topics or whether a suspect is agreeing to engage in criminal conspiracy) Language analysis (forensic dialectology) tracing the linguistic history of asylum seekers (Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin ) 8. Reconstruction of mobile phone text conversations

22. Use of linguistic evidence in legal proceedings- The following areas of application have different degrees of reliability within the field. Linguists have provided evidence in Author identification - The identification of whether a given individual said or wrote something relies on analysis of their idiolect, or particular patterns of language use (vocabulary, collocations, pronunciation, spelling, grammar ). 2 . Forensic stylistics- This discipline subjects written or spoken materials (or both) to scientific analysis for determination and measurement of content, meaning, speaker identification, or determination of authorship, in identifying plagiarism . 3 . Discourse analysis- Discourse analysis deals with analyzing written, oral, or sign language use, or any significant semiotic event . 4 . Linguistic dialectology- This refers to the study of dialects in a methodological manner based on anthropological information. It is becoming more important to conduct systematic studies of dialects, especially within the English language .

23. 5. Forensic phonetics- The forensic phonetician deals with the production of accurate transcriptions of what was being said. Transcriptions can reveal information about a speaker's social and regional background. Forensic phonetics can determine similarities between the speakers of two or more separate recordings (John Olsson, 2007). 6 . Forensic transcription - The two main types of transcriptions are written documents and video and audio records. Accurate, reliable text transcription is important because the text is the data which becomes the available evidence. 7. Variation -Intra-author variations are the ways in which one author's texts differ from each other. Inter-author variations are the ways in which different authors' writing varies. Two texts by one author do not necessarily vary less than texts by two different authors.