This document provides an overview of forensic linguistics. It defines forensic linguistics as the application of linguistic knowledge, methods and insights to legal contexts such as law, crime investigation, and judicial procedures. Some key points: - Forensic linguistics involves the analysis of language used in legal settings and documents, including legislation, court proceedings, interviews, and witness statements. - Areas of study within forensic linguistics include understanding the language of legal texts and processes, and providing linguistic evidence in areas like author identification, trademark disputes, and voice analysis. - Linguistic analysis can be applied at different stages of legal cases and proceedings, from initial investigations to trials and appeals. Forensic linguists may interpret meanings,

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Forensic linguistics
Def.-“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 the analysis of language that relates to
the law. Language of legal discourse includes the languages of statutes, judicial deliberations, the
discourse of the court room and the discourse of exchanges between layers and others outside the
court room. Forensic linguistics have also studied a wide range of interactions including prisons
and within the police service. Forensic linguistics is the interpretation of legal terminology. The
application of linguistic research and methods to the law, including evaluation of written
evidence and the language of legislation. The term forensic linguistics was coined in 1968 by
linguistics professor Jan Svartvik. Forensic Linguistics is the application of linguistics to
legal issues. It is a branch of applied linguistics. Forensic Linguistics is, rather, the application of
linguistic knowledge to a particular social setting, namely the legal forum (from which the word
forensic is derived).
In its broadest sense we may say that Forensic Linguistics is the interface between
language, crime and law, where law includes law enforcement, judicial matters, legislation,
disputes or proceedings in law, and evendisputes which only potentially involve some
infraction of the law or some necessity to seek a legal remedy. The application of linguistic
methods to legal questions is only one sense in which Forensic Linguistics is an application of a
science, in that various linguistic theories may be applied to the analysis of the language samples
in an inquiry. Thus, the forensic linguist may quote observations from research undertaken in
fields as diverse as language and memory studies, Conversation Analysis, Discourse Analysis,
theory of grammar, Cognitive Linguistics, Speech Act Theory, etc. we can say that the forensic
linguist applies linguistic knowledge and techniques to the language implicated in (i) legal cases
or proceedings or (ii) private disputes between parties which may at a later stage result in legal
action of some kind being taken.Applications of forensic linguistics include voice identification,
interpretation of expressed meaning in laws and legal writings, analysis of discourse in legal
settings, interpretation of intended meaning in oral and written statements (e.g., confessions),
authorship identification, the language of the law (e.g., plain language), analysis of courtroom

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language used by trial participants (i.e., judges, lawyers, and witnesses), trademark law, and
interpretation and translation when more than one language must be used in a legal context.
There are principally three areas of application for linguists working in forensic contexts:
 understanding language of the written law,
 understanding language use in forensic and judicial processes,
and
 the provision of linguistic evidence.
The discipline of forensic linguistics is not homogenous; it involves a range of experts and
researchers in different areas of the field.The phrase forensic linguistics first appeared in 1968
when Jan Svartvik, a professor of linguistics, used it in an analysis of statements by Timothy
John Evans.
The 2000s saw a considerable shift in the field of forensic linguistics, which has been
described as a coming-of-age of the discipline. Not only does the field have professional
associations such as the International Association of Forensic Linguistics(IAFL) founded in
1993, and the Austrian Association for Legal Linguistics (AALL) founded in 2017.
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Legal Language and Structure of Legal genres
Legal Cases and Proceedings-
In lay terms, for the purposes of this discussion, we can envisage a legal proceeding as
consisting potentially of three stages: the investigative stage, the trial stage and the appeal stage.
The investigative stage is also sometimes referred to as the intelligence stage. In this part of the
process it is important to gather information relating to the (alleged) crime. Not all of the
information which is gathered during investigations can be used in court, and so a linguist who
assists law enforcement officers during the intelligence stage may, in fact, find that there is no
requirement to give evidence at any subsequent trial. Similarly, a linguist whose work is used at
trial may not be required to assist the court at the appeal stage, if the content of the appeal does
not include linguistic questions. On the other hand if linguistic evidence which was not available

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at the earlier stages comes to light while the appeal is being prepared, then this may be the stage
at which the linguist is called in to give an opinion.
The investigative stage- Typically, requests for linguistic analysis originate with law
enforcement departments or, in some countries, at the invitation of an investigating magistrate.
Examples of linguistics intelligence work have included analysis of ransom notes, letters
purporting to provide information on a case, mobile (cell) phone text messages, and specific
threat letters. Linguists have also been asked to analyse texts purporting to be suicide notes. Even
though the police in such cases may not suspect foul play, it could be important to attempt to
establish whether the questioned text can throw any light on the cause or circumstances of death.
Also at the investigative stage, the police may need to have an opinion on a text or an interview
tape, perhaps to assist in developing interview and interrogation strategies. It is unlikely that
anything a linguist says about veracity (using techniques similar to statement analysis) would be
acceptable evidence in court, which is why this kind of linguistic analysis is usually confined to
the investigative stage.
The trial stage- At the trial stage any one of a number of types of linguistic analysis may be
called for, including questions of authorship (Who wrote the text?/Who is the speaker in this
recording?), meaning and interpretation (Does this word mean x, y or something else?), threat
analysis (Does the text contain a threat?), or text provenance and construction (Was the text dual-
authored? Was it written rather than spoken? etc). The inquiry could be of a civil or criminal
nature, and this will determine the level of ‘proof’ acceptable to the court in question. Usually,
the forensic linguist is instructed some time before a case gets to court. An expert report is
submitted to the instructing legal team — either for the prosecution or the defence (or the
plaintiff/claimant in a civil case). Even though the linguist prepares a report for one ‘side’ in a
case rather than the other, it is the court for whom the work is really done. The first duty of the
linguist — like that of any other forensic expert — is to the court, and not to the client on whose
behalf the analysis was originally carried out.
The appeal stage- If a defendant is convicted of a crime it is not uncommon, especially these
days, for the defence legal team to launch an appeal almost immediately. The structure and
nature of appeals varies from country to country, and in some countries appeals centre on the
claim that new evidence has been made available, or that existing evidence should be looked at

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in new ways. It is becoming increasingly common for linguists to be called in to assist legal
counsel at the appeal stage, either because there may be some dispute about the wording,
interpretation or authorship of a statement or confession made to police, or because a new
interpretation of a forensic text (such as a suicide or ransom note) may have become apparent
since the conviction. A not inconsiderable part of the forensic linguist’s work consists of private
cases. By this is meant that the work is commissioned by private individuals not involved in
litigation at the time of the commission. Such cases include identifying the author of anonymous
hate mail, the investigation of plagiarism for a school or university, or on behalf of a student
accused of plagiarism. It sometimes happens that the linguist’s report may have an influence on
the client’s decision to take matters further, either in a civil or a criminal court, but this is not
common. Usually, what happens is that the report is submitted and the client deals with the
matter internally — either within a university department, a business organisation, or, as may
also be the case, within a family.
Areas of study-
The range of topics within forensic linguistics is diverse, but research occurs in the following
areas:
The study of the language of legal texts encompasses a wide range of forensic texts. 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
analysing the linguistics of documents as diverse as Acts of Parliament (or other law-making
body), private wills, court judgements and summonses and the statutes of other bodies, such as
States and government departments.
The language of legal processes-
Among other things, this area 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.When we speak of the language of the law, we are talking about a number of aspects
of legal language. It can be divided into two main sections – a) the professional language of the
law and b) the language of the law encountered by the person. One more area of the language

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used in the jury room is unknown to us. Because we know very little about how juries assess
evidence, about what jury members say to each other, or about how persuasion works in the jury
room. Once a verdict is reached, no court in the land has the power to question what happened in
the jury room. The student of forensic linguistics needs to bear in mind that although we talk of
the language of the law, a very important aspect of this language is covered in secrecy and will
never become known. In many countries, juries are forbidden by law to discuss a case once it is
concluded, and have the permanent protection of the law against those who would seek to inquire
into their deliberations. It is not even possible to know whether a jury understood the facts of a
case.
***
Use of linguistic evidence in legal proceedings-
These areas of application have varying degrees of acceptability or reliability within the field.
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)[12]
 Reconstruction of mobile phone text conversations

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 Forensic phonetics
Specialist databases of samples of spoken and written natural language (called corpora) are now
frequently used by forensic linguists. These include corpora of suicide notes, mobile phone texts,
police statements, police interview records and witness statements. They are used to analyse
language, understand how it is used, and to reduce the effort needed to identify words that tend
to occur near each other (collocations or collocates).
***
Author identification-
Authorship attribution is the task of identifying the authorship of a disputed document. The
disputed texts under analysis are potentially evidential in the case. Such texts could include
abusive emails, threatening tweets, ransom notes, blackmail or extortion letters, fake suicide
notes, etc. In both criminal and civil investigations which involve these kinds of texts, linguists
can be called upon by police or legal teams to analyse the texts and provide expert witness
reports, sometimes presenting their evidence in court to juries through examination and cross-
examination. The job of the forensic linguist is to investigate the authentic author of the text on
the basis of linguistic evidence.In order to reach opinions about the authorship of written
linguistic evidence, the forensic analyst requires not only the questions regarding the disputed
text but also collects some pre-crime (before the crime took place) from written material,
computers or mobile devices. When this data is collected , the forensic linguist compares the
linguistic styles exhibited in the disputed and known texts in order to identify whether or not they
are similar enough to have been written by the same person.
The identification of whether a given individual said or wrote something relies on analysis of
their idiolector particular patterns of language use (vocabulary, collocations, pronunciation,
spelling, grammar, etc). The idiolect is a theoretical construct based on the idea that there is
linguistic variation at the group level and hence there may also be linguistic variation at the
individual level. Firstly, language is not an inherited property, but one which is socially
acquired.Because acquisition is continuous and life-long, an individual's use of language is
always susceptible to variation from a variety of sources, including other speakers, the media and
macro-social changes. Education can have a profoundly homogenizing effect on language use.

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Authorship measures that analysts use include word length average, average number of syllables
per word, article frequency, type-token ratio, punctuation (both in terms of overall density and
syntactic boundaries) and unique words in a text.
***
Forensic phonetics-
The forensic phonetician is concerned 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. Voice recording as a supplement to the transcription can be useful as it
allows victims and witnesses to indicate whether the voice of a suspect is that of the accused, i.e.,
alleged criminal.Phoneticians are able to analyse the distinctive speech characteristics of a
speaker relative to other candidate speakers in an inquiry much more easily than as little as 20
years ago. An important ethic within Forensic Phonetics is that no means exists which can
infallibly identify an unknown speaker in a legal case (such as a hoax or bomb threat caller to an
emergency service). Rather, like all branches of science Forensic Phonetics examines a set of
phenomena, in this case aspects of recorded speech, and offers opinions based on the
observations arising from the analysis
Forensic speech reading is the complement of forensic voice identification. Transcripts of
surveilled video records can sometimes allow expert speechreaders to identify speech content or
style where the identity of the talker is apparent from the video record.
***
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. If a transcription is wrong, the evidence is altered (changed). If there is
failure to transcribe the full text, evidence is once again altered unwittingly. There must be
emphasis on the text being the evidence. A transcription of an audio file should never be
assumed to be completely accurate. Each type of transcription contains its own problems. A
handwritten document might contain unusual spellings which may result in ambiguous (not

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clear) meanings, illegible handwriting and illustrations that are difficult to comprehend
(understand). A scanned document is tricky, as it may alter the original document. Audio and
video documents can include repetitions, hesitation, nonsensical talk, jargon which can be hard
to understand and speakers mumbling incoherently and inaudibly. Non-linguistic sounds such as
crying and laughing may also be included in the audio and video text which cannot be
transcribed easily. Because of this, civil libertarians argued that interrogations in major criminal
cases should be recorded and the recordings kept, as well as transcribed.
***
Types of Forensic text-
A forensic text means any kind of text said or written can become of evidential (proof)
importance in an investigation or a case. The case may by criminal or civil. Such text is produced
as a proof in the court. This includes language whose authorship is in question, language where
the meaning is at issue, language used in court while in examination or cross-examination. It can
also include a statement of a witness or defendant.Forensic texts exist in all forms and cover
almost every topic. There are suicide notes, ransom demands, threat texts, and defendant
and witness statements, anonymous hate mail. Such texts are found as mobile phone texts,
letters, e mails, videos, instant messages and so on.
***
Examination and Cross-examination of Witnesses-
Witnesses are examined, cross-examined, and re-examined entirely through questions in
court. Since questions and their eliciting speech act function are so central to the trial in the
court. While questioning a witness, it is expected to encourage the witness to give an answer.
Such questions can be described in five main types-
1. Wh questions (also called polar questions)
2. Yes/no questions, ‘to ask whether a proposition (situation) is true or false.
3. Alternative questions, ‘to ask which of the two or more alternatives (options) is true and
related to the case
4. Tag questions, which ‘seek (search) confirmation (recheck) of the statement the speaker
has just given (for example, you did meet the killer, didn’t you?)

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5. Declarative questions asked with rising intonation (for example, Next what happened?)
In addition to the above question types, the lawyers learn about leading questions in their
legal training. Such leading questions are designed to prompt (encourage) witness to give
a specific answer.
***
The Work of the Forensic Phonetician-
The forensic phonetician is concerned with all aspects of speech as evidence. This
can involve deriving (getting) information about a speakers’ social and regional
background on the basis of their voice. Forensic phoneticians are asked by police or legal
teams to offer an opinion on whether the speaker in two or more separate recordings is
the same. The phonetician can help police forces with the transcription and interpretation
of disputed recordings. He can offer advice in the design of voice evidence. The voice
evidence can be checked in ‘voice parade’. These are similar to identity parades. The
voice evidence involve victims and witnesses who have heard but not seen the criminal.
When the police arrest someone as a suspect in such a crime, recordings of the suspect’s
voice, along with a set of similar voices are played to the witness, and the witness is
asked whether they can identify the voice that they heard at the scene of the crime.