By Dana P Skopal, PhD

People may be aware of forensic science, but the term forensic linguistics may not be that common. However, both terms relate to investigating evidence for criminal and legal cases. The term forensic linguistics was coined by Professor Svartvik in 1968, and universities are now starting to run courses in this field to meet the growing demand for forensic linguistic skills.

Evidence in courts can link to what has reportedly been said or what has been written, which means examining the communication to check for originality and who may or may not be the real creator of the message. Author identification can be through checking the type of vocabulary used by those in question as well as investigating the technical creation of a file or social media posting. When examining speech, a forensic linguist can look at the pronunciation (phonetics) and whether any dialect is evident. Every person has a distinct way of speaking and the word choices they make to explain points, which we call their idiolect.

With written texts, forensic linguists need to check for the number of authors, especially as many organisations use word-processing to produce documents. A section of a long document written by one author can vary to a section written by a different person. If a text is to be produced by one person, such as an assignment, then a marker needs to be aware if that style is their idiolect. This links to the application of plagiarism detection software used by tertiary institutions for detecting the copying of past texts, but which also needs to be considered against a student’s own writing style.

Another consideration in the world of linguistics is should we examine how governments write laws? A law or regulation is expressed in words, but can we know how different individuals may interpret those laws? This may be an area where regulators, lawyers and linguistics should work together to write laws that can be clearly understood with minimal opportunities for different interpretations.