Definition:
The application of linguistic research and methods to the law, including evaluation of written evidence and the language of legislation. See also:
Examples and Observations:
- "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 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."
(Gerald R. McMenamin, Forensic Linguistics: Advances in Forensic Stylistics. CRC Press, 2002) - "What [Robert A. Leonard] thinks about of late is forensic linguistics, which he describes as 'the newest arrow in the quiver of law enforcement and lawyers.'
"'In a nutshell, just think of language as a fingerprint to be studied and analyzed,' he enthuses. 'The point to be made here is that language can help you solve crimes and language can help you prevent crimes. There is a tremendous pent-up demand for this kind of training. This can be the difference between someone going to jail over a confession he didn’t actually write.'
"His consultation on the murder of Charlene Hummert, a 48-year-old Pennsylvania woman who was strangled in 2004, helped put her killer in prison. Mr. Leonard determined, through the quirky punctuation in two letters of confession by a supposed stalker and a self-described serial killer, that the actual author was Ms. Hummert’s spouse. 'When I studied the writings and made the connection, it made the hair on my arms stand up.'"
(Robin Finn, "A Graduate of Sha Na Na, Now a Linguistics Professor." The New York Times, June 15, 2008) - "The linguistic fingerprint is a notion put forward by some scholars that each human being uses language differently, and that this difference between people can be observed just as easily and surely as a fingerprint. According to this view, the linguistic fingerprint is the collection of markers, which stamps a speaker/writer as unique. . . .
"[N]obody has yet demonstrated the existence of such a thing as a linguistic fingerprint: how then can people write about it in this unexamined, regurgitated way, as though it were a fact of forensic life?
"Perhaps it is this word 'forensic' that is responsible. The very fact that it collocates so regularly with words like expert and science means that it cannot but raise expectations. In our minds we associate it with the ability to single out the perpetrator from the crowd to a high degree of precision, and so when we put forensic next to linguistics as in the title of this book we are effectively saying forensic linguistics is a genuine science just like forensic chemistry, forensic toxicology, and so on. Of course, insofar as a science is a field of endeavour in which we seek to obtain reliable, even predictable results, by the application of a methodology, then forensic linguistics is a science. However, we should avoid giving the impression that it can unfailingly--or even nearly unfailingly--provide precise identification about individuals from small samples of speech or text."
(John Olsson, Forensic Linguistics: An Introduction to Language, Crime, and the Law. Continuum, 2004)
