21,May 2024
Have you ever come across any case where someone gets a threatening email or a ransom note? Threat becomes so scary that the involvement of an investigator is required. But have you ever thought about how crime investigators are able to trace and identify the actual culprit? This is done through the science of languages, known as forensic linguistics. Here in this blog, we have given complete details on what forensic linguistics is, its application, the principles involved in the investigation, etc.
What Is Forensic Linguistics?
The branch of forensic science which deals with the application of linguistic knowledge and associated methods to the legal system is known as forensic linguistics. This branch involves the examination and analysis of human verbal and written languages to be presented as evidence in criminal and civil cases. The implementation of the forensic linguistics branch can be traced in cases that involve disputed emails, messages, or documents that can be questioned for the words or phrases it consists of. Based on the learnings, an examiner investigates the case and collects sufficient linguistic evidence that can be presented in a court of law to prove the innocence of a victim or to hold an offender guilty.
What Do Forensic Linguists Do?
Those examiners who investigate civil and criminal cases involving the question and interpretation of different kinds of languages and writing styles are known as Forensic Linguists. These examiners look for linguistic evidence that can be used in criminal cases and can be presented to law enforcement agencies thus helping in crime mystery solving. Such investigators are required to look for lexical ambiguities and examine the languages that are used by law professionals, comparative linguistics, dialectology of linguistics, and criminal profiling.
Branches of Forensic Linguistics:
As discussed above the field of linguistics is wide and typically speaking there are principally three main areas of study in the context of forensics:
- Language of Written Laws: One of the major applications of this branch is to study the meaning behind a written law that can impact the verdict for someone. The constitution of India is the longest written constitution and hence the chances of lexical ambiguity are also there.
Lexical Ambiguity: It refers to the existence of two or more possible ways of legal document interpretation. Linguists look for ambiguities within written laws to help solve the cases.
- Language of Judicial and Forensic Relevance: Another area of its implementation is to interpret the languages used in the judicial and forensic world. Some of the languages that are examined by the linguistic investigators are the language used by police during the investigation and questioning of a suspect or a victim.
- Study of Linguistic Evidence: Linguistic examiners are tasked with comparing the writing styles that are presented as evidence with the writing styles of the accused. This branch is particularly concerned with the languages that are used by the people of the legal world like lawyers, police officers, barristers, judges, attorneys, etc.
Use of Linguistic Evidence In The Legal World:
As we have told earlier, linguistic evidence is used in solving critical and analytical criminal cases. Because their foundation is analytical instead of factual, the evidence is widely accepted and is reliable in court proceedings. The linguists have presented such evidence in the following cases:
- Trademark And Intellectual Property Disputes,
- Identification of the person who wrote a text by comparing the sample collected from a suspect,
- Identification of plagiarism in forensic evidence,
- Identification of voice also known as forensic phonetics using acoustic qualities,
- Analysis of the structure of written or spoken language to determine a suspect engaged in a criminal conspiracy,
- Forensic dialectology to trace the linguistic history of people from outside the country,
- Reconstruction of text conversations
Examples of Forensic Linguistics:
Forensic linguistics finds relevance in such cases where language is the means of interpretation of a crime. Through the implementation of this field even such cases are solved where no point is left by the offender to solve the case and find their identity. Some of the cases where this branch of forensics is used are as follows:
1. Analyze Ransom Note:
This branch can be used to analyze a ransom note to identify the person who wrote it. The examiner will minutely examine and analyze the language, vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. Thus try to match the writing style of a suspect with that of evidence found from the crime scene.
2. Analyzing Emails:
Apart from the hardcopy evidence, these experts are also responsible for analyzing a threatening email thus determining the real identity of the person who sent the email. The examiner examines the language used while writing the email. Things that are examined during the investigation are the tone, word choice, and sentence structure of the email.
3. Analyze Language Used:
These examiners help crime investigation agencies in solving crimes by analyzing the language used in communication. It is done to determine the identity of the person who is communicating.
4. Analyze Witness Statements And Confessions:
These investigators are tasked with cross-checking and verifying the statements given by the witnesses in any case. Apart from this, they also examine and analyze the confessions of the offenders.
5. Suicide Notes:
You must have been part of the forensics team collecting the notes written by an individual in cases of suicide. These notes are examined carefully so as to ensure that no murder mystery is involved in the case and the case is a suicide case only. It is done by closely examining the writing style of the note with that of the person who died.
6. Social Media Posts And Messages:
Digital posts and messages that are seditious in nature or have relevance to a crime are often investigated by linguists to know the authenticity of such posts.
Techniques Used In Forensic Linguistics:
Some of the common techniques used by linguists in the investigation of a crime are given below to you a better understanding of this topic:
1. Leading Questions:
The questions that can be subsequently asked during interrogation that provides pre-determined answers from the interviewee.
2. Speech Accommodation:
It is a theory through which the speech of an investigator changes to make the conversation more relatable to the person they are talking to.
3. Closed Or Open Ended Questions:
When the person is questioned while being on the stand they are asked lots of open-ended questions to get the desired answer from him which he does not wish to talk about. For doing so the lawyers ask random questions so that the witness speaks up.
4. Jargon And Terminology:
In order to confuse people intentionally so as to get the desired result in an investigation, linguists use specific jargon and terminology.
Methods of Forensic Linguistics:
This field of forensics uses several identification methods for solving crime mysteries in a reliable manner. Here we have given different methods that are used in forensic linguistics:
1. Comparative Linguistics:
The process of comparing a text collected as evidence with that of the victims to look into similarities or differences in language styles is known as comparative linguistics or forensic stylistics. Things that are compared for the examination are as follows:
- Choice of vocabulary,
- Idioms or phrases used in the text,
- Spellings used in email or messages,
- Slangs used,
- Capitalization in text,
- Referencing style,
- Mistakes in text,
- Format of Date used in documents, messages, or posts.
2. Linguistic Evidence:
Under this method, the evidence is analyzed for verifying the grammar, syntax, tone, and dialectical or idiolectal elements of language used in it. After making identifications from evidence the findings are compared to the language used by the accused or victim. Things that are examined are as follows:
- Syntax:It is the arrangement of words or phrases used in a sentence.
- Register:It is the style of language.
- Dialect:It is the variety of language used by people of different ethnicities, for example, people from north India will have a different dialect from that of people from south India.
- Idiolect:It is a way in which an individual uses language uniquely.
3. Linguistic Dialectology:
The study of languages to determine the dialectal clues in written evidence like suicide notes or social media posts is known as Linguistic dialectology.
Dialect: The variation of a language from the "standard" form in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation, and sometimes grammar is known as dialect.
4. Discourse Analysis:
It is a broad term that is applied in multiple ways across several disciplines. Discourse analysis can range from analyzing discourse markers to looking for hidden meanings within texts recovered as evidence.
5. Author Profiling:
It is a way of examining all the lexical items that are mentioned above and based on the findings, linguists build a criminal profile of the offender.
Conclusion:
Forensic linguistics is quite important in today’s era since people love to express their thoughts in written text over verbal communication. The experts of forensic science who are known as linguists are responsible for digging out those hidden secrets found in text evidence that can’t be figured out easily by other investigators. By examining each minute detail present in evidence, these experts are able to determine the identity of a victim or an offender.
References:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Forensic_linguistics# :~:text=Forensic%20linguistic s%2C%20legal%20linguistics %2C%20or,a%20branch%20of%20 applied%20linguistics
- https://www.studysmarter.co .uk/explanations/english/linguistic -terms/forensic-linguistics/
- https://www.alc.manchester. ac.uk/study/short-courses/ forensic-linguistics/
- https://www.lsd.law/define /forensic-linguistics