Forensic linguistics
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.
Forensic linguistics is an umbrella term covering many applications to legal contexts. These are often split between written and spoken items. It is common for forensic linguistics to refer only to written text, whereas anything involving samples of speech is known as forensic speech science.
There are principally three areas of application for linguists working on written texts in forensic contexts:
- understanding language of the written law,
- understanding language use in forensic and judicial processes, and
- the provision of linguistic evidence.
- speaker comparison
- disputed utterance analysis
- voice parades
- speaker profiling
- audio enhancement and authentication
History
The term forensic linguistics first appeared in 1968 when Jan Svartvik, a Swedish professor of linguistics, used it in "The Evans Statements: A Case for Forensic Linguistics" an analysis of statements by Timothy John Evans. It was in regard to re-analyzing the statements given to police at Notting Hill police station, England, in the case of an alleged murder by Evans in 1949. Evans was suspected of murdering his wife and baby, and he was tried and hanged for the crime. Yet, when Svartvik 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. Sparked by this case, forensic linguists in the UK at the time were focused on questioning the validity of police interrogations. As seen in numerous famous cases, many of the major concerns were of the statements police officers used. Numerous times, the topic of police register came up– the type of stylist language and vocabulary used by members of the law enforcement when transcribing witness statements.In the US, forensic linguistics can be traced back as early as 1927 to a ransom note in Corning, New York. The Associated Press reported, "Duncan McLure, of Johnson City, uncle of the 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." Other work of forensic linguistics in the United States concerned the rights of individuals with regard to understanding their Miranda rights during the interrogation process. The 1963 case of Ernesto Miranda was pivotal to the beginning of the forensic linguistics field. 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. An early application of forensic linguistics in the United States was related to the status of trademarks as words or phrases in the language. One of the bigger cases involved fast food giant McDonald's claiming that it had originated the process of attaching unprotected words to the "Mc" prefix and was unhappy with Quality Inns International's intention of opening a chain of economy hotels to be called "McSleep".
In the 1980s, Australian linguists discussed the application of linguistics and sociolinguistics to legal issues. They discovered that a phrase such as "the same language" is open to interpretation. Aboriginal people have their own understanding of, relationship with, and use of "English" — something that is not always appreciated by speakers of the dominant version of English, i.e. "white English". The Aboriginal people also bring their own culturally-based interactional styles to the interview.
The 2000s saw a considerable shift in the field of forensic linguistics, which has been described as a coming-of-age of the discipline, as it spread to many countries around the world, from Europe to Australia and Japan. Today, not only does the field have professional associations such as the founded in 1991 as the International Association for Forensic Phonetics, the International Association for Forensic and Legal Linguistics, founded as the International Association of Forensic Linguists in 1993, and the Austrian Association for Legal Linguistics, founded in 2017, but it can now provide the scientific community with a range of textbooks such as Coulthard, Johnson and Wright, Gibbons, and Olsson.
Additionally, certain leading institutions have developed programs of study and institutes focused on forensic linguistics. In the United States, Hofstra University has developed a master's degree program, and the Institute for Forensic Linguistics, Threat Assessment, and Strategic Analysis, which conducts special projects, research, and internships in forensic linguistics. This institute contains the Forensic Linguistics Capital Case Innocence Project, formed in 2014, which involves supervised interns reanalyzing language data in capital punishment cases to locate any possibilities of appeal. In the United Kingdom, Aston University has developed master's degree and Ph.D. programs as well as the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics, founded in 2019 and formerly known as the Aston Centre for Forensic Linguistics which was founded in 2008, that studies forensic texts and conducts research using a variety of methods from numerous areas of linguistics. The University of York also provides a master's degree and Ph.D. programmes in forensic speech science.
Areas of study
The range of topics within forensic linguistics is diverse, but research occurs in the following areas:The language of legal texts
Communication problems may occur between the written law and lay persons due to the complex nature of the language and vocabulary used in these legal texts. Forensic linguists will study these texts to understand how these issues arise, and if necessary, provide explanations or translations of the contents.One area of the language of legal texts encompasses the Miranda warning in the United States. These warnings let the defendant know that they have the right to be silent, since whatever they say from the moment they are in police custody can and will be used against them in a court of law. The recipients who are advised of these rights must have a certain level of competency in the English language in order to completely understand the warning.
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.Police officers use specific language to elicit certain responses from civilians. Because of a police officer's 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.
In addition, language structure in witness or suspect interviews can have an impact on the statements which are made from these. In the case of Derek Bentley, elicitation of a narrative through questions rather than a natural account resulted in a wrongful prosecution and sentence of the death penalty. Analysis of the statement revealed the statement was not Bentley's own words and was constructed by the police officers.
When a victim is invoking their right to a lawyer, there are directions stating that the request may not come off as ambiguous. In fact, if the request is not stated in a way that the officer deems to be clear, the victim may not receive their request for counsel at all.
During the examination process, language plays a substantial role in the presentation of a story to the courtroom. A defendant's ambiguity may be deemed unacceptable. The language used by the lawyer to construct the story to the courtroom elicits specific responses from the witness, and specific emotions from the jury. For example, in an instance where a lawyer is examining a hostile witness, they will often use language to limit the response of the witness, in order to avoid having the witness present conflicting evidence. In this instance, yes/no questions will be targeted, and questions with room for elaboration, such as wh-formation questions, will likely be avoided. In a situation where a lawyer interviews a friendly witness whose testimony could potentially strengthen the story constructed by the lawyer, the opposite may occur, where wh-questions are targeted to allow for elaboration.
Lawyers employ specific tactics for both themselves and their witnesses to come off as more or less truthful to the jury and the people of the courtroom. For example, the lawyer may refer to the witness by their first name or a nickname to humanize the witness, or they may speak using slang in order to create less social distance between themselves and the courtroom. The lawyer may also avoid using slang, and instead use complicated law terminology to set themselves apart from the courtroom and define their status.
The lawyer works in constructing the language of the legal process of the courtroom, and specific witnesses may respond to the lawyer's questions in different ways, eliciting new language tactics and opinions from the jury. For example, witnesses may use direct or indirect speech based on their previous societal experiences, gender differences, socioeconomic differences, or differences in education level. Using particular dialects, slang, or sentence formations could assist in making the witness more or less truthful to the jury.
Since language can be used to elicit responses in the legal process, the right to an interpreter plays a part in the fairness of the trial. "The right to an interpreter is essentially a procedural right that derives from the right to a fair trial: everyone charged with a criminal offence has the right to certain minimum procedural guarantees, and these include the right to the free assistance of an interpreter where s/he cannot understand or speak the language of the concerned court."