Forensic linguistics
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.
The Associated Press reported, "Duncan McLure, of Johnson City, uncle of the [kidnapped] girl, is the only member of the family to spell his name 'McLure' instead of 'McClure'.
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 (referred to as McWords) and was unhappy with Quality Inns International's intention of opening a chain of economy hotels to be called "McSleep".
Officers use linguistic tactics including putting the blame onto the victim and asking questions with ambiguous phrasing to elicit specific responses from people.
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.
Emphasis on intonation, voice pitch, and the extent to which there is cooperation between the caller and the recipient at any one time are also very important in analyzing an emergency call.
Forensic linguists look at factors such as syntactic structures, stylistic patterns, punctuation, and even spelling while analyzing ransom notes.
Linguists often work with other interrelated fields such as cyber analysts if the threat is made through text or an internet forum to test for validity or alterations.
They may also denounce witnesses as dishonest, critique law enforcement as corrupt in an attempt to portray innocence, or seek an element of revenge in their last moments.
Forensic application of a selection of stylistic and stylometric techniques has been done in a simulated authorship attribution case involving texts in relation to Facebook.
[25] Analysis of social media postings can reveal whether they are illegal (e.g. sex trade) or unethical (e.g. intended to harm) or whether they are not (e.g. simply provocative or free speech).
[30] 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.
[32] CUSUM analysis works even on short texts and relies on the assumption that each speaker has a unique set of habits, thus rendering no significant difference between their speech and writing.
Other examples of plagiarism include the cases between Richard Condon, author of The Manchurian Candidate, and English novelist Robert Graves and between Martin Luther King Jr. and Archibald Carey.
Ted's brother, David Kaczynski, recognized his writing style in the phrase "cool-headed logicians" in the published 35,000-word Industrial Society and Its Future (commonly called the "Unabomber Manifesto") and notified the authorities.
An analysis produced by FBI Supervisory Special Agent James R. Fitzgerald identified numerous lexical items and phrases common to the two documents.
The final important text was titled “Moab the Midian”, contained elements of a triple homicide, was justified by religious motives, and was received on October 5, 1888.
The final conclusion was that Dear Boss and Saucy Jacky cannot be considered independent from one another because they share more word 2-gram uses than 95% of all other possible pairs of texts in the JRC.
It is becoming more important to conduct systematic studies of dialects, especially within the English language, because they are no longer as distinct as they once were due to the onslaught of mass media and population mobility.
[citation needed] Linguistic expertise has been employed in criminal cases to defend an individual suspected of a crime and during government investigations.
On 9 February 1995, in a televised special presidential broadcast, President Ernesto Zedillo announced Subcomandante Marcos to be one Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, born 19 June 1957 to Spanish immigrants in Tampico, Tamaulipas, a former professor at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana School of Sciences and Arts for the Design.
After the government revealed Marcos' identity in January 1995, Max Appedole, old friend, classmate with the Jesuits at the Instituto Cultural Tampico, made direct intervention in the conflict.
Appedole played a major role with the Mexican government to avoid a military solution to the 1995 Zapatista Crisis by demonstrating that, contrary to the accusations announced by President Ernesto Zedillo,[45] Rafael Guillén was no terrorist.
After she was reported missing, her partner received several text messages from Julie's mobile phone, such as "Stopping at jills, back later need to sort my head out", and "Tell kids not to worry.
The forensic linguists found a number of stylistic similarities between David's texting style and the messages sent from Jenny's phone around the time she went missing.
Using the timeframe of when she went missing, combined with the differences in texting styles and other forensic details, Jenny's murderer, David Hodgson, was convicted.
The analysis of the text messages and their submission in court helped to pave the way for forensic linguistics to be acknowledged as a science in UK law, rather than opinion.
John Olsson, however, argues that although the concept of linguistic fingerprinting is attractive to law enforcement agencies, there is so far little hard evidence to support the notion.
Audio and video documents can include repetitions, hesitation, nonsensical talk, jargon which can be hard to understand, and speakers mumbling incoherently and inaudibly.
Individuals may employ a variety of methods to convey paralanguage in order to better communicate tone of voice, volume, and expression, such as using capital letters to portray shouting.
