The Idea Of Progress In Forensic Authorship Analysis

This Element examines progress in research and practice in forensic authorship analysis. It describes the existing research base and examines what makes an authorship analysis more or less reliable. Further to this, the author describes the recent history of forensic science and the scientific revolution brought about by the invention of DNA evidence. They chart the rise of three major changes in forensic science - the recognition of contextual bias in analysts, the need for validation studies and shift in logic of providing identification evidence. This Element addresses the idea of progress in forensic authorship analysis in terms of these three issues with regard to new knowledge about the nature of authorship and methods in stylistics and stylometry. The author proposes that the focus needs to shift to validation of protocols for approaching case questions, rather than on validation of systems or general approaches. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Introduces a formal theory of linguistic individuality, a perspective-changing framework moving the field towards more cognitively realistic methods of authorship analysis.

This Element explores the sentiment and keyword features in both authorship profiling and authorship attribution in social media texts in the Chinese cultural context. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Methodologies and Challenges in Forensic Linguistic Casework Discover more about Forensic Linguistics, a fascinating cross-disciplinary field from an international team of renowned contributors Methodologies and Challenges in Forensic Linguistic Casework provides an overview of the range of forensic linguistic casework typically found in investigative and judicial contexts. In these case studies, the authors demonstrate how linguistic theory is applied in real-life forensic situations and the constraints and challenges they have to deal with. Drawing on linguistic expertise from the USA and Europe involving casework in English, Spanish, Danish and Portuguese, our contributing practitioners exemplify the most common types of text analysis such as identifying faked texts, suspect profiling, analyzing texts whose authorship is questioned, and giving expert opinions on meaning and understanding. Methodologies and Challenges in Forensic Linguistic Casework is designed for investigators and legal practitioners interested in the use of language analysis for investigative or evidentiary purposes, as well as for students and researchers wanting to understand how linguistic theory and analysis may be applied to solving real-life forensic problems using current best practice.

This Element presents an account of forensic linguistics in Australia since the first expert linguistic evidence in 1959, through early work in the 1970s-1980s, the defining of the discipline in the 1990s, and into the current era. It starts with a consideration of some widespread misconceptions about language that affect the field and some problematic ideologies in the law, which underly much of the discussion throughout the Element. The authors' report of forensic linguists' work is structured in terms of the linguistic, interactional and sociocultural contexts of the language data being analysed, whether in expert evidence, in research, or in practical applications of linguistics in a range of legal settings. The Element concludes by highlighting mutual engagement between forensic linguistic practitioners and both the judiciary and legal scholars, and outlines some of the key factors which support a critical forensic linguistics approach in much of the work in the authors' country.

This Element offers a comprehensive examination of forensic linguistics in China. It traces the origins of the field in the 1980s and 1990s, and highlights the progress made in the 2000s, with a focus on the work of influential scholars such as Pan Qingyun, Wang Jie, Du Jinbang, Liao Meizhen, Yuan Chuanyou, and Wang Zhenhua. It discusses the development of Discourse Information Theory, the Principle of Goal, Functional Forensic Discourse Analysis, and Legal Discourse as a Social Process. It also analyses studies on language evidence and explores legal translation. It discusses emerging research areas, including cyberbullying language research, internet court discourse analysis, authorship analysis, expert assistance systems, and speaker identification and evidence of forensic phonetics. This Element provides valuable insights into the growth and potential of forensic linguistics in China, serving as a comprehensive resource for scholars, researchers, and practitioners interested in the intersection of language and law.

Focusing on adversarial legal settings, this Element explores discursive practices in court proceedings which often involve unrepresented parties - private family proceedings and small claims cases. Such proceedings present the main caseload of county and family courts, but pose immense challenges when it comes to legal-lay communication. Drawing on court observations, alongside textual and interview data, the Element pursues three aims: (1) developing the methodological and theoretical framework for exploring discursive practices in legal settings; (2) establishing the link between legal-lay discourse and procedural justice; (3) presenting and contextualising linguistic phenomena as an inherent part of court research and practice. The Element illustrates how linguistic input can contribute to procedural changes and court reforms across different adversarial and non-adversarial legal settings. The exploration of discursive practices embedded in court processes and procedures consolidates and advances the existing court research conducted within the fields of socio-legal studies and forensic linguistics. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Exploring the interplay of love, money and threat in romance fraud, this Element reveals how language is used to persuade, manipulate, and threaten without causing alarm. It provides the first empirical examination of criminal interactions-in-action that exposes and tracks the grooming process and manipulation techniques from first contact with the fraudster, to the transition between romance and finance, and requests for money and intimate images, before morphing into explicit threats and acts of sextortion. Through the use of a range of interactional methodologies and real romance fraud messages, a new type of criminality in the form of 'romance fraud enabled sextortion' is revealed. The insights contained in this work have clear implications for future directions of academic exploration and practitioner efforts to protect the public. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.