Professor Jan Svartvik of Gothenburg
University was the first linguist to use the
term ‘forensic linguistics’ in a 1968 paper
on the police statements in the Timothy
John Evans case. However, TGH
Strehlow, an Australian born linguist and
anthropologist arguably carried out the
first forensic linguistic analsyis when he
reported on the supposed confession of
Rupert Max Stuart in 1959 (See Diana
Eades’ book, Language in Evidence,
UNSW Press, 1995).
Forensic authorship analysis:
the practice of assessing whether
the authorship of a text is
attributable to a particular
individual.
Books
News
Forensic Texts
© Forensic Linguistics Institute, 2000-2009.
Genuineness of text: Establishing
whether a given text is genuine or
a hoax.
Forensic interpretation of meaning:
the practice of tracing meanings of
language used in a criminal or civil
case, within a given culture and within
a specific context.
Definitions
R v Graham Speed
October 2008, Lincoln Magistrates’ Court
Charge of malicious communication (series of hate
mail letters and emails to neighbours, police, hospitals,
newspapers, government departments). Verdict: guilty.
R v Rehan Asghar
February 2007, Central Criminal Court, London UK,
Case No: T20050083
Charge of Murder
Verdict Guilty
Used mainly to assist officers in
intelligence-gathering, rather than as
forensic evidence in court. The same
applies to author profiling - not to be
confused with psychological profiling.
The first forensic linguists
TGH Strehlow
© Strehlow Research Centre
Examples
