Researching Forensic Linguistics Approaches and Applications

Researching Forensic Linguistics is an informative, hands-on guide to conducting research in forensic linguistics that can underpin legal and justice practices and address social justice problems involving language.

Georgina Heydon takes readers step by step through the research process using case studies that draw on different types of forensic and legal language data such as police interviews, anonymous reports of sexual assault, threatening letters and justice stakeholder interviews. Each chapter is framed by a language problem arising from either forensic linguistic case work or a key issue in language and the law. Up-to-date research methods in forensic linguistics are presented, including authorship attribution using online corpora, practice-based linguistic analysis and experimental techniques.

This is an ideal companion for linguists who want to apply their skills to a forensic setting, practitioners in the legal and justice fields seeking to understand how linguistic analysis can support their work, and any student undertaking research in forensic linguistics within English language, linguistics, applied linguistics and legal studies.

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I Language Crimes

Chapter 1 Authorship Attribution Case File: Murder in Mackay

Chapter 2 Legal Language Interpretation Case File: Solvency and Semantics

Part II Police procedures

Chapter 3 Police Interviewing: Questioning Strategies in UK and USA Models of Training

Chapter 4 Lie Detection and Linguistics

Chapter 5 Police Cautions and Comprehension

Part III Legal Process

Chapter 6 Anonymous Reporting of Sexual Assault: Assessing the Value of Online, Form-Based Reporting

Chapter 7 Legal Investigative Interviewing: Questioning Strategies in Civil and Administrative Investigations

Chapter 8 Access to Justice: Post-Colonial Language Attitudes

Chapter 9 Generating Data for Forensic Linguistic Research

Index

Georgina Heydon is an Associate Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Melbourne, Australia) and President of the International Association of Forensic Linguists. She has published extensively on the discourse and conversational structures of police interviews and other forms of crime reporting. Associate Professor Heydon regularly delivers interviewing training to police and judicial audiences around the world and provides expert evidence in court cases involving language issues.