FORENSIC LINGUISTICS Lecture 10 László Katona 02 LANGUAGE AND THE LAW 03 FORENSIC ANALYSIS Here you could describe the topic of the section 01 INTRODUCTION 04 CONCLUSION objectives, definitions, terminology Conclusion and references TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION OBJECTIVES GET TO KNOW IMPORTANCE LEGAL SYSTEMS FIELDS OF FL APPLICATIONS KEY NOTIONS FORENSIC 1.related to scientific methods of solving crimes, examining the objects or substances that are involved in the crime: Forensic examination the deadman's stomach. revealed a large quantity of 2. using the methods of science to provide information about a crime: forensic medicine / chemistry / linguistics /CAMBRIDGE/ involving poison in FORENSIC: ethimology The noun forensic, meaning “an argumentative exercise” derives from the adjective forensic, whose earliest meaning in English is “belonging to, used in, or suitable to courts or to public discussion and debate.” The English word was derived from a Latin word forensic meaning “of the market place or form, public,” which in turn comes from the Latin word forum, meaning “market place, forum.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forensic ‘‘Few professions are as concerned with language as is the law.’’ —Tiersma, 1993 Forensic linguistics by Shuy - the use of linguistic knowledge in law cases where data may serve as evidence - applied linguistics (Shuy, 2006, p. 3) Forensic linguistics by Olsson The application of linguistic knowledge to a particular social setting, namely the legal forum (from which the word forensic is derived). the interface between language, crime and law … (Olsson, 2008, p. 3) AILA (International Association of Applied Linguistics): - language of law (documents, courts, prisons, police) study, provision and improvement of professional legal interpreting and translation alleviating linguistic disadvantages linguistic expertise to provide linguistic evidence legal drafting LANGUAGE AND THE LAW Law and language: • framework within which we manage our daily lives • represents societies value system (imposing rights and obligations, eg. infanticide) • linguistic institution, coded in language, concepts are only accessible through language Legal processes: court cases, police investigations, contracts /Gibbons 2003, p. 1/ Legal English modification of common speech both as regards vocabulary and as regards syntax (Russell, 1975 in Gibbons 2003, p. 36) VOCABULARY • • • • Archaic deictics: hereinafter, thereupon, aforesaid, etc. Doublets and triplets: due care and attention Specific vocabulary: murder / manslaughter / party (legal English ESP) Latin expressions: caveat, in camera GRAMMAR - articles: def/indef or zero? (general vs. general conceptual aspect) In the event of conflict …. - split infinitives are not preferred (to boldly go where no one has gone before) - nominalisation is not preferred (to make decision vs. decide) - prepositions are not preferred in sentence final position: He is one of the people I saw my daughter with. He is one of the people with whom I saw my daughter. - Proper use of relative ‘which’ and ‘that’ The evidence which was presented to the jury was accurate. DEF (THAT is preferred) The evidence, which was presented to the jury, was accurate. NON-DEF - Since (causal and temporal relationship) vs. because (causal relationship) He has been in home custody since Friday since he is a suspect. - Shall: only in contracts (obligation) – the parties shall be entitled /International Legal English – Cambridge University Press/ LAW SYSTEMS Roman Law Common Law Shari’ah Common Law also known as the Adversarial System or (misleadingly) as Anglo-American Law (Gibbons, 2003, p. 5) • Presumption of innocence until proven guilty prosecution: to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt • Adversarial proceedings ritualized battle between the prosecution and the defence, trying to prove conflicting cases (Gibbons, 2003, p.6) Jury: verdict Judge: sentence State attorney: prosecutor (prosecution) Defence lawyer: defence Literacy and Law (Gibbons, 2003, pp.15 - 36) Two major areas: coded and spoken language Coded: written, legislation and legal documents Spoken: interactive, dynamic (language of courtroom, police investigation, consultations) (Gibbons, 2003, p.15) CODIFIED more passive decontextualized more standardized particular in wording longer sentences accessible consistency and conservatism Once legal actions are committed to paper, they can be consulted, relevant elements can be reproduced. Detachment from the context results in high levels of autonomy. Tiersma, 1991: Three types of legal written texts Operative documents Expository documents Persuasive documents Operative documents: establish the legal framework itself legislation: acts, orders, statutes pleadings petitions judgements contracts wills Expository documents: objectively explaining the law. letter to a client office memorandum educational materials, books fairly formal standard English Persuasive documents: submissions to convince a court fairly formal standard English SPOKEN (oral) LEGAL SYSTEMS The distinctions between spoken and written legal communication / language are not absolute. less planned increased explicitness less passive shorter sentences speech can refer to the surrounding context between speakers while written is decontextualised usually not retained in visual circumstances THE INTERACTION OF WRITTEN AND SPOKEN LANGUAGE Legal transcription FORENSIC ANALYSIS Legal proceedings: Three stages • the investigative stage • the trial stage • the appeal stage Investigative stage Police request opinion on a text or an interview tape, to assist in developing interview and interrogation techniques Trial stage Common types of linguistic analysis: • questions of authorship (Who wrote the text?/ Who is the speaker in this recording?) • meaning and interpretation (Does this word mean X, Y or something else?) • threat analysis (Does this text contain a threat?) • text provenance and construction (Was the text dual-authored? Was it written rather than spoken?) Expert report to the instructing legal team (prosecution/defence – plaintiff/claimant in a civil case) Expert witness Appeal stage - New evidence has been made available - Existing evidence to be looked at in new ways FORENSIC ANALYSIS OF SOUND / VOICE RECORDINGS Forensic phoneticians: speaker identification Problem: there will always be differences between any two speech samples, even when they come from the same speaker Task: being able to tell whether the inevitable differences between samples are more likely to be within-speaker differences or between-speaker differences (Coulthard & Johnson, 2007, p. 148) AUDACITY Voiceprint Closely analogous to fingerprint identification, which uses the unique features found in people’s fingerprints, voiceprint identification uses the unique features found in their utterances. (Kersta, 1962 in Coulthard & Johnson, 2007, p. 150) Spectrograms A spectrogram is a visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies in a sound or other signal as they vary with time or some other variable FORENSIC ANALYSIS OF LEXIS sentence structure specifics Authorship attribution Idiolect: linguistic fingerprint A variety of language unique to an individual speaker, a sort of ‘linguistic fingerprint’ which distinguishes him or her from other speakers of the same dialect. (Pearce, M. The Routledge dictionary of English studies. 2007, p. 87) At the practical level in forensic linguistics, there is probably little need in most authorship investigations to think in terms of unique style. It is simply not necessary. Rather, when conducting an investigation, the emphasis should be upon the relative differences between the candidate authors and how we can classify their texts. Hence, insofar as it is necessary to think of style at all, it may be better to focus on distinctive rather than unique style. (relative) (Olsson, 2008, p. 31) (absolute) CONCLUSION SKILLS: translation drafting to avoid loopholes and ambiguity linguistic identity KNOWLEDGE: legal English (English for law) legal systems Availabilities: katonal@caesar.elte.hu Dr. Katona László (I7BG4N) on MS Teams References Coulthard, M., & Johnson, A. (2007). An introduction to forensic linguistics: Language in evidence. Abingdon: Routledge. Gibbons, J. (2007). Forensic linguistics: An introduction to language in the justice system. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Olsson, J. (2008). Forensic linguistics. London: Continuum. Shuy, R. W. (2006). Linguistics in the Courtroom. New York: Oxford University Press
