Ever since I started studying language I’ve been fascinated by forensic linguistics! The fact that language can be used to help solve crimes is just amazing to me and very much Sherlock Holmes-like. 🔍
What is forensic linguistics?
As defined by Dr John Olsson of the Forensic Institute, it is ‘‘the interface between language, crime and law, where law includes law enforcement, judicial matters, legislation, disputes or proceedings in law, and even disputes which only potentially involve some infraction of the law or some necessity to seek a legal remedy.’’ So, basically, it is a discipline that analysis evidence based on language and that may be able to help solve a legal dispute or a crime. We use it to find out who’s guilty, but also to protect the innocent.
How cool is that?
Experts divide forensic linguistics divide into two areas:
Spoken language
It refers to the language that interpreters analyze when victims, suspects and witnesses are interviewed and also what and how they said something during a crime. The linguists who specialize in spoken language focus on the dialect, tone, pronunciation etc.
Written language
It refers to transcripts of official interviews with suspects, victims and witnesses, phone messages, letters, social media posts etc. The linguists who specialize in written language focus on punctuation, spelling, grammar, word choice etc.
Derek Bentley case
On November 2 1952 Derek Bentley, 19 at the time, and his 16-year-old friend Christopher Craig were trying to burgle a warehouse, neighbors spotted them and called the police. When police got there, one of them said to Craig, ”Hand over the gun!”, and Bentley yelled, ”Let him have it, Chris”. Craig killed a policeman shortly after, but it was Bentley who they convicted of murder and executed by hanging. There was a lot of controversy around what the phrase meant and it was one of the first cases in history where forensic linguistics was used. Did ”let him have it” mean ”go ahead and kill him” or ”give him the gun”?
Also, linguists came to the conclusion that the grammatical use of ”then” after the grammatical subject ( ”I then” instead of ”then I”) in the ”confession” recorded by Bentley wasn’t consistent with his idiolect (use of language) which he used in court testimony. In fact, it fit better the idiolect of the policemen, which proved that the ”confession” was edited by policemen. Thanks to this and other evidence that was part of a long campaign, Bentley was able to get a posthumous pardon.
The Unabomber Case
This case is famous because it was the only time in the US a search warrant was issued exclusively on language evidence (1995).
Nicknamed the ”Unabomber” (University and Airline Bomber), Ted Kaczynski killed people by mailing them bombs, which was a campaign that lasted for NINE years. He wrote a 35,000 – word manifesto and submitted it to the New York Times and the Washington Post. The manifesto explained his motives and his views on modern society.
After the essay was published, a lot of people called to suggest possible suspects. Ted’s brother David called the FBI and provided letters written by his brother which were written in the same manner as the manifesto.
What was interesting was that the linguists were able to identify both the age and where he was from, purely based on how Ted wrote the manifesto. He used words like ”chick” for women which was something ”you would hear from a ’50’s movie”. The writing format matched Chicago newspaper clips from he 50’s as well, which helped the linguists determine the bomber was born and raised in the Chicago area.
There is an amazing series on Netflix called Manhunt:Unabomber which explores how the FBI caught Kaczynski, and (what I enjoyed most, obviously) how forensic linguistics helped narrow down his profile.
