Linguistics for justice

Handbook of the…….

….Three-day workshop on
Forensic
Linguistics
Organized by
Dept. of Linguistics,
University of Kerala
in collaboration with
Police Training College
Gov. of Kerala
March 26-28, 2018

@ Police Training College

Thiruvananthapuram
Coordinators:
Dr. S. Prema& K. Sethuraman IPS
Content

1. Message by Dr John Olsson, United Kingdom

2. Introduction about the workshop by Dr. S. Prema
3. What is Forensic Linguistics by Dr John Olsson
4. Forensic Linguistics by Gerald R. McMenamin
5. List of Resource persons
6. Schedule of the workshop
7. Handouts of the classes
Dr. N. Vijayan
Dr. Sindhu Thulaseedharan
Prof. Achuthsankar S Nair
Lt. P. Sreekumar and etc
…..
8. Action Plan (Draft)
9. Syllabus (Draft)
10. Other resources
10.1. Research Tasks
10.2. Indian Evidence Act Section 45
10. 3. Possible Questions and Responses for Direct and Cross Examination
10. 4. Expert Testimony
10. 5. International Association of Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics Code
Practice
Message
Dr John Olsson
Forensic Linguistics Institute Llanfair Caereinion
SY21 0BL Powys Wales, United Kingdom,
http://www.thetext.co.uk/

Lecturer in Forensic Linguistics, School of Law,

Bangor University, Member of the Bar of England
and Wales, Expert before the International Criminal
Court.

26 March 2018
Forensic Linguistics, 2nd
Edition
To my dear Colleagues at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Kerala, Police
Training College, Government of Kerala and Attendees at the first ever forensic linguistics event
to be held in India

May I offer my sincerest congratulations on hosting the first Forensic Linguistics event ever
held in India. You will be sharing your insights and developing new frontiers in this scientific
discipline with a number of colleagues from other leading universities and from other
branches of science, including psychiatry and forensic science, as well as legal scholars and
colleagues from law enforcement. I really enjoy professional workshops, such as the one you
are partaking in for the next three days, as I have always found them to be an ideal
opportunity to learn, develop new ideas, exchange theories and benefit from networking.

It is an honour, as the world’s first full time professional forensic linguist and author of one of
the standard textbooks in the field, to be asked to contribute this message. Embarking on the
Forensic Linguistics journey of discovery has been, and continues to be, the great intellectual
and personal adventure of my life, and has been my main interest for the last quarter of a
century. In fact, being a forensic linguist seldom feels like work and at this stage of my career I
can scarcely believe that I have worked on over 500 civil and criminal cases, including over 100
homicides. Although there are times when one has had to work on tragic cases, I am sure that
you will nevertheless find this process a fascinating and enduring one, which will engage all
your attention and concentration. More importantly, you will be serving your community in a
unique and valuable way, by assisting courts to carry out the difficult work which they
undertake on behalf of all of us on a daily basis.

In taking this exciting path of study and practice, and having undertaken all the hard work in
organising and hosting this workshop, you are showing not only that India is at the forefront of
technology and education, but also that the University of Kerala is a leader in the discipline of
Linguistics, and this, I am sure, will be a moment of great pride and joy for the Department of
Linguistics at the University of Kerala. If at any time I can be of assistance to your department,
or in the development of Forensic Linguistics in India, please do not hesitate to call on me. I
would be delighted to support you in any way that I can.

May I take this opportunity to wish you all the best for an enjoyable and intellectually
stimulating conference and in the hope and belief of your future success and outstanding
contribution to this most engaging and exacting field of endeavour.

Dr John Olsson, Forensic Linguist, Law Lecturer at Bangor University,

and Barrister
BSc Psych., LLB Hons, MA, MPhil, PhD, BPTC
Introduction of the
Workshop on Forensic Linguistics

Dr. S. Prema, Asst. Professor

Dept. of Linguistics, University of Kerala

Distinguished dignitaries on and off the dais, respected participants and my

dear research scholars, students and all those who have assembled here
specially the media personals; good morning to all. Let us tell you with a little
bit of excitement, this workshop is historical. This is the first event on Forensic
Linguistics in India. No other event on FoLi is so far reported. I am thankful to
Dr. Sandhya madam and Sethurama Sir for accepting the proposal and
extending the collaboration from the side of Kerala Police towards this
beginning. Once again undoubtedly it proves that, the Kerala Police, the most
professional police force in our country is the pioneer in innovation and
reflexive in timely reform of investigation, prosecution and dynamic in all the
process of delivering justice by subscribing modern science.
1. Let me tell you in brief what is FoLi and what it is stand for. Use linguistics
to investigate the truth and deliver justice is the philosophy of Forensic
Linguistics (henceforth FoLi). Language can hide and reveals the truth.
Language is an evidence of truth. Therefore, the truth potential of language can
be used for criminal and civil investigation, justice and rule of law. FoLi is the
use of linguistic for crime investigation, court trial and other judicial
procedures. FoLi covers the language of law, and language in investigation and
language of trail and the issues of interpretation of judgment and law. It is a
well established area of applied linguistics in developed nations with
structured professional training programmes in many universities, institutes
and journals like Forensic Linguistics: The International Journal of Speech, Language
and the Law and International Association of Forensic Linguistics. FoLi has been
used for good number of cases in Europe and North America. However, FoLi is
not introduced in India in spite of its wide potential of our multilingual
situation. The already established Forensic infrastructure by the central and
state governments across the nation did not properly utilized FoLi as a new
scientific knowledge to assist the Criminal Justice Delivery System of the
country (Gazette of India 2010). This is the context a workshop on Forensic
Linguistics is proposed by the Dept. of Linguistics, University of Kerala to the
Police Training College, Gov of Kerala.

2. The linguistic diversity and the multilingual nature of our country provide
wide scope for FoLi in India. However, no effort has been so far reported to use
FoLi in India in any police investigation, court trail and the interpretation of
law. FoLi can modernize and sophisticate our investigation. For an instance,
accused statement is recorded by the investigating officer in the language of the
investigating officer, which is more or less near to the language of the accused.
This often under represents the events, attitudes and even the world view of the
accused. The accused very often being dictated the statements attributed to him
by the investigating officer as reported in the Timothy John Evans case in
England further explored by the linguistics Professor Jan Svartvik in 1968. In a
country like India with 74 % literacy, practice of linguistic technique to check
the accuracy of the documentation of the statements of accused, and witness
will enhance the Right to Fair Trial guaranteed by the Article 21 of the
constitution. The Section 277 in The Code of Criminal Procedure categorically
ensure the access of trail in the language of the accused. There, the role of FoLi
is primordial in India. Use of 22 scheduled languages in judiciary necessitates
the role of FoLi in the interpretation and accuracy of law. The scope of FoLi in
relation to investigation, trail and interpretation of law is exceptionally
important. The Perceptive Plan of Indian Forensic in 2010 by the Ministry of
Home Affairs, Gov. of India reported that only Chandigarh Laboratory of the
four of the Central Forensic Laboratories in India (Chandigarh, Hyderbad,
Kolakata and New Delhi) is minimally equipped with speaker identification
infrastructure. Needless, tell about the other potentials of FoLi in India.
However, the 2010 Gazette of Ministry of Home Affairs created a Directorate of
Forensic Science Service with wide scope of innovation (Government of India
2010). No effort had been reported so far to build the capacity among the
linguists to assist the investigation agencies or court related language of law
and FoLi. This is the first time in India; the scope of FoLi in India is taken for a
deliberation. Therefore, it is an innovation from the side of the Dept. of
Linguistics, University of Kerala and from the side of University we are
thankful to the Police Department to accept our request for collaboration.
3. This tree-day workshop is planned with three components: introducing the
FoLi among the participants to create awareness, sharing of experience to
identify the relevance of FoLi in India and developing an action plan to develop
FoLi in India.
First day (introducing FoLi): Presentation of the history, development,
the basic principles, and practice of FoLi by an expert of FoLi.
Second day (sharing of experience): Experience of language related
issues of investigation, trail, law and judgment can be shared by
instigators, lawyers, judges and investigative journalists.
Third day (developing an action plan): An action plan of the use of FoLi
in investigation, trail and interpretation of law and judgment can be
developed with following sub components:
1. Training materials of FoLi: Training materials for FoLi can be
developed to include the FoLi as a component of police training.
2. Development of a syllabus: Develop a post graduate syllabus of
FoLi as an external electives for the students of linguistics MA,
LLM.
3. Initiation of an institutional infrastructure: A practical action can
be developed to start a National Centre for Forensic Linguistics
(NCFL) in Kerala in collaboration with the Dept. of Linguistics,
University of Kerala, Central Institute of Indian Languages,
Kerala Police and Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Ministry of
Home Affairs, Hyderabad.
 4. Research agenda and FoLi database: Research agenda for FoLi in
India and the type of FoLi database necessarily to be developed to
be discussed and priority of both shall be decided.
4. Resource persons: Resource persons for the workshop are five streams. (1)
Linguists who are specialized in FoLi, (2) Investigating officers suggested by
the Police Department and (3) Experts from judiciary (4) Expert from
computational Linguistics, and (5) Experts from investigative journalism.
5. Outcome of the workshop: Following are the expected outcome of the
workshop:
Awareness creation: Create awareness among the investigation agencies,
linguists, government and judiciary about the potentials of FoLi in
relation to language and justice.
Training materials: Develop a template for the development of training
materials for FoLi in Malayalam.
Syllabus: Development of five unit structure for the development of an
elective syllabus of Forensic Linguistics for MA Linguistics and LLM
students.
Concept note: A document to start a National Centre for Forensic
Linguistics (NCFL) in Kerala.
Research Agenda and Database Priority: Necessarily to researched area
of FoLi and necessarily to be developed database of FoLi in India.
This is what we are envisaging by this workshop and what we are expecting
from it. Thank you
Supporting documents
Ministry of Home Affairs, Gov. of India. 2010. The Perceptive Plan of Indian
Forensic
http://mha.nic.in/sites/upload_files/mha/files/pdf/IFS(2010)-
FinalRpt.pdf
Government of India. 2010. Gazette of India, Part-Sec- 1 dated 18th December
2010.
What is Forensic Linguistics?

John Olsson
Adjunct Professor, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, Nebraska

Director, Forensic Linguistics Institute, www.thetext.co.uk

International consultant to law enforcement agencies and legal professionals

Keywords: Forensic linguistics, forensic phonetics, authorship, authorship attribution, author

identification, voice analysis, language, linguistic, linguistics, legal system.

Forensic Linguistics 9

1.1.1. What is forensic linguistics? 10

1.1.2. Legal Cases and Proceedings 10
1.1.3. The investigative stage 11
1.1.4. The trial stage 11
1.1.5. The appeal stage 11
1.1.6. Private disputes 12

1.2. History and development of Forensic Linguistics to the present 12

1.3. Forensic Phonetics 17

1.4. Summary of the development of Forensic Linguistics 17

1.5. Forensic Linguistics in the Justice System 18

1.1. Glossary 21

1.6. Annotated Bibliography and References 23

Summary: This article discusses the discipline of Forensic Linguistics. It begins by describing
what Forensic Linguistics is, namely the interface between linguistics (the science of language)
and the law, including law enforcement. It then outlines the history and development of
Forensic Linguistics from its beginnings in the 1950’s and 1960’s to the present day. A section
on Forensic Phonetics is included, and the article concludes with how Forensic Linguistics
works in the justice system and some of the difficulties that linguists and lawyers may have in
understanding each others’ viewpoints. The article concludes by suggesting that lawyers and
linguists work more closely with each other in the interests of justice, and that linguists seek to
widen their understanding of international law, of international human rights issues, and of
how law and language relate to each other across the globe. The article suggests that the
future of Forensic Linguistics will be bright if linguists work on these issues, and also on
acquiring skills, knowledge and qualifications in other disciplines in order to better prepare
them for working in and with courts.
1.1.1. What is forensic linguistics?

In ten words or less, what is Forensic Linguistics? Forensic Linguistics is the application of
linguistics to legal issues. That is a starting point, but like all answers it is imperfect and serves
only to stimulate more questions. For example, what does ‘the application of linguistics’
mean?

When Forensic Linguistics is referred to as an application of linguistics or, more concisely, an

applied linguistic science, the word applied is not necessarily being used in the same sense as,
for example, in the phrase applied statistics, where what is being applied is a theory
underpinning a particular science to the practice of that science. Forensic Linguistics is, rather,
the application of linguistic knowledge to a particular social setting, namely the legal forum
(from which the word forensic is derived). In its broadest sense we may say that Forensic
Linguistics 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. Given the centrality of the use of language to life in general and the law in particular,
it is perhaps somewhat surprising that Forensic Linguistics is a relative newcomer to the arena,
whereas other disciplines, such as fingerprint identification and shoeprint analysis, are much
older, having a well-established presence in judicial processes.

The application of linguistic methods to legal questions is only one sense in which Forensic
Linguistics is an application of a science, in that various linguistic theories may be applied to
the analysis of the language samples in an inquiry. Thus, the forensic linguist may quote
observations from research undertaken in fields as diverse as language and memory studies,
Conversation Analysis, Discourse Analysis, theory of grammar, Cognitive Linguistics, Speech Act
Theory, etc. The reason for this reliance on a broad spectrum of linguistic fields is
understandable: the data the linguist receives for analysis may require that something is said
about how the average person remembers language, how conversations are constructed, the
kinds of moves speakers or writers make in the course of a conversation or a written text, or
they may need to explain to a court some aspects of phrase or sentence structure.

In summary, we can say that the forensic linguist applies linguistic knowledge and techniques
to the language implicated in (i) legal cases or proceedings or (ii) private disputes between
parties which may at a later stage result in legal action of some kind being taken.

1.1.2. Legal Cases and Proceedings

In lay terms, for the purposes of this discussion, we can envisage a legal proceeding as
consisting potentially of three stages: the investigative stage, the trial stage and the appeal
stage. The investigative stage is also sometimes referred to as the intelligence stage. In this
part of the process it is important to gather information relating to the (alleged) crime. Not all
of the information which is gathered during investigations can be used in court, and so a
linguist who assists law enforcement officers during the intelligence stage may, in fact, find
that there is no requirement to give evidence at any subsequent trial. Similarly, a linguist
whose work is used at trial may not be required to assist the court at the appeal stage, if the
content of the appeal does not include linguistic questions. On the other hand if linguistic
evidence which was not available at the earlier stages comes to light while the appeal is being
prepared, then this may be the stage at which the linguist is called in to give an opinion.

1.1.3. The investigative stage

Typically, requests for linguistic analysis originate with law enforcement departments or, in
some countries, at the invitation of an investigating magistrate. Examples of linguistics
intelligence work have included analysis of ransom notes, letters purporting to provide
information on a case, mobile (cell) phone text messages, and specific threat letters. Linguists
have also been asked to analyse texts purporting to be suicide notes. Even though the police in
such cases may not suspect foul play, it could be important to attempt to establish whether
the questioned text can throw any light on the cause or circumstances of death.

Also at the investigative stage, the police may need to have an opinion on a text or an
interview tape, perhaps to assist in developing interview and interrogation strategies. It is
unlikely that anything a linguist says about veracity (using techniques similar to statement
analysis) would be acceptable evidence in court, which is why this kind of linguistic analysis is
usually confined to the investigative stage.

1.1.4. The trial stage

At the trial stage any one of a number of types of linguistic analysis may be called for, including
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 the
text contain a threat?), or text provenance and construction (Was the text dual-authored? Was
it written rather than spoken? etc). The inquiry could be of a civil or criminal nature, and this
will determine the level of ‘proof’ acceptable to the court in question. Usually, the forensic
linguist is instructed some time before a case gets to court. An expert report is submitted to
the instructing legal team — either for the prosecution or the defence (or the
plaintiff/claimant in a civil case). Even though the linguist prepares a report for one ‘side’ in a
case rather than the other, it is the court for whom the work is really done. The first duty of
the linguist — like that of any other forensic expert — is to the court, and not to the client on
whose behalf the analysis was originally carried out.

1.1.5. The appeal stage

If a defendant is convicted of a crime it is not uncommon, especially these days, for the
defence legal team to launch an appeal almost immediately. The structure and nature of
appeals varies from country to country, and in some countries appeals centre on the claim that
new evidence has been made available, or that existing evidence should be looked at in new
ways. It is becoming increasingly common for linguists to be called in to assist legal counsel at
the appeal stage, either because there may be some dispute about the wording, interpretation
or authorship of a statement or confession made to police, or because a new interpretation of
a forensic text (such as a suicide or ransom note) may have become apparent since the
conviction.

1.1.6. Private disputes

A not inconsiderable part of the forensic linguist’s work consists of private cases. By this is
meant that the work is commissioned by private individuals not involved in litigation at the
time of the commission. Such cases include identifying the author of anonymous hate mail, the
investigation of plagiarism for a school or university, or on behalf of a student accused of
plagiarism. It sometimes happens that the linguist’s report may have an influence on the
client’s decision to take matters further, either in a civil or a criminal court, but this is not
common. Usually, what happens is that the report is submitted and the client deals with the
matter internally — either within a university department, a business organisation, or, as may
also be the case, within a family.

1.2. History and development of Forensic Linguistics

to the present

Like almost all sciences it is not possible to say that Forensic Linguistics began at a specific
moment in time. Questions of authorship have exercised minds since the times of the ancient
Greek playwrights who not infrequently accused each other of plagiarism. Since at least the
eighteenth century scholars and amateurs alike have pondered over the authorship of some of
the world’s most famous texts, including sacred texts and the plays of Shakespeare.

There was some attempt in the nineteenth century to develop methods of authorship
attribution, mainly by British and American mathematicians and statisticians, notably Augustus
de Morgan, in 1851, TC Mendenhall (1887 and 1901) and in the earlier part of the twentieth
century by Udney Yule (1938 and 1944). These studies tended to concentrate on easily
measurable attributes like word length average, mean sentence length, and so on. The
application of these exercises, though, was hardly forensic and, in any case, had little to do
with linguistics. The actual phrase Forensic Linguistics was not used until 1968 when a
linguistics professor by the name of Jan Svartvik recorded its first mention in a now famous
analysis of statements given to police officers at Notting Hill Police Station in 1953. Timothy
John Evans was accused of the murder of his wife and baby at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill,
London, England, tried at the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales (The ‘Old Bailey’)
and hanged at Pentonville Prison. In the 1960’s the statements he had allegedly given to police
following his arrest, troubled several people, including a well-known journalist by the name of
Ludovic Kennedy, and Svartvik was commissioned to analyse the statements. Svartvik was one
of the earliest linguists involved in corpus studies, which is the systematic analysis of language
through the collection and study of large bodies (hence corpus, pl. corpora) of language, and
therefore he was able to approach the task of analysing the Evans’ statements in a methodical
manner. He quickly realised that the statements contained two styles and he set about
quantifying the differences, ultimately demonstrating that they were, in fact, an educated
written style and a marked spoken style. Along with other evidence collected in the course of
many different threads of investigation, the findings of Svartvik showed that Evans could not,
as had been claimed at his trial, have dictated the statements attributed to him.

For a long period in English law a set of rules had been established regarding the interrogation
of witnesses, in particular how statements were to be taken from them. These prescriptions
were known simply as Judges’ Rules which laid down that suspects were to dictate their
narrative to police officers, that police officers were not to interrupt suspects, and that
questions were not to be asked of the suspect at the statement stage except for minor
clarifications.

In practice this almost never happened. Typically, a police officer would ask a series of
questions, take down notes and then write or type the suspect’s statement, not in the words
of the suspect, but in a form and pattern which police custom had long dictated. Thus, police
statements contained phrases like ‘I then observed’, etc. This type of phrasing is not at all
typical of how people speak, but rather reflects a way of phrasing which has come to be known
as ‘police register’, itself an area of study within Forensic Linguistics.

The learned judges who formulated the rules for statement taking were not aware that
dictating a statement and transcribing it verbatim are difficult — perhaps even impossible —
tasks for the average speaker. Learning to dictate a narrative in a coherent, sequential,
articulate form is extremely difficult, but the person taking the statement has an even harder
task if the speaker is not skilled at pacing his/her delivery. Usually, people do not deliver their
statements in a coherent, ordered fashion: they speak too fast, they omit important details,
they speculate aloud, they backtrack, and so on. In effect, the Judges’ Rules were unworkable.
This was why police officers had their own way of taking and regrettably in some cases making
statements. It was simply impossible to follow the prescriptions of the Judges’ Rules.

This was why in the early days of Forensic Linguistics, at least in the United Kingdom, many
cases involved questioning the authenticity of police statements. The first example of expert
evidence being given from the witness box on this matter was at a murder trial at the Old
Bailey in 1989, where Peter French demonstrated the presence of police register in an
incriminating statement the prosecution claimed was entirely in the words of one of the
defendants.

Notable cases included appealing against the convictions of Derek Bentley (posthumously
pardoned) the Birmingham Six, The Guildford Four, the Bridgewater Three, and so on. These
last four cases all relied on the work of Britain’s most distinguished forensic linguist, Professor
Malcolm Coulthard of Birmingham University, a discourse analyst who had first taken an
interest in forensic questions following an inquiry from a colleague.

In the United States forensic work began slightly differently, but also concerned the rights of
individuals with regard to the interrogation process. In 1963 Ernesto Miranda was convicted of
armed robbery, but appealed on the grounds that he did not understand his right to remain
silent or to have an attorney present at the time of questioning. The Court of Appeal
overturned his conviction in 1966. In the US there were many Miranda cases, as they came to
be known. On the face of it the provision of Miranda is a simple one: police officers are obliged
to advise arrestees that they need not speak unless they wish to, that they are entitled to have
a lawyer present, and that anything they say can be used against them in court. However,
many issues arose, as discussed by Professor Roger Shuy: (i) a confession must be voluntary,
(ii) questioning should not be coercive, (iii) arrestees must be asked whether they understand
their rights, etc. With regard to the first point Shuy pointed out that an arrestee is hardly in a
position to agree voluntarily to being questioned. Effectively, the very nature of questioning
(as pointed out by the US Supreme Court) is coercive. Shuy (1997: 180) gives a good example
of the issue of coercion in an interrogation process. He describes how a suspect, having
declined to speak following the reading of his Miranda rights, was escorted in the back of a
police car to the police station by two officers, who then began to talk to each other about the
possibility of the murder weapon in the case (a shotgun) being accidentally stumbled upon by
children at a nearby school. The suspect immediately waived his rights and led officers to the
location of the weapon. The suspect, a man by the name of Innis was convicted of murder and
his lawyers appealed. The issue before the appeal court was whether the suspect had been
coerced into making the confession. This in turn caused lawyers and judges to consider the
meaning of the word interrogation. The Rhode Island Supreme Court concluded that
interrogation need not involve the asking of a question, and that in this case subtle coercion
had occurred and that this was “the functional equivalent of interrogation”. In the US Supreme
Court it was thus appreciated that “interrogation need not be in the form of a question…[and]
may involve the use of psychological ploys”. However, it was also realised that the
conversation between the officers was probably more in the nature of casual remarks than a
deliberate ploy. Shuy raised many important points about Miranda, and vigorously questioned
many of its assumptions of simplicity. He cites one case where a fifteen year old boy from
Houston, Texas was read his rights and ultimately signed a confession of murder. After
analysing tape-recorded interviews between the attorney and the child Shuy concluded that
though the boy often said he understood what he was being asked it was clear that his level of
comprehension was extremely low. His school confirmed that his comprehension ability was
no more than that of an eight year old. Thus in this and other cases Shuy explores the most
basic premises of Miranda, and — by extension — similar legal provisions. He does not take
even the ‘simplest’ word or concept for granted: what does ‘voluntarily’ mean, does
‘understand’ mean ‘I say I understand’ or ‘I actually understand’?

The work of Roger Shuy, and other US linguists, has encompassed many areas of civil and
criminal practice, but right from the beginning, the law itself was, as it were, subject to
questioning: what does this law mean? How do different people perform when asked if they
‘understand’ their rights? There is a very readable review of early Forensic Linguistics in the
United States, written by Judith Levi (Levi 1994). In her account Levi recalls a case in which she
was asked to analyse a ‘bad news about your social benefits’ letter written by the Illinois
Department of Public Aid to recipients of child benefit payments whom they had categorised
as ‘non-cooperative’. One of the tasks Levi undertook was to determine whether the
vocabulary selections made by the drafters of the letter had used technical and bureaucratic
language in place of ordinary, everyday language. Also included in the analysis were pragmatic
questions such as inferencing (Were inferences made by recipients of the letter justified by the
facts of the case? Did the writers of the letter “provide incomplete information which could
lead…to the making of misleading inferences”? Was the reader forced “to infer information
that should have been made explicit”?). The result of Levi’s work was a stunning success for
the recipients of the letters. Most of the recipients of the benefit were single mothers who had
suffered real hardship as a result of the State’s actions. The judge in the case awarded
$20,000,000 to the beneficiaries and ordered the State to rescind its classification of
‘non-cooperation’ until it had complied fully with the court’s consent order. Finally, the State
was ordered to re-write the letter in terms comprehensible to the beneficiaries (Levi 1994: 18).
An important point noted by Levi is the comment by a linguist acting in another case, namely
that the legal system is “linguistically naïve and vulnerable” (Levi 1994: 22). This point is
referred to in the next section.

Another early application of Forensic Linguistics in the United States related to the status of
trademarks as words or phrases in the language. An early case involved a dispute surrounding
an aspect of the brand name ‘McDonald’s’, owners of the multi-national fast food chain. In this
case the linguists were Genine Lentine and Roger Shuy (as reported in Levi 1994: 5). Quality
Inns International announced their intention of opening a chain of economy hotels to be called
‘McSleep’. ‘McDonald’s’ claimed that the attachment of the ‘Mc’ prefix to many unprotected
nouns, such as ‘Fries’ in ‘McFries’ ‘Nuggets’ in ‘McNuggets’, etc., barred Quality Inns from use
of the ‘Mc’ prefix. In this case the plaintiff was not just claiming implicit ownership of a name,
but over a morphological principle, namely the attachment of a particular prefix to any noun. It
appears that the claim was inherently one of a “formula for combination” (Levi 1994: 5) and it
was this formula for which protection was being invoked. ‘McDonald’s’ also claimed that they
had originated the process of attaching unprotected words to the ‘Mc’ prefix and had run
advertising campaigns which illustrated this. In their evidence Lentine and Shuy showed that
the ‘Mc’ prefix had had previous commercial applications, and that as ‘McDonald’s’ had not
objected to any of these they had no grounds for doing so in the present instance. Despite the
overwhelming evidence presented by Lentine and Shuy, judgement was for the plaintiff’s and
Quality International Inns were unable to launch their chain of motels under the ‘McSleep’
banner.

In Australia linguists began meeting in the 1980’s to talk about the application of linguistics
and sociolinguistics to legal issues. They were concerned with the rights of individuals in the
legal process, in particular difficulties faced by Aboriginal suspects when being questioned by
police. They quickly realised that even such phrases as ‘the same language’ are open to
question. An important instance of this is the dialect spoken by many Aboriginal people,
known colloquially as ‘Aboriginal English’, wrongly thought by many white Australians to be a
defective form of the English spoken by whites. It is in fact a dialect in its own right. Thus,
when being questioned by police, Aboriginal people bring their own understanding and use of
‘English’ to the process, something which is not always appreciated by speakers of the
dominant version of English, i.e. ‘white English’. More than this they bring their own
interactional, culturally-based, styles to the interview. An individual’s own interactional style, if
perceived to be at variance to that of the dominant culture, might compel responses to
questions in particular, non-confrontational ways which could lead to a false assumption on
the part of a questioner that the suspect was being evasive or, worse still, that an admission of
guilt was being made.

Other Australian research focused on how Aboriginal witnesses and defendants understood
the legal processes involved in land claim hearings and examined the impact of cross-cultural
differences between white settlers and Aboriginal people on the presentation and even
outcome of cases. In this context Gibbons (1994: 198) observes “ the…system…around
interrogation in the courtroom is alien to Aboriginal culture”. Gibbons is the author of two
major books on Forensic Linguistics, ‘Language and the Law’ (Longman, 1994) and ‘Forensic
Linguistics: An introduction to language in the justice system’ (Blackwell 2003). In these books
he not only summarises some of his own considerable experience as a Forensic Linguistics
expert in the court system, but also details much of the history of the development of Forensic
Linguistics.

Surprising as it may seem, the thread which connects many of these different forensic
activities is authorship. Essentially, in considering the question of whether an individual
dictated a statement, or whether a statement was in the words of its alleged speaker, analysts
were actually asking the question ‘Who was the author of the statement attributed to X?’ This
applied to the statements of Derek Bentley, Timothy Evans, the Birmingham Six, the
Bridgewater Three in the United Kingdom (and many others), as well as to Australian
Aboriginal defendants who claimed that police had ‘verballed’ them (i.e. altered what they had
said). In the case of US defendants whose Miranda rights were being investigated, there was a
slightly different kind of authorship nexus of questions which included: ‘Did the putative
authors of statements (such as the 15 year old Houston boy, or Mr Innis) make their
statements voluntarily, knowingly and in full possession of their rights?’ In other words, the
issue here relates to the conditions of authorship: a series of questions put by police, for which
answers are required, structures and even distorts a narrative of events; answers which
appear vague, ambiguous or reluctantly given may slant a narrative in a way which is
disadvantageous to the defendant and, as pertinently, to the apparent truth of the narrative.
In any case, the assymetric nature of the relationship between authority figures (the police)
and the defendant — who may be (i) illiterate (ii) a speaker of another language than the
language of interview (iii) young/disabled/ethnically disadvantaged, etc., can result in a text
(such as a record of interview, video or audio recording or written statement) which is
considerably at variance with what the suspect would have said had he/she been given the
opportunity to make a statement in a non-coercive or less threatening environment.

In a broad sense to be an author is to possess the language you are using. It is the use of
language to produce a text over which you as the author have control, and whose course you
are free to direct. Illiterate, young, disabled, language minority speakers are scarcely in control
of the authorship process when ‘giving’ a statement to powerful authority figures. We can
realistically challenge almost any text produced under conditions of duress even where the
duress may not have arisen through the intention of questioning police officers, court officials,
or any other authority figure within the justice system. If a suspect’s way of using language is
at some remove from that of the officials with whom the suspect is dealing then the potential
for distortion of the authorship process is clearly exacerbated, probably in proportion to the
differences of perspective, interactional styles and cultural norms between the institutional,
authority figures on the one hand and the suspect on the other. This is not to suggest any
malice or intrinsic lack of fairness or justice on the part of officials: they work within
institutional structures which are not always the most conducive for taking individual
circumstances into account.

In Germany, an early case involved an alleged slander by a tenant in an apartment complex of

a fellow tenant (Kniffka, 1981). The issue at stake was whether the word concubine was an
insult. Linguists advised that for some speakers the word might be amusing, for others a way
of addressing each other as a joke, while yet others might find it insulting under some
circumstances: it was not possible to say that a given word or phrase, on its own, was an insult,
or constituted verbal injury. Rather, the relationship between speaker and hearer, the context
of situation, the speaker’s education level — all needed to be taken into account. A word does
not have a single, universally-agreed, meaning within a speech community. Other issues which
emerged in the early days of Forensic Linguistics in Germany involved authorship attribution,
and the development of methodologies for doing so. An early case, reported by Kniffka,
concerned the theses of twin sisters whose previous academic performance was, according to
university authorities, at a much lower level than the theses they submitted for their final
examination. Kniffka argued that an authorship attribution in the case was not possible
because the language used was essentially the meta-language of the law and that it was not
easy to attribute such language to any given individual. He suggested the university authorities
subject the students to a written examination on their theses to test their knowledge, rather
than relying on subjective comparisons with their previous, known, work.
In the years since Forensic Linguistics began to establish itself as a discipline its scope has
grown considerably. From its beginnings as a means of questioning witness and defendant
statements, linguists have been called on to give evidence in many different types of case,
including authorship attribution in terrorist cases, product contamination cases and suspicious
deaths; the interpretation of meaning in legal and other documents, the analysis of mobile
(cell) phone text messages to establish a time of death. The list continues to grow. In the next
section, an important area within Forensic Linguistics will be considered: Forensic Phonetics,
the analysis of speech through auditory and acoustic means and its application in the legal and
criminal arena.

1.3. Forensic Phonetics

This article is about Forensic Linguistics rather than phonetics, but no account would be
complete without some mention of the science which deals with questions of speaker
identification, resolution of disputed content of recordings, the process of setting up voice
line-ups and ear line-ups and related topics. It has a more established presence in the legal
forum than Forensic Linguistics and its progress has been assisted by recent advances in
acoustic engineering. Phoneticians are able to analyse the distinctive speech characteristics of
a speaker relative to other candidate speakers in an inquiry much more easily than as little as
20 years ago. An important ethic within Forensic Phonetics is that no means exists which can
infallibly identify an unknown speaker in a legal case (such as a hoax or bomb threat caller to
an emergency service). Rather, like all branches of science Forensic Phonetics examines a set
of phenomena, in this case aspects of recorded speech, and offers opinions based on the
observations arising from the analysis. Among the earliest British forensic phoneticians were
John Baldwin, Stanley Ellis and Peter French, while in Germany Hermann Künzel was also
active. Künzel (with Eysholdt) considered many aspects of speech production with reference to
social situations, including the influence of alcohol on speech (Künzel and Eysholdt, 1992).
Kniffka’s (1990) collection contains accounts of some of the early forensic phonetic cases – see
especially Ellis’s and Baldwin’s contributions to that collection. The earliest recorded voice
identification testimony in the UK was in 1965, given by Stanley Ellis at Winchester
Magistrates’ Court.

1.4. Summary of the development of Forensic

Linguistics

The early years of Forensic Linguistics were characterised by two critical issues:

1. The need to discover the scope and effectiveness of Forensic Linguistics as a form of
expert testimony within the court system.
 2. The need to improve methodologies within Forensic Linguistics and to make these
transparent to non-linguists.

These issues are still ongoing. It is tempting to add a third point to the above: the need to
develop a theory of authorship as a socio-cognitive process, the relationship between
individual and community or social authorship and the nature of institutional authorship.
However, the scope of such a discussion is beyond the present article.

Like all sciences — even new ones — a discipline’s scientific methods, the need to educate
non-specialists and the constant testing of the limits of the science are always key issues. To
some extent these questions will be addressed in the following section.

1.5. Forensic Linguistics in the Justice System

In the previous section we saw the kinds of cases which forensic linguists routinely advise on,
but it is important to consider the mechanisms which underlie the use of Forensic Linguistics in
the world’s justice systems, and the institutional and other factors which relate to the further
development of Forensic Linguistics and its rôle as an adviser within the legal process.

In this section the following aspects of linguistics in the justice system will be considered: the
relationship between language and the law; the relationship between linguists and lawyers;
the conflicting goals of linguists and lawyers; meaning and clarity in judges’ directions to juries,
and the process of admitting linguists as expert witnesses.

The relationship between the two abstract notions, language on the one hand and the law on
the other is key to understanding how linguists can contribute to the forum of the law. It has
often been said that the law is the language that enshrines it. Not only do we need language to
frame the law, but we need language to understand the law. Law and language are
inseparable. For this reason it was perhaps only natural that, as linguistics developed
throughout the course of the twentieth century, linguists would take an increasing interest in
the relationship between the two, specifically: the language of the law, the use of language
within the law, and language in the court system. An early concern was the way in which the
law is framed: it was often seen as abstruse, impersonal, vague or ambiguous. Lawyers were
frequently viewed as wordy and hyper-precise and many linguists questioned the assumption
that lawyers were experts in the language. On occasion this led to tensions between lawyers
and linguists, with lawyers questioning the need for linguistic testimony in the court system
and occasionally seeking to exclude it. One judge remarked to a phonetician: “A linguist…is
someone who speaks a lot of languages, so what exactly are you doing here?” (Storey-White
1997: 281). In another case a linguist was told by the judge that ‘Surely there are only two
kinds of English — correct English and incorrect English?’ However, notwithstanding difficulties
many lawyers and linguists have learned to work with each other. It is now realised in some
legal circles that the language of the law is often archaic, and that lawyers — in an effort to
protect their clients — will frequently use expressions whose meanings are not always
transparent. However, it is not enough to say that lawyers and non-lawyers have different
ways of using language. They bring to encounters with each other different perspectives and
hence different discourse practices. Jackson made a close study of some aspects of language
and the law, one aspect of which was the rôle of narratives in the legal process (Jackson 1995).
In an earlier section of this article it was discussed how the police statements of Derek Bentley
and Timothy John Evans could not have been dictated, as claimed by police officers at the
time. Such police statements are the kinds of document Jackson studied, except that his
reference point was their use in the courtroom rather than their method of construction.
Citing the example of a murder trial, he considered, for example, the fact that the prosecution
is always able to present their narrative first in a courtroom, and that the defence has not only
to dislodge this narrative, but to create a convincing one to replace it. This, Jackson claimed,
inherently puts the defence at a disadvantage. As an example of the ordinary person
interfacing with the law Stratman and Dahl considered the language of temporary restraining
orders, and the difficulties ordinary speakers may have in comprehending them. They cite a
case where a man served with a temporary restraining order drove to his partner’s apartment
and slipped a letter under her door in order to elicit from her what the problems in their
relationship were and how they could address them. The court argued that he had violated the
restraining order’s injunction not to ‘molest, interfere with or menace’ his partner (Stratman
and Dahl 1996: 212). It was clear that the drafters of this particular law had a different
conception of the words molest, ‘interfere with’ and menace, since it is highly likely that most
people would not ordinarily consider placing a letter under someone’s door to be an act of
molestation or menace on its own. In court judges often refer to dictionaries for the meaning
of words which occur in legislation. However, this approach has been criticised. Generally
speaking, linguists view dictionaries as imprecise and limited. Meanings are probably best not
taken from a dictionary, but from experimentation and observation of how words are used. It
is generally agreed that words have a core meaning and a number of ‘fuzzy’ meanings (see
Goddard 1996: 254). While the core meaning is probably well understood by ‘most’ people, it
is as the word approaches the boundaries of its semantic envelope that difficulties arise. We
would probably all agree that dogs, cats and hamsters are pets. But what if a prospective
tenant in a block of apartments which allows pets were to bring a chicken or a crocodile and
claim such an animal as a pet? How does this kind of meaning difficulty equate with
interpretations of words in our previous example, such as molest and menace?

Thus, while the word pet encompasses a range of familiar domestic animals in the minds of
most of us which may or may not exclude such creatures as a chicken or a crocodile, words like
molest and menace have status as legal terminology. Though legal drafters are nowadays
obliged to use words in a meaning as close to ordinary language as possible, words like these
do present special problems, since they may have been used in legal language for hundreds of
years in a more or less fixed fashion, yet in ordinary language their meaning will probably have
changed considerably. Linguists have proposed a number of ways of dealing with this kind of
difficulty, including carrying out semantic surveys. However, this approach has not found
universal favour among linguists. For example, Solan notes: “People cannot explain what, for
instance, makes a snake a snake, a game, a vehicle, etc. Generic categorisation is a matter of
induction and intuition, which we are rarely able to describe” (cited in Goddard 1996: 259).
Goddard notes that it would be absurd for forensic linguists to promote themselves as experts
in the meaning of legal words, because this is really the province of judges. Using surveys, for
example, to determine the meaning of a word, could produce contradictory results. He
suggests that if linguists confine themselves to non-legal words, this may make more sense,
but in any case, he points out that semantics is still a relatively under-developed area of
linguistics and that there is still considerable disagreement among semanticians as to
methodology. Corpus linguistics has allowed the semantic survey approach to flourish because
in the technological age it is easy to collect many samples of a word in its ordinary usage.
However, an important competing process is that of semantic reduction (the ‘reductive
paraphrase’ — Goddard 1996: 269), which puts into practice Plato’s dictum that a definition
must use words which are simpler than the word which is being defined.

Another area of potential conflict with regard to word-meaning is in the directions given by
judges to juries. It has often been pointed out that such directions are full of legal terminology,
some of which may be present in the language as ordinary, everyday words. How are jurors, by
definition ‘ordinary citizens’, to understand whether a word is being used as a technical term
or as an ordinary word, let alone understand the legal terminology? Would all the jurors in a
case agree as to the meaning of a particular word? In recent years, in England and Wales at
least, judges have received recommendations to illustrate their jury directions with visual
presentations, to avoid giving directions about the law, and to keep reminding juries
throughout the jury direction phase what the issues in the case are. In the US in some
jurisdictions, judges are now being trained in how to talk to juries.

When it comes to linguists giving evidence in court, it is clear that lawyers and linguists have
different goals. The job of the lawyer is to convince or persuade the jury that the defendant is
guilty or innocent. The job of the linguist is to present an opinion and to explain that opinion.
The lawyer may interrupt the expert witness, use rhetoric, ‘spin’, guile, and may choose to
ignore anything the expert witness says. It is safe to say that it is not necessarily the case that
the lawyer is intent on discovering or promoting the ‘truth’. The linguist, on the other hand,
mindful — among other things — of Grice’s famous Cooperative Principle will attempt to be
informative, truthful and relevant. However, if the evidence is injurious to the party the lawyer
is representing — prosecution or defence — the linguist must expect various lawyerly
stratagems to suppress or distort that evidence. Lawyers can also play on the notion of
‘cooperative’. The linguist will usually attempt to be cooperative, but linguist and lawyer may
conflict about what cooperative means in practice in a given instance. This, again, will be due
to the differing discourse practices of lawyers and linguists. The lawyer will in all probability
bring a folk-semantic meaning to the idea of cooperation: ‘Why aren’t you cooperating with
the court? After all, it’s a simple question.’ The linguist on the other hand, mindful that the
lawyer is attempting to direct the discourse away from the evidence, struggles with the
lawyer’s notion of cooperative: to the linguist cooperation here means that lawyer and linguist
cooperate to uncover the truth.

Finally in this section, it is important to consider some aspects of the different methods of
admitting expert witnesses into courts, in particular linguists. In the US each state has its own
rules of evidence, some of which will be applicable only to district courts, and some to higher
courts. There are also Federal Rules of Evidence and these differ in kind from the evidence
rules of lower courts. The rules governing expert evidence are complex and not always
understood. They require that scientific evidence meets certain standards. Generally, the
‘Daubert’ standard is what is insisted upon. This requires, among other things, that witnesses
demonstrate the known error rate attached to their opinion. This of course implies that the
linguist must present quantifiable data. However, in linguistics it is not always possible to
present quantifiable data, and it may indeed be misleading to do so. Some courts have
interpreted ‘Daubert’ more flexibly than this, and it is an ongoing debate in legal and linguistic
circles, with some insisting that any authorship attribution analysis must be backed up by the
use of inferential statistics, which is the only way to demonstrate a known error rate in a
particular case. However, contrary to popular belief there is in reality no such thing as a
‘linguistic fingerprint’ and it is not always possible to quantify a view that a particular
individual is the author of a questioned text in a case.

In other countries it is sufficient that the method on which the expert bases an opinion should
be acceptable to the scientific community, and that the expert should be qualified to give it.
Both Canada and Sri Lanka, for example, follow this method of accrediting a witness and
accepting an opinion.

In the near and medium term future it is likely that the question of how linguists verify their
opinions will be given a great deal of attention. Some have argued that linguists have inhabited
the ivory tower of academia for too long. For this reason moving into the rough and tumble
arena of the law, where they are required with great rigour to justify what they do, say and
believe, has been a culture shock for many. Understanding of this culture is critical: some
would argue that it is not productive to describe the law as alien or hostile to the linguistic
viewpoint. The law is blind: it has no favourites and nor should it. It is surely necessary for
linguists to accept this culture and adapt to it, while remaining true to their discipline.

In this section an attempt was made to illustrate some of the issues linguists face when
interacting with the legal system. It is now seen as imperative among linguists that both they
and legal professionals work towards a better understanding of each other’s perspective. If
linguists claim that lawyers are ignorant of linguistics, then it is up to linguists to ensure that
this situation does not continue. Lawyers can equally claim that linguists are ignorant of the
law and it is certainly up to linguists to ensure that this gap in their knowledge is addressed as
a matter of some priority.

It will also be important for linguists, in this age of international courts, to understand the
discourse practices of international law, and to familiarise themselves with the customs and
mores of other countries’ legal systems, as Forensic Linguistics moves into a new millennium
and an uncertain terrain in a world of organised crime, international terrorism and human
rights abuses in many countries. It is likely in the future that increasing numbers of those
seeking to enter the field of Forensic Linguistics will have additional qualifications in areas such
as the law and mathematics and statistics, and to gain greater understanding of scientific
techniques, methods and presentation. Many universities are already equipping their
undergraduates with some of this information. With a broad but accurate insight into the law
and an appreciation of how science is ‘done’ in other fields than their own, forensic linguists of
the future will have greater means at their disposal than the founding fathers and mothers of
the discipline and the future for Forensic Linguistics will be bright.

Glossary

Authorship attribution: the activity of attempting to assign a particular text to one or more
candidate author (see ‘authorship’).

Authorship: the process whereby language is produced by an individual writer or speaker, or

by a group of writers or speakers.

Candidate author: in an authorship inquiry the candidates are those individuals who are
suspected of being the author of a questioned text. Some inquiries have only one candidate
author.

Inflection: the morphological attachment of a prefix, suffix or word ending, e.g. ‘-ed’ to
indicate past tense in English, ‘pre-‘ as a prefix to a word. In general, if a word cannot take an
inflection it is non-lexical (see ‘lexical word’).
IPA. The International Phonetic Association. A group of leading phoneticians who concern
themselves with the sound systems of all of the world's known languages and their
transcription. The IPA Chart, which records most of the phones in the world's known
languages, is an essential reference for anyone interested in or working in phonetics. The IPA
Chart can be used for transcribing any language.

Lexical word: a lexical word is one which is said to have meaning, e.g. ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘table’, as
opposed to words like ‘the’, ‘of’, etc., which essentially carry the grammar of the language, see
non-lexical words. Lexical words are also called ‘content words’. See also ‘inflection’.

Linguist: one who studies linguistics. However, in some courts a linguist is an interpreter or
translator.

Linguistics: the systematic, scientific study of language.

Morpheme: the minimum grammatical unit of a language, e.g. in the word dog there are two
morphemes, dog and -s. Neither of these morphemes can be reduced further. Morphology is
the study of the system of morphemes in a language. It is now largely the domain of those
studying syntax (see ‘syntax’ below).

Non-lexical word: a word which is said not to have meaning or content, such as in, for,
therefore, etc. There are approximately 250 common non-lexical words in English.

Phoneme: the minimum contrastive sound unit of a language, e.g. /b/, /k/, etc. English has
about 44 phonemes depending on the language variety under discussion.

Phonetics: the study of the sounds of a language, usually written in phonetic symbols (see IPA).

Phonology: the study of the sound system of a language.

Plagiarism: the activity of using other people’s written or spoken language to originate a text,
particularly where the plagiarist intends to pass the work off as his/her own.

Plagiarist: one who plagiarises (see plagiarism).

Pragmatics: the study of the application of speaker-addressee context, as well as external

contextual factors, to communication, closely related to ‘semantics’ (see below).

Questioned text: a text whose authorship is unknown, or whose authenticity is doubted.

Semantics: the study of meaning, either theoretically or empirically. Semantics deals with truth
conditions, sense and reference and the (broadly) metaphoric relations between words (such
as metonymy, meronymy, etc).

Syntax: the study of the grammar of the sentence. In traditional syntax, as proposed by Noam
Chomsky and his followers, the focus of the study (and much of linguistics at the time) was to
understand how native speakers of a language acquired competence in the language, by which
was meant the ability to generate and understand an infinite number of sentences.

Text Measures: attributes of a text which can be measured, e.g. text length (the number of
words in a text), lexical density, the number of lexical words divided by the total number of
words, etc.
Annotated Bibliography and References
Baldwin J.R. and P. French. 1990. Forensic Phonetics. Pinter Publishers, London. [The authors, practising
phoneticians, describe the rôle of phonetics in criminal inquiries and as evidence in the courtroom. They
illustrate voice identification with a number of cases. A very readable book, though regrettably now out
of date.]

Cornu G 1990. Linguistique Juridique. Montchrestien, Paris. [A good introduction to Forensic Linguistics
in French. In this book the emphasis is on the language of the law.]

Cotterill J: 2003. Language and Power in Court: A Linguistic Analysis of the O.J. Simpson Trial. Palgrave
Macmillan. [This is a detailed account of the trial of OJ Simpson from a linguistic point of view. The
author, a professor of linguistics at Cardiff University in Wales, and a practising forensic linguist of
international reputation, discusses the trial from many linguistic perspectives. The chapter on narrative
discourse in the courtroom is particularly interesting. Cotterill considers research from closely related
disciplines including the law itself, sociology, criminology, anthropology and psychology.]

Coulthard M. 1994. On the use of corpora in the analysis of forensic texts. The International Journal of
Speech Language and the Law. 1 (1), 27-43. [In this article Professor Malcolm Coulthard, discusses his
approach to the Derek Bentley statement (see ‘History and development of Forensic Linguistics to the
present’, this article). He illustrates the use of a corpus and how to compile a concordance to illustrate
systematicity in what is supposed to be a spontaneously dictated statement. See also: Coulthard M.
1992. Advances in Spoken Discourse Analysis. Routledge, Chapter 12: ‘Forensic Discourse Analysis’ (pp
242-254).]

Coulthard M and J Cotterill. 2006. Introducing Forensic Linguistics. Routledge. [In this book the authors
provide an overview of the interface of language and the law, illustrated with authentic data and
contemporary case studies. Topics include collection of evidence, discourse, courtroom interaction,
legal language, comprehension and Forensic Phonetics.]

Eades D 1994. Forensic linguistics in Australia: an overview. International Journal of Speech Language
and the Law 1 (2) 113-132. [As the title says, the author — a leading forensic linguist practising mainly in
Australia — gives a broad picture of Forensic Linguistics in Australia, its beginnings, and details a number
of important cases. A key issue in Australia has been the involvement of linguists in analysis of police
statements by speakers of Aboriginal English.]

Gibbons J (1996). Distortions of the police interview revealed by videotape. International Journal of
Speech Language and the Law 3 (2) 289-298. [In this journal article John Gibbons shows how the
sequence and content of questions in a police interview structures that interview, and in some cases
leading to a distorted representation of an incident and the interviewee’s involvement. See also Gibbons
J 1994 Language and the Law, Harlow, Longman. This is Gibbons’ classic book on Forensic Linguistics.]

Goddard C. 1996. Can linguists help judges know what they mean? Linguistic semantics in the court-
room. International Journal of Speech Language and the Law 3 (2) 250-272. [This journal article, by a
semantician, writer and theorist, examines how judges can interpret statutory legal terms in ways that
ordinary people can understand what they mean. The author argues against linguists being admitted to
courts as experts on the interpretation of the law because lexical semantics is as yet not sufficiently
developed.]

Grice HP 1975. Logic and Conversation. In Cole, P & Morgan J (eds.) Syntax and Semantics Vol 3, 41-58.
[This is the classic article by Grice on logic in conversation: in it he introduces his famous Conversational
Maxims. What is not perhaps always realised is that Grice is essentially a philosopher and that his
maxims are a philosophical attempt at the logical structure of meaning. As such they rely on
introspection rather than actual data. Essential knowledge for anyone interested in speech act theory.]

Hale S. 1997. Clash of world perspectives: the discursive practices of the law, witness and interpreter.
International Journal of Speech Language and the Law 4 (2) 197-209. [The writer is a practising
interpreter, writer and teacher. In this journal article she discusses the different viewpoints that lay
people and lawyers bring to a meeting, based largely on the fact that lawyers, especially in court, do not
have the same discourse practices as the rest of us. The problem is exacerbated in the case of a
non-native speaker witness.]

Jackson BS (1995) Making Sense in Law. Liverpool. Deborah Charles Publications. [In this book, Bernard
Jackson — a university teacher of law — shows how a core linguistic ‘event’ in the law is the narrative.
He analyses the presentation of narratives in court and how the structure and sequence of narratives —
prosecution and defence — influences the legal process.]

Kniffka H. 1981, in G PeuserSt. Winter (eds), Angewandte Sprachwißenschaft: Grundfragen – Berieche –

Methoden, pp 584-633. Der Linguist als Gutachter Bei Gericht. Überlegungen und Materialien zu einer
‘Angewandte Soziolinguistik’. [The author, Hannes Kniffka, is a well known writer, teacher and
practitioner in Forensic Linguistics in Germany. In this paper he reviews the application of linguistics to
the court arena and the rôle of the linguist as expert. A must read for those interested in the practice of
Forensic Linguistics in Germany.]

Kniffka H. 1990 (Ed). Texte zu Theorie und Praxis forensischer Linguistik. Tuebingen. Niemeyer. [See
previous citation. However, this paper focuses on theoretical aspects of Forensic Linguistics.]

Kniffka H. 1994. Understanding misunderstandings in court: “La Serva Padrona” phenomena and other
mis-communications in forensic interaction. Expert Evidence: The International Digest of Human
Behaviour Science and Law 2 (1), 164-175. [In this paper the author (see previous two citations)
discusses a very interesting academic authorship case involving two sisters, law students, who were
accused of plagiarising their dissertations.]

Künzel H und Ulrich Eysholdt, 1992. Der Einfluß von Alkohol auf Sprache und Stimme. Heidelberg.
Kriminaliste Verlag. [In this paper Hermann Künzel and Ulrich Eysholdt, two well known phoneticians,
teachers and writers practising in Germany, give detailed information about the effects of alcohol on
speech output and voice characteristics.]

Kuenzel, H.J. Sprechererkennung: Grundzuege forensicher Sprachverarbeitung. Heidelberg:

Kriminalistik Verlag, 1987. [Introductory text on Forensic Phonetics in German.]

Hollien, H. The Acoustics of Crime. New York: Plenum, 1990. [An introductory text on Forensic
Phonetics.]

Lentine G and R Shuy 1990. Mc-. Meaning in the marketplace. American Speech, 65(4), 349-366. [Genine
Lentine and Roger Shuy were involved in the classic trade mark dispute between a famous hotel chain
and a famous fast food chain. In their paper they discuss how they researched the uses of ‘Mc’, and how
they attempted to persuade the court that, by its very nature, ‘Mc’ could not be the property of a
commercial concern such as ‘Macdonald’s’.]

Levi J. Language as evidence: the linguist as expert witness in North American Courts. International
Journal of Speech Language and the Law 1 (1), 1 – 26. [In this article Professor Judith Levi summarises
the kinds of case in which linguistics has played a rôle in US courts. She discusses such cases in which
linguistic areas as diverse as phonology, morphology and dialectology have formed part of the
argumentation, in social contexts such as historical dialectology and trademark law. In one case a group
of recipients of Family Aid brought a class action against the Illinois Department of Public Aid based on
comprehensibility issues in a notice sent to aid recipients. Levi’s article also discusses the application of
other areas of linguistics to criminal and civil work including semantics, syntax and pragmatics (see
Glossary below).]

McMenamin, G. (2002). Forensic Linguistics: advances in forensic stylistics. Boca Raton: CRC Press LLC.
[In this book Gerald McMenamin offers a readable and down-to-earth explanation of the work of the
forensic linguist for the specialist and non-specialist alike. He concerns himself, and his reader, with such
basic questions as ‘What is linguistics?’, ‘What is language?’. ‘How is language acquired?’. McMenamin
goes on to discuss a wide variety of authorship markers and the measurement of probability in
authorship attribution exercises.]

Nolan, F.J. The Phonetic Bases of Speaker Recognition. Cambridge: CUP, 1983. [A classic but highly
readable text on Forensic Phonetics.]

Olsson John 2004. Forensic Linguistics: An introduction to Language, Crime and the Law. London,
Continuum. [In this book John Olsson (the author of this article) — a practising forensic linguist in the
United Kingdom, writer and teacher, and Adjunct Professor at Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln,
Nebraska, outlines the main areas of Forensic Linguistics, especially authorship. The book — a practical
guide — tends to focus on linguistics in criminal investigations and in the courtroom, with less emphasis
on the language of the law. There is also a chapter on phonetics.]

Rose, P. Forensic Speaker Identification. London: Taylor and Francis, 2002. [A recent text on Forensic
Phonetics.]

Shuy R 1997. Ten unanswered questions about Miranda. International Journal of Speech Language and
the Law 4 (2) 175-196 (see Lentine and Shuy, above). [The author, Professor Roger Shuy, shows how the
language of Miranda is far from simple and can be interpreted in a number of different ways. He
questions the assumption that it is sufficient to read an individual his/her rights for that person to
understand what rights he/she actually has. Professor Shuy has provided linguistic input in a wide
variety of cases, both criminal and civil. Two particularly famous cases were those relating to (i) John de
Lorean and (ii) ‘McDonald’s’ Corporation vs. Quality Inns International.]

Solan LM 1993. The Language of Judges. Chicago. University of Chicago Press. [Lawrence Solan is
Professor of Law at the prestigious Brooklyn Law School. He distils his experiences of a lifetime of
dealing with and listening to judges. This is a key text in understanding the interface between linguistic
theory and the law.]

Stratman JF and P Dahl. 1996. Readers’ comprehension of temporary restraining orders in domestic
violence cases: a missing link in abuse prevention? International Journal of Speech Language and the
Law 3 (2) 211-231. [In this journal article the authors — researchers, writers and teachers on legal issues
and their comprehensibility to lay people — show how an apparently straightforward legal instrument,
the temporary restraining order, is open to misinterpretation.]

Walsh M 1994 (217-233) Interactional Styles in the Courtroom: an example from Northern Australia, in
Gibbons J (ed) Language and the Law, London, Longman. [In this article in John Gibbons’ classic work on
Language and the Law (see reference above), Michael Walsh, a linguistic fieldworker, teacher and writer
in Australia, shows how the different interactional styles of lawyers and Aboriginal people, works to the
disadvantage of Aboriginals.]
List of Resource Persons

1. Prof. N. K. Jayakumar, Renowned Jurisprudent and the former Vice

Chancellor of National University of Advanced Legal Studies, Legal
advisor of Chief Minister of Kerala
2. Dr. Alexander Jacob IPS (Rtd DGP).
3. Sri. Jacob Punnoose IPS, DGP/SPC (Rtd)
4. Dr. Ravisankar S Nair, Associate Professor, Dept. of Linguistics,
Central University of Kerala.
5. Dr. Sindhu Thulaseedharan, Assistant Professor, Department of Law,
University of Kerala.
6. Dr. L Ramamoorthy, Deputy Director, Central Institute of Indian
Languages, Mysuru.
7. Lt. P. Sreekumar, Asst. Professor, Dept of Dravidian & Computational
Linguistics, Dravidian University.
8. Prof. Achuthsankar S Nair. HoD, Dept. of Computational Biology &
Bioinformatics, University of Kerala.
9. Dr. L Sobha, Senior Scientist, Computational Linguistics Research
Group, AU-KBC Research Centre, Anna University.
10. Dr. Vijayan, Asst. Professor, Dept. of Linguistics, Bharathiyar
University.
11. Mr. Shijith, Technical Officer, Dept. of Linguistics, Uty of Kerala.
Sri. Gopalkrishnan N
12. Dr. Jayesh K. Joseph, Criminologist, Kerala Police Academy.
Ramavarmapuram, Thrissur
13. Dr. Pradeep Saji K., Joint Director, HOD, Forensic Science, KEPA
14. Shri. K. N. Jinarajan
15. Dr. Sreekumar, Director, FSL
16. Dr. Pradeep Saji K., Joint Director, HOD, Forensic Science,
KEPA.
17. Dr.Vijaya kumar
18. Sri. Ajith, SP
19. Sri. Reji Jacob, SP
20. Dr. Naseer, Medical College, TVM
21. Mr. K. Sethuraman IPS, The Principal, Police Training
College.
22. Dr. S. Prema, Asst. Professor, Dept. of Linguistics, University
of Kerala
and Research Scholars and Students.
Programme
26 March 2018, 10.00 -12-30am Inauguration

Mr. Sethu Raman IPS, Principal & Coordinator of the Workshop, Police
Training College: Welcome
Dr. S. Kunjamma, Head, Dept of Linguistics, Uty of Kerala: Presidential
Address
Dr. S. Prema, Asst. Professor & Coordinator of the Workshop, Dept. of
Linguistics, Uty of Kerala: Introducing the workshop
Sri. Loknath Behera IPS, State Police Chief, Kerala: Inaugural Lecture
Prof. Jayachandran R, Registrar, University of Kerala: Chief Guest
Prof. L. Ramamoorthy, Deputy Director, CIIL, Mysore: Felicitation
Sri. Gopakumar, Member Syndicate, University of Kerala: Felicitation
Dr. B Sandhya IPS, ADGP (Training): Keynote address
Sri. Anil Sreenivas, Vice Principal, PTC: Vote of Thanks

Lunch

26 March 2018, 01.30 -02.30pm Opening Lecture Session

1

Chair: Dr. Alexander Jacob IPS, Rtd DGP

Prof. N. K. Jayakumar
Renowned Jurisprudent and the former Vice Chancellor of National
University of Advanced Legal Studies, Legal advisor of Chief Minister of
Kerala

The role and relevance of Forensic Linguistics in the Administration

of Justice
26 March 2018, 02.30 -05.30pm
Session 2
Introducing Forensic Linguistics
Objective: Introducing the Forensic Linguistics in Indian situation

Chair: Chair: Dr. Alexander Jacob IPS (Rtd DGP)

Dr. Ravisankar S Nair, Associate Professor, Dept. of Linguistics, Central
University of Kerala: What is Forensic Linguistics: Methods and Applications

Tea Break
Dr. Sindhu Thulaseedharan, Assistant Professor, Department of Law,
University of Kerala: The limits in the use of Forensic Science Testimony in
the Legal Process.

Dr. L Ramamoorthy, Deputy Director, Central Institute of Indian Languages:

Resource for Forensic Linguistics in India.

Lt. P. Sreekumar, Asst. Professor, Dept of Dravidian & Computational

Linguistics, Dravidian University: Science & Justice: Scope of Forensic
Linguistics in India.

26 March, 2018, 06.30 -07-30pm

Screening films deals with Forensic Linguistics

27 March 2018, 10.00 -12.30am Session

3
Case Studies & Technologies
Objective: Introduce the scope of Forensic Linguistics by successful case
studies and introduce computational tools of forensic linguistics

Chair: Dr. S Ravisankar S Nair

Prof. Achuthsankar S Nair HoD, Dept. of Computational Biology &

Bioinformatics, University of Kerala: Word Prints: A case Study of
Computational Stylometry.

Dr. L Sobha, Senior Scientist, Computational Linguistics Research Group,

AU-KBC Research Centre, Anna University: Natural Language
Processing and Forensic Linguistics.
Tea Break
Dr. Vijayan, Asst. Professor, Dept. of Linguistics, Bharathiyar University:
Confessions, Statements and Evidences in Forensic Linguistics.

Mr. Shijith, Technical Officer, Dept. of Linguistics, Uty of Kerala:

Phonetic techniques of speaker identification.

Lunch

27, March 2018, 01.30 -05.30pm

Session 5
Sharing investigation experiences by the investigation officers

Objective: By sharing the linguistic aspects of earlier investigations the

potential use of Forensic Linguistics in Indian situation can be explored.

Chair: Sri. Rishi Raj Singh IPS

Sri. Gopalkrishnan N: Investigation Skills

Dr. Jayesh K. Joseph: Truth Telling and Criminal behavior

Tea Break

Dr. Pradeep Saji K., Joint Director, HOD, Forensic Science, KEPA: Future of
Polygraph, Brain mapping and Narco Analysis.

Shri. K. N. Jinarajan: Interrogation Techniques

Day2, 26 Tuesday 2018, Monday , 06.30 -07-30pm

Screening films deals with Forensic Linguistics

Day 3, 28 March 2018, Monday , 10.00 - 12.30am

Session 6
Presentation of action plan & Syllabus
Objective: A proposal of how to develop FoLi in India through the
amendment of evidence act, resource development, training of human
resource in FoLi and research can be presented and discussed in detail.
Chair: Sri. Jacob PunnooseIPS, DGP/SPC (Rtd)

Sri. Naseer (Medical College): Participants from Forensic Psychiatry,

Medical College.

Sri. Ajith, SP and Sri. Reji Jacob, SP: Participants from Police
Department.

Tea Break

Dr. Ravisankar S Nair, Dr. L. Sobha , Dr.L.Ramamoorthy,

Lt.P.Sreekumar, Dr.Vijaya Kumar: Participants from Linguistics

Dr. Sreekumar, FSL Director and Dr. Pradeep Saji K., Joint Director,
HOD, Forensic Science, KEPA: Participants from Forensic Science.

Lunch

28 March 2018, 02.00 - 05.30 am

Valedictory Session

Dr. S Prema: Welcome

Shri. K Sethu Raman IPS: Presentation of Report

Dr. B Sandhya IPS: Presidential Address

Mrs. Sruthy.T.S, Mrs. Reena Raveendran and etc: Remarks from

Participants

Dr. NC Asthana IPS: Valedictory Address

Prof. C.R. Prasad, Director, school of Indian languages , University of

Kerala: Felicitation

Sri. Anil Sreenivas: Vote of thanks

National Anthem
 CONFESSIONS, STATEMENTS AND
EVIDENCES IN FORENSIC
LINGUISTICS

Dr. N.Vijayan
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Linguistics
Bharathiar University, Coimbatore

Forensic Linguistics is a branch of applied linguistics, which uses

language as evidence. It is the application of linguistic knowledge, methods
and insights to the forensic context of law, language, crime investigation,
trial, and judicial procedure.
Just like the Forensic science got recognition in the area of legal
processes and helps in solving problems related to blood, weapon, clinical
testing of liquids and related things, now the language used by the accused,
witnesses, victims, etc., gets impetus in giving evidences for legal
processes. Forensic Linguistic study, through its analysis of the data
collected for the assessment, brings out the information as to whether the
written or spoken statements, conversations, vocabulary used etc., can be
useful for finding out the actual involvement of a person in the crime or
not. (Coulthard and Johnson, 2007).Forensic Linguistics can help the
Police Department as well as the Judicial to find out the culprits. With the
increase in new technology used by culprits, suspects, forensic linguistics
can contribute to the field to a greater extent. The confessions and
statements given in the Police station or Court may lead to change in the
course of trial. Prompted confessions and dictated statements by
prosecution witnesses, defense witnesses, the accused, etc., have turned the
proceedings in the Court of law. There is an urgent need in our multilingual
country to give more importance and priority to Forensic Linguistics since
crime rates are shooting up. The role of language to solve the cases quickly
should be given precedence, for which Forensic Linguistics can serve the
purpose (Vijayan, 2015).
Take for example, the confession given by the accused.However,the term
confession is nowhere defined in the Evidence Act of India. All the
provisions relating to confessions occur under the heading of admission,
which is applicable to confession also. Section 17 of Indian Evidence
Actdefines ‘admission’ or here ‘confession’ as “a statement oral or
documentary, which suggests any inference to any fact in issue or relevant
fact. A confession can be defined as ‘an admission made at any time by a
person charged with the crime stating or suggesting an inference that he
committed the crime’. But in our country, as per the Article 20(3) of
Constitution of India, ‘no person accused of any offence shall be compelled
to be a witness against himself.’
The value of confessions, however, is discussed, and law generally
requests cross-checking them with objective facts and other forms of
evidence, namely, exhibits, testimonies from witnesses, etc., in order to
evaluate their value(O'Hara & O'Hara, 1980).On one hand, confessions
obtained under torture have often been considered as not objective enough,
since the use of such means may lead to the suspect in confessing anything.
However, when the confession reveals secret only known to the perpetrator
(such as the location of the body or the weapon used), the confession is
reliable and these are normally used by the police to find out the exact
mode of crime.
However, if it was obtained by force, it will never be considered for
trial by the court. In our country, forcefully obtaining confession is
unconstitutional. This was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court of India in
the case "Smt. Selvi vs. State of Karnataka" in which it was held that
narco-analysis, polygraph called as lie-detector, and brain mapping tests to
be unconstitutional as they violate Article 20(3) of the Constitution (
Supreme Court Judgment, 5th May 2010).
There are some problems also when the confession is made. The
police sometimes corrects the accused or otherwise guide the accused
describing the crime scene and then ask him to state what
happened(Rutledge, 1994).This can be verified by the language of
confession. This is an important issue as for as the legal process is
concerned. The analysis of the language is very much necessitated as it is
related to the crime or judicial proceedings. Hence, the analysis of the
language gets significance.
Obtaining a confession is one of the most important aims of police
interrogation, and it is estimated that more than 80% of solved criminal
cases are solved by a confession.
Here is an example of a confession made by an accused and how
language as played a major role in solving and convicting the accused(s).
Example Case :Murder of Mrs.Vijayalakshmi:
One Mr.Natarajan of Namakkal in Tamilnadu, working as an
Assistant Professor in a private college in Padappai, Chennai had murdered
his wife, Mrs. Vijayalakshmi, since she came to know about his illegal
affair with another woman. After her murder, he made a complaint to the
police that his wife Vijayalakshmi was missing. In his complaint there was
a sentence
‘enguteeDinaalumkiDaikkamaaTTaaL.’(in Tamil)
‘She will not be found out, even if searched anywhere.’
 This gave the clue to doubt him. The sentence can be interpreted as
‘I know that you may not be able to find her since something has happened
to her, (which I know.)’
Later he confessed to the murder. With the confession made by the
accused, the Police could trace the whole incident.
In the confession, he had repeatedly used the first person pronoun ‘I’
several times, while describing how he had murdered his wife. Further, ‘I
only’ was intentionally used in the confession.This paved the way in
finding the involvement of his girlfriend also.
In the same way, witness statements are to be analysed for their
legitimacy.
A witness statement is a document recording the evidence of a person,
which is signed by that person to confirm that the contents of the statement
are true. A statement should record what the witness saw, heard or felt. It is
considered that if the witness has seen the crime, he/she becomes an ‘eye
witness’, if he/she has heard about the crime; he/she becomes an ‘ear
witness’.
At this point of discussion a mechanism to evaluate the
genuineness/legality of such statements is proposed.
The features of the statements such as their legality, validity,
reliability, authenticity and the truthfulness are to be assessed, for which a
system called Statement Worthiness Evaluation System (SWES) has been
proposed.
The analysis has taken up the following eight cases to substantiate
the SWES.
Janakiyamma murder case: (Case No. 146/05)
Vijayalakshmi murder Case
Tractor accident leading to murder (Case No.341/1998)
 Sheela murder case: (Case No. 297/2002)
Attempt to murder of Mr. Muthaiyan (Case No.102/2001).
Attempt to murder of the HM, Mr. SasidharanNayar (Case No.
11/2006).
Rape Case of Miss Sophia: (Case No. 400/2008)
Bribe case on Mr. Ganapathiya Pillai (Case No. 6/2004)

The SWES is proposed here as an application to find out how

much merit the statements have in the legal process. The following
principles are projected in the process of assessment using SWES.

1. The Principle of legality of the statements.

2. The Principle of validity of the statements.
3. The Principle of reliability of these documents.
4. The Principle of authenticity of the documents.
5. The Principle of truthfulness in documents.

SWES

Statement Worthiness Evaluation System

The Principle of Legality
The principle of legality is captured in the Latin phrase
‘nullumcrimen sine lege, nullapoena sine lege,’ which may be translated as
‘no crime or punishment without law.’ In spirit, the principle of legality
means that criminal liability and punishment should be based only upon a
prior enactment of a prohibition that is expressed with adequate precision
and clarity. Legality can be, further, defined as an act, agreement, or
contract that is consistent to the law or state of being lawful or unlawful in
a given jurisdiction. According to Webster’s New World College
Dictionary (2006), the definition of legality is “1: attachment to or
observance of law and 2: the quality or state of being legal. Legality checks
for if certain behaviour whether it is according to law or not.”
The Principle of Validity
“Validity refers to the faithfulness of a test. It is one of the five
criteria used for the critical evaluation of tests. The other criteria are
administrability, economy, reliability and scorability…. A test is said to be
valid when it measures accurately and faithfully the ability or the
knowledge that the test is intended to measure.” (Subbiah, 2002). The same
is true of the confessions and statements given by witnesses, both the PWs
and DWs or the defendant, where accuracy and faithfulness get specific
importance.
“Eyewitness testimony is far from being fool-proof. Despite the
assumption that witnesses under oath are honest, sincere, and credible,
there may be sufficient discrepancies. Any two witnesses to the same event
will undoubtedly and unfailingly observe it differently. What is
subjectively true to a witness may be objectively false due to faulty or
defective perception.” (Brunson, 2010). If they are ear witnesses, they
need not be taken seriously for they may be deficient in reliability.
The Principle of Reliability
“Reliability refers to the consistency of a test in measuring
whatever it measures what it has to measure…. Reliability is necessary for
validity, because a test with scores which fluctuate very much does not test
anything” (Subbiah, 2002). It is true that the definition best suits language
teaching and evaluation. Nevertheless, the same definition when extended
to the analysis of statements of witnesses in the court, where it will be
interpreted for the consistency of a statement is more important. In the
same way if at all a lie is to be made a fact, the statements should be
consistent.

The Principle of Authenticity

A linguistic profile of the detainee based on performance during
face-to-face assessment can provide useful and sometimes more important
insights. The main purpose for the kind of language assessment is the
provision of information about a particular person’s use of the language,
here Tamil, that is, a linguistic profile. This would give authenticity to the
facts.
The Principle of Truthfulness
It is not an easy task to get the feature of truthfulness in
criminal cases. Even at the end of the trial, the court asks the accused
person(s) about their involvement in the crime they never accept their part.
Evaluation of Inter-textual Similarities
It points out the important defect happening at the stage ofrecording
the confessions / statements in written form and at the time of first
examination and cross-examinationin the court. The recording of the
confession or statements, for example, is done in written Tamil and not as
said / narrated in the own words by the accused or witness, which is usually
in spoken Tamil (as Tamil is a diglosic language), which may form the
document to be produced as evidence. This, itself, makes the statements
inappropriate for they are not in the actual form. Additionally, the
prompting or recording of the statements by writers or scribes in the police
station or in the place of recording has been influencing the subject matter.
In other words, the sameness or similarities in the statements are more
among the statements by witnesses.In fact, the exact words are very
important for any case for validity and authenticity.
This would mean that the system of getting confession, statements of
witnesses and evidences are to be changed. It is suggested that they are to
be recorded in audio and video as well. This will enable the court to get
the true picture of the language used. The language used, in turn, will bring
the actual culprit and help the court to solve the case quickly and easily.
References
Agnes, Michael. 2006. Webster’s New World College Dictionary. (4thD Edition).
New Delhi:
Wiley India (P) Ltd.
AshimaGarg . 2011. Critical Analysis of the concept of Confessions.

Brunson, Tim. 2010. The Validity of Eyewitness Accounts - What You see is What
You Think!
Cipes, R. 1966. “Crime, Confessions, and the Court”.Atlantic Monthly 55.
Coulthard, M. and Johnson, A. 2007. An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics:
Language in Evidence, London: Routledge
Grano, J. 1979. “Free Will and the Law of Confessions”. Virginia Law Review
859-945.
Gudjonsson, G. 1992. The Psychology of Interrogations, Confessions and
 Testimony. NY: Wiley and Sons.
Inbau, F., J. Reid, & J. Buckley .1986. Criminal Interrogation and Confessions.
Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.
O'Hara, C. & L. O'Hara . 1980. Fundamentals of Criminal Investigation.
Springfield: Charles Thomas.
Rutledge, D. 1994. Criminal Interrogation: Law and Tactics. Placerville, CA:
Copperhouse.
Rafferty, Lisa. 1999. ‘Anything you say can and will be used against you:
Spectrographic evidence in criminal cases’. American Criminal Law
Review 36: 291–311.
Renkema, J. 2004. Introduction to discourse studies. Amsterdam: Benjamins
Subbiah, Pon. 2002. An Introduction to Evaluation Terminology. Mysore: Central
Institute
of Indian Languages.
The Times of India. May 5, 2010. “No narcoanalysis test with out consent, says SC.”
Vijayan, N. 2013.“Preplanned Crimes - An Analysis of Statements and Confessions
in Forensic Linguistics”. www.languageinindia.com. Vol.13.5
Vijayan, N. 2015(1).“Evaluation of the Statements and Confessions from the Point of
View of Forensic Linguistics”. www.languageinindia.com. Vol.15.12
Vijayan, N. 2015 (2). “Legal Processes: A Forensic Linguistic Study”
(Unpublished thesis), Annamalainagar: Annamalai University.
 WORD-PRINTS: A CASE STUDY OF COMPUTATIONAL
STYLOMETRY

Achuthsankar S Nair
Professor, Dept. of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics,
University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram

Authorship resolution of creative work is a widely felt need in literary field. The
fundamental premise for such resolutions is that distinctive patterns of language
preferences can be used to identify authors and resolve alleged misattributions.
John Fletcher's preference for the contractional form of "them", as a marker to
distinguish his authorship is often considered the first work in this direction [1].
The frameworks for such analysis, popularly known as Stylometry, were proposed
by Wincenty Lutosławski in Principes de stylométrie in 1890 [2]. The efforts during
these periods did not have the benefit of computer systems. Half a century ago, A.
Q. Morton attempted a computer analysis of Epistles of the New Testament attributed
to St. Paul and concluded that six different authors had written it. Analysis of
disputed works of Shakespeare have also been attempted in similar lines. Among
the measures that have been used, we find frequency of most commonly used
words, idiosyncrasies such as rare pair words, average sentence length, word length,
number of syllables per word, measures such as Simpson’s D index etc. Most
works do not use such measures directly for analysis, but use sophisticated
computing algorithms such as PCA (Principal Component Analysis). In 1980, a
group of researchers proposed “word print analysis” to examine the possible
authors of the Book of Mormon [3]. To the best of author’s knowledge, such
methods are yet to find their way into the field of Carnatic music where there are
long standing authorship attribution controversies. In this paper, the author makes
a beginning towards capturing the word-print of composers in Carnatic music. A
case study of authorship verification is presented highlighting the limitations of the
methods.

Stylistics of Carnatic composers can be captured in some aspect, based on the

frequency of words used by them. Deriving the frequency of words used by
composers is not an intellectually challenging task, but it is practically a very difficult
task. To bring in computing, we first need in our hand a transliterated text.
Lakshman Ragde, the famous lyrics collector provided this. His transliterations use a
fairly standardised transliteration scheme, though we cannot vouch for its
perfection. As a first-time work, this aspect has been compromised by accepting the
text as it is. A program in the computer language ‘Perl’ was then written to compute
the frequency of occurrence of each word used by famous composers and then sort
them in descending order.

We now attempt to develop a scheme for authorship resolution based on word

frequency. We take the case of Swathi Thirunal, a few compositions of whom are
well known to be mis-attributions. We consider only Sanskrit compositions, which
are maximum in number. We first need to create a set of undisputed compositions.
We selected a set of 187 from 194 Sanskrit compositions listed in Chidambara
Vadhyar’s publication of 1916 [4] (At least one composition is clearly that of
Margadarshi Shesha Iyengar’s. There have been faint doubts about another six. All
seven have been excluded). We name this Set-1. We then compute frequency of
words used by Swathi Thirunal from this undisputed set. Top 50 words are given in
Table below. It is interesting to note that for all Trinity and Swathi Thirunal, the top
3 words include their favourite deity and also the word Shri.

shrI ( 155 ) jaya ( 119 ) padmanAbha (107) mama ( 102 ) vara ( 83 )

parama (73) mukha ( 69 ) sama ( 65 ) dEva ( 59 ) ghana ( 58 )
bhava ( 55 ) pada ( 55 ) muni ( 54 ) cAru ( 50 ) mAm ( 49 )
tava ( 49 ) sura ( 45 ) guNa ( 44 ) mE ( 44 ) jana ( 43 )
nayana ( 43 ) nija ( 43 ) bhUri ( 42 ) carita ( 42 ) kE ( 41 )
pAda ( 41 ) vibhO ( 41 ) pAhi ( 40 ) kuru ( 39 ) mrdu ( 39 )
pApa ( 39 ) sadA ( 39 ) kAma ( 38 ) mA ( 38 ) ruci ( 38 )
caraNa (37 ) lOka ( 37 ) nirupama ( 37 ) sakala ( 37 ) kalita ( 36 )
hrdi ( 35 ) kamala ( 35 ) shubha ( 35 ) vimala ( 35 ) hara ( 34 )
kanaka ( 34 ) krta ( 34 ) sAdhu ( 34 ) sArasa ( 34 ) Vilasita(34)
Table : Top 50 words used by Swathi Thirunal, with frequency of occurrence, based on 187undisputed Sanskrit
compositions selected from the publications by Chidambara Vadhyar (1916), text provided by Lakshman Ragde.

We now demonstrate an example of using such an analysis for aiding authorship

resolution. We first define a score for any composition related to any composer
based on their word use count. We define the word-score for each a composition as
total of all the frequency counts corresponding to each word in it. We further divide
it by the count of words in the composition.

Table below demonstrates computing of score using the above equation for the
composition “Nama Sudhamayi” in Kamboji (This is from Ajamilopakhyanam,
published as early as in 1853)[5].
No Word Score
1 nAma 13
2 Sudhamayi 1
3 Piba 2
4 Mama 56
5 rasanE 2
6 yAmiha 2
7 pibatA 2
8 sAdhu 27
9 kulEna 2
10 triptiravApta 1
11 nO 6
12 bhuvanE 7
13 yadi 2
14 hari 16
15 nAma 13
16 parAtvamivahaikA 1
17 bhavati 10
18 yamAnnahi 1
19 bhayamapi 1
20 svapnE 2
21 sarasijanAbha 10
22 vibhO 34
23 nAryaNa 5
24 mArAyaNa 1
25 Nigada 1
26 sukhEpi 1
27 Ca 8
28 kadanE 2
Total Score 229
Word Score 229/28 = 8.18

Table: Demonstrating calculation of word-Score of a composition “Nama Sudha

Mayi”.
Set – II consists of all compositions with some doubts regarding their authorship or
have been attributed to Swathi Thirunal at a relatively later stage. The latter
category includes about 30 and odd songs tuned and popularised by Muthiaha
Bhagavathar and Chemagudi Sreenivasa Iyer in 1940’s.Scores for all compositions in
both set I (undisputed) and II (disputed) are calculated. We plot the trimmed
distribution of word-score of undisputed set I in Fig. below.

COUNT

SCORE

Fig. 1 Distribution of Word-Scores of Swathi Thirunal Compositions

The distribution in Fig. above has a trimmed mean of 17.1 and

standard deviation of 4.5. We could take as first approximation that
any score of 17 and above as a strong evidence that it is Swathi
Thirunal’s authorship. However a more precise observation can be
made based on standard deviation, giving strength of confidence also,
as shown in Table below.

No. Word Score Cut off value Confidence

1 12.6 or above Mean – 1 SD Strong

2 8.1 to12.6 Mean – 2 SD Medium

3 3.6 to 8.1 Mean – 3 SD Low

4 Less than 3.6 Mean – 4 SD Very low

Table:. Confidence levels based on word-score

We note here that the compositions in Kuchelopakhyanam and Ajamitopakhyanam

receive high scores along with Keerthanas, indicating similar word-use style in both.
This is important to note as the Upakhayanas were published in 1853 in the book
titled “Swathi Thirunal Ponnu Thampuran Kalpichundakkiya Krithikal” which was
unearthed recently by the author, [5].

Now we comment about the scores computed for Set II. These scores range from
3.67 to 44.16. Most of the 30 and odd compositions tuned and popularised by
Muthiah Bhagavathar and Chemangudi Sreenivasa Iyer in 1940s receive very high
scores. (Jaya Jaya Padmanabha in Manirangu receiving an extremely high 44.16)
indicating that their authorship is not in doubt (That their music has not been set by
Swathi Thirunal is also not in doubt).

It must be clearly understood that computational stylometric studies are but one of
the ways of gathering evidence for authorship resolution. It must be carefully
compared, contrasted and combined with other internal and external evidences. An
example is the conclusion that Hitler Diaries were written by Hitler himself based on
stylistics, but the kind of paper and ink was later proved to be of post-1945 material.
In the case of Carnatic musical compositions, among internal evidences, the
following can be considered:
- Veggeyakara Mudra and its location
- Deity addressed, place names referred.
- Raga used (already in composer’s repertoire?), Raga mudra
- Structure of composition (length of Pallavi, number of Charanas)
- Rhyming patterns and Meter used.

Among external evidences, we have:

- General tradition attributing piece to the composer
- Authorship attribution in print and its frequency.
- Availability of attribution closer to composer’s life time or shishya/near-
relative/collaborator’s life time.

Another way of re-confirming conclusions is to compute the confidence levels of

attribution to other alleged authors. In the example we have delineated, this is not
easy to achieve as we do not have a critical mass of Sanskrit Compositions of
Irayimman Thampi, Ponnaih or Vadivelu. Hence representative corpus for
extracting word-print is unavailable. We now discuss two lowest scoring
compositions.
Pahimam Brhannayike, Huseni, Chappu Thalam (Score 8.67): This attribution
is only less than half a century old and hence weak to begin with, The score
indicates only a medium confidence that it is attributable to Swathi Thriunal (the
score actually borders on low confidence range). S. Venkitasubramanya Iyer,
renowned authority on Swathi Thiruanal, had in 1973 argued that this song was not
of Swathi Thirunal [6]. Though the mudra ‘Kamalanabha” occurs, it is seen the
second charana. Swathi Thirunal stamps the murda in Pallavi or Anupallavi or the
last charana only. The diety praised in Brihadamba of Pudukotta, a diety outside
Kerla and she is mentioned as worshipped by Brahma and Vishnu, which again is
not in the style of Swathi (he refers to Devi as sister of Padmanabha and granting
desires of Padmabha pada sevakas), The name “Vijayaraghunatha” occurs in the
song which is unexplainable. All these additional evidences go well with the low
confidence predicted by the stylometric method.

Bhogindra Shayinam, Kunthala Varali, Khanda Chappu (6.39): This

composition was never listed as a Swathi Thirunal composition in any printed works
prior to 1942. Thus the authorship attribution is relatively recent. This composition
is ascribed by some to Irayimman Thampi. The argument in favour of Swathi
Thirunal is that this is a parody of “Sreeranga Shayinam”, a composition of
Margadarshi Sesha Iyangar whom Swathi Thirunal is well known to have adopted
as a role model. However, the composition also echoes the ‘Dandakam’ in the
Aattakadha “Uthara Swayam varam”, by Irayimman Thampi (“Kshoneendra Pathniyude
Vaanee Nishamyam”). Authorship resolution is not possible with the arguments
above, but the case that this is a Swathi Thirunal composition in definitely weakened
by the Word-Score, as it is in the weak confidence range.

The obvious limitation of the method described here is that it is entirely based on
sahithya, that too only on words. Rare pair of words, certain metaphors, use of
special meaning of certain words etc are additional possibilities in sahithya itself. In
case of Swathi Thirunal we can get a hint of such possibilities from the scholarly
remarks made by Venkitasubramonya Iyer[7]. He points out frequently met
characteristic ideas and expressions such as : A wicked person or accumulated sin
being destroyed by Padmanabha, (It is like the dark cloud being dissipated by the
wind as in ‘muravaridasamira’, ‘bhaumavaridasamiranar, ‘papambhodharapavana’,
‘patakajaladharavatula’ etc; or a hill being crushed by the thunderbolt, as in
‘papajalagirikulisa’ ‘duritamayadarunagirikulisa’ etc. It is also like the sun dispelling
darkness as in ‘bhuritimirasamuhadinakarara’, ‘suribhititimiraughadinesvara’ etc. or the
woods being destroyed by a conflagration as in ‘ghanabhavakananadava’,
kalushadavadahana’, ‘ghorataravipinadava’; like the serpents are killed by the peacock as
in ‘ripupannagasamudayanilakantha’ or a fly being consumed by a flame as in
‘samalasalabhadipa’). ‘dasajanamarasalakalpa’). The bountiful Lord is spoken of as the
divine tree granting all desires as in padanamrajanakalpasala), ‘desajanamarasalakalpa’),
‘dinajananikara devataro ‘nata,janajalavibudhasala’ etc. Venkita subramonya Iyer also
mentions that the root kal is seen to be a favourite of Swathi Thirunal, so too the
words derived from it. It means’ to go’ as, well as ‘to count’ but he seldom uses it in
either of these meanings, but uses it in several meanings like ‘to mediate, as in
‘Kalayami’, ‘Kalayami nandakamaniyabalam’, ‘Kalaye Srikamalanayanachurane’ etc; ‘to
worship’ as in ‘Sanaka sukanaradadikalitam ,(‘Kamalasanatanayakalitam’ etc; ‘to adopt’
as in ‘Kalltadarakapuranivesa’ Kalitavanavasa’ etc; ‘to make’ as in ‘Karamapi kalaya’’
‘vidhudyumanikaiitanetra’ etc, and so on. This verb figures in numerous compositions
and is used in such diverse meanings that Venkita Subramanya Iyer considers it a
contribution to Sanskrit semantics by the scholar-composer.

Venkitasubramonya Iyer also points out use of words in uncommon meanings such
as ‘turanga’ which means ‘horse’ used in the sense of ‘vehicle’ as in ‘garudaturangam’
‘vihagavaraturanga’ and, ‘vrishabhdvarenya turangam’ and ‘karana’ which means ‘sense
organ’ in the sense of ‘body’ as in ‘karanajuitabhodhara, and ‘charutarakarana’. Rare
words like ’mahana’ in the sense of worship as in ‘naradadimuni virachitamahanam’,
‘navana’ in the sense of praise as in ‘sailavairikritanavana’ and ‘vanadhi’ in the sense of
ocean as in ‘ vanadhitaranachana’ are also met with. The words ‘samala’ (=sin), ‘chana’
(=clever) ‘jatarupa’ (=gold) are point out as among the favourites of Swathi Thirunal.
Venkitasubramaniya Iyer also points out rare synonyms like ‘rathacharana’ for
‘chakra’), ‘taranitanaya’ for ‘yamuna’ and ‘kayathutanaya’ for ‘prahlada’.
The sahithya style also can be verified against non-musical works of the composer.
Even official writing can be used in this context (In a personal letter dated 25th April
1846, the translated copy of which is available in Madras Old Records office in
Egmore, Swathi Thirunal uses the following phrases in a communication with Sir
Henry Hardinge: “the arrow blessed by the almighty has happily hit the mark at
which it has aimed and the sound thereof has been the most pleasing and delightful
music to my ears; it is the will of the creator to rear and protect all shady and fruitful
trees and to eradicate and destroy all nocious and thorny plants; may of the
brightness of your sword of victory illuminate the earth”.The poetic style is evident
even in this official communication.Swathi’s Malayali identity can be found in the
Manipravala Padams, easily. Theliviyalunu (Dravida Vritham), Pancha Banan
(Nathonnatha – famous vanchippattu vritham), Athaliyunnu (Maara Kaakali
vritham) etc. are examples. The famous “Pannagendra Shayana” Raga malika is also
in Nathonnatha Vrittam. A detailed research into meter used by various composers
is required before it can be used for stylometry.

The obvious lapse in the method is that musical style is not taken into account. Just
like sahithya, a composer may also have very characteristic phrases of musical notes
or vishesha prayogas. Khamas, for example, is seen used by Swathi Thirunal without
the presently popular Sa Ni Sa prayoga with Kakali Nishadha in it. In the rare Varna
Sa Vama Rusha in Khamas is a case to be studied in this regard. Venkitasubramanya
Iyer also points out [9] the abundance of series of equilinear phrases beginning in
Panchama, such as in the third Ethukada in the Varna Sadhu Vibhatam in
Bhoopalam. Swarakshara, an embellishment that Swathi Thirunal is well known to
be fond of could be a musical feature that can be used in identifying authorship.
The Khamas varna cited above is an excellent example for this as well as the
Kamboji Krithi Padasanathimuni, Oriental Music in European Notation, a
monumental work published in Madras in 1883, contains songs of SwathiThirunal
and also some interesting references. In the section on peculiarities in Indian Music,
Chinna SwamyMuthaliar’s says: Adaption of names of notes to syllables in the text at
appropriate places- A good many composers take also a particular delight in arranging their music
and words in such a manner that the syllables pronounced coincide with the name s of the notes
sung at the commencement of a bar or the conclusion of a phrase; and this is considered a great feel;
in Europe it would perhaps be regarded as puerile, though the example annexed shows that the
idea is not altogether Asiatic; even such a distinguished authority as his late highness
KULASEKHARA Maharaja of Travancore did not consider this artifice beneath his dignity; a
large number of his compositions have been framed in accordance with this principle; two specimens
are given below;- in this publication … (One of the songs given is Padasanathi in Kamboji).
A foot note in the page above also states: A certain musician who had composed a melody
in this style appeared before the Maharaja and boasted that he had accomplished an extraordinary
feat such as had never been attempted before. His Highness at once produced a number of pieces of
the same kind, to show that he himself was capable of doing great deal more without difficulty.
Analysis of music style calls for a separate comprehensive research and
development.

Inconsistencies in Roman Script transliteration could create errors in the counts and
scores and this has been mentioned earlier. Even section headings, page numbers
etc. can affect the analysis. The selection of materials is critical. In the words of
Rudman, all decisions must err on the side of exclusion and he also opines that this
degree of conservatism carries with its own and problems. The “range” of styles is
(possibly) reduced.

Because of the above limitations, 100% reliance on the stylometric studies cannot
be resorted to. These studies are always to be used in conjunction with other
evidences, arguments and common sense.

REFERENCES

1 Wikipaedia page on Stylometry accessed in December 2014 John Fletcher

2 Wincenty Lutosławski, Principes de Stylometric, 1890

3 Wayne A. Larsen and Alvin C. Rencher,"Who Wrote the Book of

Mormon? An Analysis of Wordprints", Book of Mormon Authorship,
(1982)
4 Chidambara Vadhyar, “Musical Compositions of H.H. The Maharaja of
Travancore whoreigned from 1830 to 1847”, Government Press,
Trivandrum, 1916.

5 Achuthsankar S. Nair, “Travancore’s Composer King”, Sruthi, Issue 345,

June 2013, pp 21-27.

6 S. Venkita Subramonya Iyer, “The Authorship of the Swarajathi Pahi

Mam Brihannayike”,Journal of Madras Music Academy, Vol. 42, 1973.

7 P. Sangunny Menon “A History of Travancore from The earliest Times”

Madras Higginbothamand Company 1878, Republished by Govt. of Kerala,
1983.

8 P. Govinda Pillai (Sarvadhi Karyakkar), “Bhasha Charithram,” Kerala

Vikasom Press, Trivandrum 1881.

9 K. Sambasiva Sasthri, “Sangeetha Kritis of Swathi Sri. Rama Varma

Maharaha”, TrivandrumSanskrit series, Oriental Manuscripts Library,
Trivandrum, No. 113, 1932.

10 S. Venkitasubramonya Iyer, “Swathi Tirunal & His music”, College

Book House, Trivandrum, 1973.

11 Kavalam Narayana Panicker, “Sopana Thathwam”, Haritham Books,

Kozhikkode, 2008, pp. 175- 188.

12 S. Venkitasubramonya Iyer, “Swathi Tirunal & His music”, College

Book House, Trivandrum, 1973.
 Forensic Science Testimony and its Limitations
Dr. Sindhu Thulaseedharan, Dept. of Law, University of Kerala

Properly qualified and admissible expert testimony can be powerful evidence.

It can identify a potential suspect to the exclusion of all others. It is a significant
assistance to the trier of fact in appreciating specific facts and circumstances in a
prosecution that are outside of its general knowledge and understanding. On
the other hand, tainted, tailored and unsubstantiated expert evidence, couched
in scientific terms and language, based on unreliable fact and ultimately
debunked science has long been recognized as a leading cause of wrongful
convictions.Following on the heels of recent public inquiries, judicial
pronouncements and interventions by advocacy groups, the current trend is:

• The admission of expert evidence depends on its relevance to a fact in issue,

the necessity to assist the trier of fact on exceptional issues that require special
knowledge outside their normal experience, the absence of any exclusionary
rules and the proper qualifications of the expert;

• Judges maintain their duty as “gatekeepers” to prevent the distortion of the

fact-finding process by excluding the admission of inappropriate and
unnecessary expert testimony;

• The ultimate role of the trier of fact is not to be usurped by expert evidence;

• Appropriate and non-misleading language be used in reporting forensic

conclusions; and

• Forensic evaluation services no longer be the exclusive domain of the state.

Expert evidence has traditionally been admitted as an exception to the rule

against opinion evidence, to assist the trier of fact to understand and rule on
complex and technical issues that may be above the general level of knowledge.
The basic underlying premise of expert scientific evidence is that the opinion to
be considered by the trier of fact given by someone with special knowledge
and training is the result of disinterested, objective and scientifically sound
reasoning. However, some expert opinions can present difficulties to the trial
process. Sometimes, it appears the experts are not terribly impartial. Some are
far from expert. On occasion, their evidence may be seen as virtually infallible,
having more weight than it deserves, with the result that the evidence distorts
the normal fact-finding process at trial. Finally, sometimes objective sciences
such as DNA later show that the opinions tendered in evidence were simply
wrong
Handout of the lecture to be delivered in the Three-day workshop on Forensic
Linguistics, organized by the Dept. of Linguistics, University of Kerala & Police
Training Academy, Govt. of Kerala @ Thiruvananthapuram on 2018 March 27-29.

Science and Justice: Scope of Forensic Linguistics in India

Lt. P. Sree Kumar, Dravidian University

1. Introduction: Three cases noted of Forensic Linguistics (henceforth FoLi)

presented at first followed by a discussion about the scope of FiLi in India.

1.1. Three cases

1.1.1. The Timothy John Evans Case (1950) in the United Kingdom: Timothy
John Evans once hanged in 1950, but later pardoned posthumously based on
the ‘forensic linguistics’ findings by a linguistic professor by the name of
Jan Svartvik in 1968. This miscarriage of justice resolved by linguistics.
So when Professor Svartvik (1968) wrote of his work on the Evans statements,
“…it has provided the linguist with one of those rare opportunities of making a
contribution that might be directly useful to society”.

1.1.2. The Chris Coleman Case (2009) in the United States: The similarities
between killer’s style of usage of English and the Coleman lead towards the
conclusion that, Coleman himself killed his wife (Hitt 2012).
Both Killer and Colems’s spelled "opportunities" as "oppurtunities',
Both Killer and Colems’s put apostrophe in the wrong place “doesnt’’’
and “cant’”.
Here the forensic linguistics gives clues to the case and lead the case towards
the right direction.

1.1.3. The Jenny Nicholl Case (2008): Mobile SMS was the evidence proved by
Professor Malcolm Coulthard, linguistics Professor. David Hodgson
murdered 19 years old Jenny Nicholl and send SMS to his friends and father
that she is alive. Hodgdson typed ‘2’ instead of ‘to’ with two space by Jenny
unlike Hodgson: "ave 2 lve". Jenny usually wrote "Im" and "Im not" in her
texts, while Hodgdson typed "I am" and "aint". Jenny would use "my", "cu"
and "fone", the words "me", "cya" and "phone" appeared in texts typed by
Hodgdson.

1.2. The above mentioned three cases prove how the science of language i.e.,
linguistics, can strengthen justice by revealing the truth. Science and law are
two sources of authorities in modern society. Both are in different ways aim
at truth. Therefore, the use of science by law can strengthen justice in a
society. Justice is the objective of investigation of truth and the practice of
law. Truth and law are substantially depending on the language. Therefore,
the knowledge about language generated by linguistics can help us to reach
towards truth and make the rule of law fair.

1.3. FoLi is the use of linguistic knowledge for the development of justices
through the interpretation of law and to investigate the crime to reach the
truth. It is an advanced forensic discipline in English speaking and European
countries and widely used all aspects of the law, justice, and investigation.
India is a multilingual country with 22 scheduled languages and around 150
languages with sizable speakers. Linguistic diversity is a challenge and a
potential for rule of law and the investigation of truth in India. However,
FoLi is not used in India at any level to address this challenges and the
potential. An attempt is made in this class to introduce the different use of
FoLi and certain proposals have been made to use and develop FoLi in India.

2. Branches for FoLi: Study of all levels of language from the phonetics to
discourse analysis contributes towards FoLi.
2.1. Forensic Phonetics:
2.1.1. Speaker recognition:
2.1.2. Speaker verification:
2.1.3. Voice Comparison:
2.1.3. Earwitness:
 2.1.4. Intelligibility enhancement:
2.1.5. Audiotape Examination:
2.2. Forensic Stylistics:
2.3. Forensic Semantics:
2.3.1. Interpretation of words, phrases, and sentences:
2.3.2. Interpretation of texts (contracts, insurance policies,
communications,
restraining orders, statutes, contracts, legal texts):
2.3.3. Ambiguity in texts and laws:
2.3.4. Interpretation of spoken discourse in reading of rights (Miranda
warn-
ings, police cautions) and in police interviews:
Mirand warning 1966 USA: “You have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of
law..”.
2.3.5. Interpretations of jury instructions:

2.4. Forensic Pragmatics Discourse:

2.4.1. Discourse and pragmatics:
2.4.2. Discourse of specific contexts:
2.4.3. Language of the courtroom:
2.4.4. Language of specific speech acts: [Threats, Promising, Warning,
Offer and acceptance, Defamation, Denial, Perjury, Sexual harassment,
Sexual assault: Ehrlich, Car sales].

2.5. Stylistics and Questioned Authorship: Methods: Quantitative and

qualitative

2.6. Language of the Law: Plain language and linguistic right.

2.7. Language of the Courtroom: Witness, lawyers and judge speak in the
court room.
2.7.1. Language of witness:
2.7.2. Language of lawyers:
2.7.3. Language of judge:
2.7. 4. Interpretation and Translation:

2.3. Computational forensic linguistics:

2.3.1. JVocalyse : Lexical analysis

2.3.2. CopyCatch Gold: to detect plagiarism

2.3.3. Signature Stylometric Syste: Stylometric analysis with special

emphasize on authorship.
2.3.4. WordSmith Tools: Multifunctional software can be used for many
languages.

2.3.5. VOCALISE: Automatic Speaker Recognition Software: VOCALISE’ –

(Voice Comparison and Analysis of the Likelihood of Speech Evidence) is a
forensic automatic speaker recognition system, built for the Windows
platform, that allows users to perform comparisons using both ‘traditional’
forensic phonetic parameters and ‘automatic’ spectral features in a semi- or
fully automatic way.

2.3.6. CLEAVER – Cluster Estimation And Versatile Extraction of Regions:

CLEAVER’ (Cluster Estimation And Versatile Extraction of Regions) software
provides an easy means of separating out the speech of individual speakers
from a recording that contains more than one speaker. It allows the user to
either extract only the speech of the person of interest and highlights the
parts of the audio where that person is speaking.

2.3.7. Voice Quality Enhancement (VQE):

2.4. Language Analysis in the Determination of Origin (LADO)

3. How to develop FoLi in India: The potential of FoLi is relatively high in

India due to our multilingual richness. Therefore, the scope of FoLi in India
is multilingual and multidimensional in enriching investigation and
strengthening justice delivery system. The multilingual scope is in relation to
law and the multidimensional scope is in relation investigation. In relation to
law, the aspects of legal language and terminology, legal genres, translation
in legal sphere, legal language reforming, legal communication etc are not
explored in any of the Indian languages. No guideline is proposed for the
day-to-day needs of legal translation between Indian languages. Regarding
the use of FoLi for investigation, there is a mentioning about the availability
of voice identification equipment at the Center Forensic State Laboratory,
Chandigarh (Gov of India 2010). However, FoLi evidence is reported in any
of the civil and criminal cases in India. This does not means that no linguistic
issue has come up in any cases in India, but most of the issues in the cases
might have been left unexplored as in the case of The Timothy John Evans
Case (1950) in United Kingdom.
Following are the parameters to develop FoLi in India.
Normative foundation
Institutional foundation
Intellectual resources
3.1. Normative foundations: FoLi should be accepted as a scientific procedure
in investigation, trail and other jurdicational process.

3.2.1. Indian Evidence Act 1975 shall be amended and the section 45 Scientific
Evidence shall be reformed to accommodate the Forensic Linguistics
Evidence and to include Forensic Linguists as experts.

Section 45: “When the court has to form an opinion upon a point of foreign
law or of science or art or as to identity of handwriting or finger impressions,
the opinions upon that point of persons specially skilled in such foreign law,
science or art or in questions as to identity of handwriting or finger
impressions are relevant facts. Such persons are called experts”.

3. 2. 2. Three normative models of Forensic Science in relation to the court:

Frye Model, Daubert criteria of US (1993); CRFP Model (2000), United
Kingdom.
Daubert standard proposed by US Federal court in three subsequent cases
1993, 1997 and 1999 states that Judge should function as:

1. A gatekeeper
2. Relevance and reliability should be examined
3. Scientific knowledge should be reached through sound scientific method.
Scientific method > Illustrative Factors
Criteria should meet:
1. Whether the theory or technique employed by the expert is generally
accepted in the scientific community;
2. Whether it has been subjected to peer review and publication;
3. Whether it can be and has been tested;
 4. Whether the known or potential rate of error is acceptable; and
5. Whether the research was conducted independent of the particular
litigation or dependent on an intention to provide the proposed
testimony.

3.2. Institutional Foundations: Institutional environment is necessary for the

development of a scientific practice. Ideas should be institutionalized.
Therefore, (a) there should be structural organization of forensic linguistic
services and their provision to the criminal justice system. (b) There can be
fundamental research, development and technology transfer in forensic
linguistics. (c) Education and training of forensic linguistics. (d) Regulatory
frameworks for quality assurance in the provision of forensic linguistics
services. (e) There should be funding (a)–(d). (f) Institutional and normative
frameworks for the translation of analytical findings into forensic science
evidence.

3.3. Intellectual Resources

3.3.1. Training of human resource
3.3.1.1. Universities
3.3.1.2. Include FoLi as a part of police training
3.3.1.3. Special training programme on each components of FoLi
3.3.2. Development of forensic linguistic corpus in all Indian languages.
3.3.3. Organizational network (Association of Forensic Linguists of India
AFLI)

4. In brief: How FoLi can investigate truth and deliver justice has been
explained in the first part of the paper by narrating the three cases. Then the
general scope of FoLi is discussed followed by what can be done in India for
the development of FoLi. Any attempt to develop FoLi in India will
contribute strengthening the justice delivery system of India.

Selected References
Svartvik, J. (1968). The Evans statements. University of Goteburg.
Hitt, J. (2012, July 23). Words on Trial: Can linguists solve crimes that
stump the police?. Retrieved 23 March 2018
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/23/words-on-trial
Ministry of Home Affairs, Gov. of India. 2010. The Perceptive Plan of Indian
Forensic Accesses 23 March 2018
http://mha.nic.in/sites/upload_files/mha/files/pdf/IFS(2010)-
FinalRpt.pdf

Draft of an action plan to develop Forensic Linguistics in India

Following are proposed to develop Forensic Linguistics (henceforth FoLi) in

India and towards initiating such innovation as a joint venture of Dept. of
Linguistics, University of Kerala, the Police Training College, Gov of Kerala or
any other agencies and organist ions suggests by this workshop.

1. Make necessary reform in the Indian Evidence Act 1972 and the Code of
Criminal Procedure to consider the Linguistic evidence as Scientific Evidence.
Section 45 states that expert Evidence as:

“When the court has to form an opinion upon a point of foreign law or of
science or art or as to identity of handwriting or finger impressions, the
opinions upon that point of persons specially skilled in such foreign law,
science or art or in questions as to identity of handwriting or finger impressions
are relevant facts. Such persons are called experts”

1.1. Adopt any of the three forensic models or develop a new model based on
the merits of all these models for the validity of Forensic Linguistic Evidence
and expert witness in the trail: Frye Model (1975) and, Daubert criteria of US
(1993); CRFP Model (2000) of UK.

2. Use the FoLi to treat linguistic evidence in all investigations irrespective of

the importance of the linguistic evidence.

3. Develop an institutional foundation for the development of intellectual

resource of Foli in India by:

3.1. Start a FoLi Unit in the Directorate of Forensic Science, MHA, GoI.
3.2. Start FoLi Unit in each State’s Forensic Laboratory.
 3.3. National Center for Forensic Linguistics in Kerala as a joint
venture of Dept of Police GoK and Dept of Linguistics, University of
Kerala.
3.4. Form a Forensic Linguistic Authority to review and approve the
standards, guidelines, protocols and ethical guidelines for FoLi
practice from time to time.
4. Train one faculty from each linguistic department of all Universities in India
in FoLi at the advanced centers anywhere in the world.

5. Introduce FoLi as an optional paper in LLM and Linguistics in all

Universities in India.

6. Support all levels of researches in FoLi in any Indian languages by facilitating

and granting fellowship from the side of NCFL.

7. Establish a system to develop all levels of linguistic corpus for forensic

linguistic purpose at the NCFL.

7.1. All types of telephone enquiries shall be connected with the NCFL
server to develop telephonic speech corpus.

7.2. All interrogations of Police Department can be developed as

confidential interrogation corpus.

7. Start an Association of Forensic Linguistics in India for the development of

FoLi in India.

8. Start an online open access journal Forensic Linguistics to share the research
advancement, case studies issues in FoLi in India.

9. Develop technological facilities in all Forensic Laboratories in India for the

day-to-day analysis of Linguistic evidence.

10. Include Forensic Linguistics as a part of all levels of police training in the
Police Training College.
 Model Syllabus to be presented in the workshop

Forensic Linguistics
Number of credit: 4 Marks:
100 (60+40)

Objective of the course: This is an internal and external elective course meant for MA
Linguistics students and LLM students to introduce the basic notions of FoLi with
practical works and presentation.

Unit 1: Introduction to language and FoLi: Structure of language, basics of phonetics,

phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics; dialects, idiolects and
register; linguistic variable; sociolinguistic variables; individual idiosyncrasies of
speech and writing. Science and justice; Forensic science and justice; What is FoLi; Brief
history of FoLi: The Timothy John Evans Case (1960) The Evans Statements: A Case for
Forensic Linguistics by Jan Svartvik and other cases.

Unit 2: Language and law: Characteristics of Legal language, ambiguity, language of

trial, linguistic right in the court, language of interrogation, trial and judgment;
Language of specific speech acts; Interpretation of words, phrases, and sentences;
Ambiguity in contract, texts and laws; Plain language movement;

Unit 3: Forensic Phonetic: Speaker recognition, and verification; voice comparison, ear
witness; Intelligibility enhancement; Audio tape Examination; voice print; different
types of transcriptions.

Unit 4: Author identification & Forensic stylistics: Authorship identification:

Quantitative and qualitative methods; linguistic fingerprint; variation in authorship;
deep syntactic layer, Chaski Method; style and markedness; mobile messages and
online text; linguistics aspects of plagiarism;

Unit 5: Application, methods and cases: Three Forensic model: Frye Model, Daubert
criteria of US (1993); CRFP Model (2000); Indian Evidence Act Section 45; How to give
expert Testimony; Professional and Ethical Guidelines: IAFPA; Computational
Linguistics and FoLi practices.

Text books

Baldwin J.R. and P. French. 1990. Forensic Phonetics. Pinter Publishers,

London.
Coulthard M and J Cotterill. 2006. Introducing Forensic Linguistics.
Routledge.
Hollien, H 1999. The Acoustics of Crime. New York: Plenum.
McMenamin, G. (2002). Forensic Linguistics: advances in forensic stylistics.
Boca Raton: CRC Press LLC.
Olsson John 2004. Forensic Linguistics: An introduction to Language, Crime
and the Law. Continuum, London.
Solan L M 1993. The Language of Judges. Chicago. University of Chicago
Press.

International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics

Code of Practice
1. This is the current IAFPA Code of Practice which was approved by the AGM in Helsinki, 2004.
2. Members should act in all circumstances with integrity, fairness and impartiality.
3. Recognising the varied array of casework subsumed under the interests of IAFPA (eg speaker
identification/elimination, speaker profiling, voice line-ups, transcription, authentication, signal
enhancement, sound propagation at crime scenes), Members should maintain awareness of the
limits of their knowledge and competencies when agreeing to carry out work.
4. Members should not enter into any arrangements in which remuneration is dependent on the
outcome of the case.
5. Members should make clear, both in their reports and in giving evidence in court, the
limitations of forensic phonetic and acoustic analysis.
6. In reporting on cases where an opinion or conclusion is required, Members should make clear
their level of certainty and give an indication of where their conclusion lies in relation to the
range of judgements they are prepared to give.
7. (a) Members should exercise particular caution if carrying out forensic analysis of any kind on
recordings containing speech in languages of which they are not native speakers.
(b) In carrying out forensic speaker identification/elimination work, Members should exercise
particular caution if the samples for comparison are in different languages.
(c) Members should exercise particular caution if carrying out authenticity or integrity
examinations of recordings that are not claimed to be original.
8. Members undertaking forensic phonetic and acoustic analyses or operations of all kinds should
state in their reports the methods they have followed and provide details of the equipment and
computer programs used.
9. Members, in making their analysis, should take due account of the methods available at the
time and of their appropriateness to the samples under examination.
10. Members should not attempt to do psychological profiles or assessments of the sincerity of
speakers.
11. Members' reports should not include or exclude any material which has been suggested by
others (in particular by those instructing them) unless that Member has formed an independent
view.