Description

How language scientists use linguistic clues to help identify anonymous authors and speakers—and keep innocent people out of prison.

An anonymous bomb threat is phoned in to a school; a kidnapper sends an untraceable ransom note; a social media post echoes the manifesto of an at-large serial bomber. When you’re trying to catch the perpetrator and all you’ve got to go on is the words themselves, you’re going to need a forensic linguist.

In this lecture, given by the first of two Ian Gordon Fellows this year, Dr Natalie Schilling explains how linguists help solve crimes and assist courts in reaching valid verdicts. Drawing from her own experiences as a linguistic investigator, Dr Schilling will explain different types of forensic linguistic analysis—author and speaker profiling, authorship attribution, and voice identification, among others—and give you the chance to analyse some language evidence yourself.