Nicci Macleod

Aston University · Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics

In this chapter we seek to elucidate the potential of linguistic analysis in the undercover pursuit of criminals online. We examine the relationship between language and online identity performance and address the question of what linguistic analysis is necessary and sufficient to describe an online linguistic persona to the extent it could be succ...

Cambridge Core - Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics - Language and Online Identities - by Tim Grant

The majority of practicing forensic linguists working on questions of authorship subscribe in some form to a theory of linguistic identity that relies on a view of language as essentially a product of sociolinguistic experiences and membership of particular identity categories. On the other hand, discourse analysts tend to adopt a social interactio...

One way in which linguists have been able to o er their expertise to undercover online policing in England and Wales is assisting police o cers in the assumption of alternative identities in order to apprehend o enders in the context of the online sexual abuse and grooming of children. With reference to the historical Instant Messaging (IM) logs of...

One limitation widely noted in sociolinguistics is the tension presented by the ‘observer׳s paradox’ (Labov, 1972), i.e. the notion that everyday language is susceptible to contamination by observation (Stubbs, 1983: 224). The observer׳s paradox has been perceived to present significant challenges to traditional sociolinguistic researchers seeking...

One routine "common sense" means of explaining sexual violence is the ideologically facilitated tendency to blame the victim, and previous research has identified patterns of victim-blaming in the talk of perpetrators of rape, and also in that of the professionals who deal with rape in their day-to-day work. This article focuses on the discursive r...

This article uses a research project into the online conversations of sex offenders and the children they abuse to further the arguments for the acceptability of experimental work as a research tool for linguists. The research reported here contributes to the growing body of work within linguistics that has found experimental methods to be useful i...

In this chapter, we discuss the interviewing of adult witnesses and victims with reference to how the extant psychological and linguistic literature has contributed to understanding and informing interview practice over the past 20 years and how it continues to support practical and procedural improvements. We have only scratched the surface of thi...

Broadly defined, “forensic linguistics” refers to the study of the interface between language and the law.Keywords:discourse analysis;intercultural communication;forensic linguistics;interpretation

Lawrence M. Solan (1952– ) is Don Forchelli Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, and well known for his contributions to the field of language and law with his books The Language of Judges (1993) and Speaking of Crime: The Language of Criminal Justice with Peter Tiersma (Solan & Tiersma, 2005), as well as numerous scholarly articles.

The 1641 Depositions are testimonies collected from (mainly Protestant) witnesses documenting their experiences of the Irish uprising that began in October 1641. As news spread across Europe of the events unfolding in Ireland, reports of violence against women became central to the ideological construction of the barbarism of the Catholic rebels. A...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the quality of evidence collected during interview. Current UK national guidance on the interviewing of victims and witnesses recommends a phased approach, allowing the interviewee to deliver their free report before any questioning takes place, and stipulating that during this free report the inter...

The methods used by the UK Police to investigate complaints of rape have unsurprisingly come under much scrutiny in recent times, with a 2007 joint report on behalf of HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary concluding that there were many areas where improvements should be made. The research reported here form...