The work of the Forensic Linguist

Forensic linguistics is the investigation of authorship for forensic purposes. During the past ten years there has been a rapid growth in the frequency with which lawyers and courts in a number of countries have called upon the expertise of linguists in cases of disputed authorship. The texts examined range from questioned suicide notes, through anonymous letters, mobile phone text messages and contemporaneous police records of both interviews and confession statements, to the essays of students suspected of plagiarism.

Malcolm Coulthard is Professor of Forensic Linguistics & Director of the Centre for Forensic Linguistics School of Languages & Social Sciences, Aston University.

For more information see:

The work of the Forensic Linguist
Extract from lecture ‘The Linguist as Detective and Expert Witness’
Tim Grant on Forensic Linguistics
Website of the Centre for Forensic Linguistics
The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics