Forensic Linguistics
" Words can drive men to murder.
Words can have a man sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit.
Words can tempt a woman to kill her husband for less than a dime, Words can hide motives, words can steal hearts,
words can fool us all.
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Words can turn a reasonable mind into a hungry wolf.
Yeah, make no mistake...
words have killed more men than any knife."
TrueFace Investigations: Forensic Linguistics
Forensic Linguistics is the practical application of the science of language as it applies to the law, legal processes and crime investigation. This sub discipline of Applied Linguistics is used to examine everything from court testimony, criminal and witness statements, to the language used by unknown criminal offenders in order to solve crimes.
TrueFace Investigations offers expert analysis of criminal and witness statements, linguistic evidence, and cryptic communications of letters, notes and messages left by offenders. Be it subversive handwritten notes, suspicious emails or spoken language from suspect phone calls, TrueFace Investigations is here to assist you.
Kevin is fully trained in analysing written and spoken language of criminal statements and has over 10 years' experience examining lexical choices in high stakes negotiations, assessment of subversive emails and has studied both forensic Linguistics and pragmatics with experts within the field of applied linguistics. Additionally, Kevin is educated in multiple methods of linguistic analysis such as Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), Criteria Based Content Analysis (CBCA), Six Channel Analysis in Realtime , Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)
for Criminal investigations.
He has been offered an unconditional PhD in applied forensic Linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan but is currently pursing a masters in forensic criminology .
Methods of Forensic Linguistics
There are various methods and protocols used for the investigation of language in forensic contexts.
Subjects such as morphological meaning, lexicon-grammatical ambiguity and lexical meaning as well as narrative analysis are just some of the areas forensic linguists explore when investigating language function.
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Spoken language and written language also have different individual aspects which has led to specialist subjects with the field of forensic Linguistics itself. There is for example, forensic phonetics in which the focus is upon aspects of speech as evidence.
Likewise, there are forensic linguists who focus on the various potential meanings that occur in forensic context using the sub disciple of applied linguistics known as pragmatics.
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Many forensic linguistics choose to focus on written language used by criminal offenders during a crime.
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The methods most well-known and applicable to
criminal investigations are authorship attribution and linguistic profiling.
Authorship attribution involves analysing the writings of an unknown writer in order to find similarities in the language used by a known suspect in a case,
This is what forensic linguists refer to as "idiolect".
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Linguistic profiling involves finding indicators of dialect geography, lexicography as well as sociolinguistic and psycholinguist inferences hidden within a document or forensic text.
Personal uses of a suspect's grammar, syntax, spelling and punctuation for example, provide important clues about an unknown writer and thus can assist investigations about the inferred traits of an unknown Criminal suspect.
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In the modern age forensic linguistics has been utilised to analyse suspicious emails, subversive text messages and sinister language use on the internet to commit various crimes.
Criminal profilers of various traditions have also noted the importance of understanding what offenders say to there victims during the commission of a crime.
This is known as "verbal scripting" and is often used to determine the signature behaviour and motivations of unknown offenders.
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The purpose of linguistic profiling is to discover hidden linguistic elements which can reduce the suspect pool for police detectives
and
investigative organisations.
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Linguistic Profiling
Forensic case examples:
Linguistic Evidence: Who Wrote this?
In 1996, a three-page ransom note was found in the residence of two wealthy parents of a missing six year old. The mother of the missing girl called 911 to report her daughter missing. Upon detectives initiating a search of the residence the father "suddenly" found his daughter's body in the basement. She had been struck in the head causing her death,
The following example on the right is the ransom note reported to be found on the back stairwell in the house...
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Both forensic linguists and document examiners determined that the ransom note matched both the mother's idiolect and her handwriting.
CASE: Ramsay Ransom Note
in 1947 after the mutilated body of a young 22 year old aspiring actress was found in a small park area in a small neighbourhood in Los Angeles, the victim's killer began communicating with police detectives and the media. The letter on the left is an early example of just one of the letters the killer sent during the investigation.
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The case remains unsolved.
CASE: THE BLACK DAHLIA
In 1945, the following was found written on the wall of a female victim's apartment not far from her body. The offender had used the victim's lipstick to write the message.
Several more homicides where to follow and the offender was soon known as "The Lipstick killer" due to the newspaper reports of the case.
The following is an actual crime scene photo of the offender's message to police...
CASE: Heiren's "Lipstick" Messages
CASE: THE ZODIAC
Between 1966 and 1978 in northern California a series of serial homicides occurred. Due to the handwritten communications by the offender, the Homicides were attributed to the man now known as "The Zodiac".
spanning across 12 years the first handwritten note on the left is one of first letters the Zodiac sent to the Riverside Police.
The notes were sent after the murder the offender's first officially established victim, 18 year old cheerleader Cheri jo Bates.
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More notes where sent to the Riverside Press-Enterprise and the victim's father. As the murder count increased so did the length of the letters. Many more letters and cards were sent which included cryptic ciphers and elaborate taunting messages seemingly packed with clues,
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To date the 340-cipher letter of the case has yet to be cracked despite the most well qualified cryptologists and codebreakers in the world working to solve the code.
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Next to the Whitechapel murders of 1888 committed by the offender known as"Jack the Ripper",
the Zodiac case is perhaps the most well known historical serial homicide case
with puzzling cryptic linguistic evidence.
The case remains unsolved.
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CASE: The son of Sam
Between 1976 to 1977 the New York boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx had a series of seemingly random homicides shook the city of New York.
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The Press added to the panic with reports of a "44 caliber killer" who prowler the streets killing seemingly selecting young couples as his victims.
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The case is now known as the "Son of Sam" Murders. There were numerous letters sent to the New York Daily News and police as well as messages left at the crime scenes.
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The case took a bizarre twist when the offender was caught. First claiming that he was motivated by demons, offender David Berkowitz claimed his neighbour's dog told him to commit the murders.
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Later Berkowitz confessed this was a false and confessed to being part of a violent cult who were committing the murders as part of their occult rituals.
Despite abundant evidence that there were in fact multiple offenders involved in the murders the media's version of the crimes continues to obscure the actual evidence in the case.
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The message on the right is one of several messages found in the offenders residence.
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Kevin R. Garnett MSc..
official member
of
The International Association of Forensic Linguistics
and
The International Association of Forensic Criminologists
IMPORTANT NOTE!
FORENSIC LINGUISTICS AND FORENSIC DOCUMENT EXAMINATION ARE VERY DIFFERENT.
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FORENSIC LINGUISTS LOOK CLOSELY AT LANGUAGE WITHIN A DOCUMENT OR TEXT.
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DOCUMENT EXAMINERS LOOK AT HANDWRITING, PRESSURE, INK, ETC TO DETERMINE OTHER
FORENSIC CLUES.
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