Forensic Linguistics

Last week, I finished reading the book in Spanish “Atrapados por la Lengua, 50 Casos Resueltos por la Lingüística Forense” (Caught by the Language, 50 Cases solved by the Forensic Linguistics; this is my translation of the title of the book, I will correct it if I find out that the book is published in English under a different name), written by the Spanish Forensic Linguist Sheila Queralt. I had a nice time reading this fine book where languages and forensic science are the protagonists. Most of the written works by Dr Queralt are in Spanish, but here I leave the link to an interview with her in English in case you want to know more. 

Last year, I learned about the existence of forensic linguistics, a branch of the science where it is possible to solve criminal cases if you like languages. I started to research about this sunject and look for cases where the analysis of language lead to the conclusions needed to catch the perpetrator.

Forensic Linguistics is a branch of Applied Linguistics involving the examination of language evidence in a criminal or civil matter. It can be used to analyze written or spoken language to assist in the identification of suspects or witnesses and to uncover the real meaning of what they expressed.

Forensic linguists can work for the different police departments and law enforcement agencies. They can also work as independent contractors. They also can assist in civil cases, analyzing the language of a text, something useful when there’s a contract dispute.

In this book, Dr Sheila Queralt explains the different aspects of the work of a forensic linguist and provide examples of cases that were solved with the intervention of a specialist in this area.

When they analyze the language of a text, we are not talking only about handwritten texts from letters and small notes, but they have to work more often with written texts sent through the social media or those found in the Internet. In fact, Cybercrime is an area where the support of a forensic linguist is more often required. Written texts analyzed by forensic linguists could come from the suspects, victims or witnesses. Sometimes they have to analyze transcripts of police interrogations, official court transcripts and the legal jargon used.

When they analyze the spoken language, they take in consideration points such as tone, dialect, idioms, possible mother tongue, style of speech and which emotions are part of the communication

The work of professional translators and interpreters is also subjected to analysis. They can take different translations or recordings and see which terms where used by the language professionals and study the effects of their work over the final outcome. The book also describes a case where a translation was made with a Machine translation software, with bad consequences.

To know languages can be a plus if you want to work in this field. This book has cases where texts were analyzed in languages such as Spanish, English and Catalan.

Perhaps the most famous criminal case solved using forensic linguistics was the identification and arrest of the Unabomber. This man was sending homemade bombs over an 18 years period, and the FBI spent millions of dollars and countless of resources in vain. But the clues against him were in his letters and in his called “manifesto”. After the manifesto was published. David Kaczynski, recognized the writing style of his brother Ted, and contacted the FBI providing samples of his letters. One phrase catch the attention: “You can’t eat your cake and have it too”, while most people say “You can’t have your cake and eat it too”. Ted Kaczynski and the Unabomber, both used this same phrase, and an analysis of his letters determined that they have the same writing format. In other hand, the letters of the Unabomber had some typical expressions of the speech from Chicago area, same city where Kaczynski family comes from. Once Unbomber was identified, the FBI could get a search order and finally they got the evidence needed to convict this famous criminal. 

For Spanish speakers, one of the most important works of forensic linguistics was the case of Oscar Sanchez, a Spanish citizen who was extradited to Italy to face drug charges. The accusation was based on a voice recording of a phone conversation. One of the phone numbers involved was in his name. An expert confirmed that the voice in the recording belongs to Oscar Sanchez. But there was a problem with the recording: The conversation recorded was in Spanish and the expert consulted did not have a good command of the language. Later on, forensic linguists from Spain, found that there were important differences in the way Oscar Sanchez and the person recorded speak the same language, starting from the accent. Oscar Sanchez speaks Spanish with a clear accent from Spain while the drug dealer whose voice was recorded speaks Spanish with a South American accent. This and other linguistic details proved that Oscar Sanchez was innocent and he was finally released. 

Dr Queralt describe both cases I put in my article. But there are other cases that you can find on the Internet. A touristic company from Catalonia suddenly started receiving emails from an extortionist. They found out who was sending them and took action. The messages came from an employee who sent them from his own computer. He was fired. The employee sued the company stating that although those emails might come from his computer, he did not write them. He argued that somebody else could use his computer while he was absent and send them from his office. The company requested the expertise of a linguist to find out if the ex-employee indeed composed the emails or not. The emails in question were compared with other known emails and messages sent by the plaintiff. All the analyzed written texts were composed in Spanish. (Catalan is also a common language used in that environment). The expert found some linguistic peculiarities that were common in all the analyzed texts. Common mistakes using the accent marks, suppression of the letter H when using the verb “haber” (like “to have” as an auxiliary verb for perfect tenses) when used in 3^rd person (ex: “a trabajado” instead of “ha trabajado”. Haber trabajado means: to have worked). There were similar expressions and there is a clear influence of the Catalan language despite that the person who composed the emails was not a native speaker of Catalan but Spanish, who has lived in Catalonia for many years. At the end the court ruled in favour of the company.  

If you are a language lover and you can read Spanish, this book is a must. You will enjoy the way dr Queralt explains how linguistic can be applied to solve criminal and civil cases. But in case you also love to see TV series like CSI or documentaries like Medical detectives, you can imagine watching this team of forensic scientists ready to work in the next case, and with an expert in languages being part of this group. In case you are not into linguistics, I still recommend reading this book. It’s a different way to see how forensic sciences work in the real life. Its a book easy to read, detailed and for sure you will enjoy it.

In other hand, if you are a language lover looking for a career where you can apply what you know about languages, Forensic linguistics is an interesting alternative. You can read more in the internet about what this field of the forensic sciences has to offer.