Need your help for my research in forensic linguistics

Joined
May 24, 2001
Messages
443
Dear friends,

I have been working for a long time on a research paper, doctoral thesis in forensic linguistics in English. Part of my research is the analysis of written texts and style of the author and the identification of the authors of anonymous threat letters. Since I write my research paper in English I need test persons who would like to participate in this project. I finished the first part, namely style analysis through the gracious help of some forumites in SFI. Since I do not post there anymore, and I like this forum I would like to ask you for help.

1) I will analyze the style of the interested forumites by analyzing the posts they have written so far, some of them.

2) Test persons will send me threat letters asking me for money and the place I should put there and so on. I will define the whole variables. Since we work under lab conditions, please do not use any proof reading program on your computers.

3) I will analyze the two sets and try to establish whether there are any clues indicating the same authorship and hence I can establish authorship attribution.

Would anyone be interested?
For your information I work full time in the financial industry and this research paper is only because of my academic interests and because I want to finish my higher degree.

I will send a copy of my research after publication to all test persons.

And when I am finished with this I am planning to write a book on Indo-Persian swords and I will also dedicate a copy to these special friends.

Regards,

Manoucher:)
 
I cannot speak for other forumites, but I would feel a bit uncomfortable sending a threatening letter to anyone, even in jest or under test conditions. If such a letter were taken out of context...

Sorry, Manoucher. Although it sounds like a doozy of an experiment, I must decline.

Auf weidersehen,

Keith
 
Thanks a lot Keith for posting and I know that it feels kind of strange to do this. This is for pure academic research and I can provide everybody with the name of the professor and university in Germany. We can get a lot of people in the USA and UK for style analysis. We found some in Germany who would do that in German, but we cannot use these letters since there are in German!

Thanks a lot anyhow.

Regards,

Manoucher:)
 
I think this would be an interesting project. I want to know

-- How much it pays? In USD?
-- And when?
-- And where do your children go to school?
-- And what is your home address?
-- And what room in your house do you sleep in?
-- And do you have an alarm system? If so what kind and where is the control panel.....
-- How much cash do you have in that wall safe? Jewelry? Bearer Bonds?
-- Do you have any rare HI Khuks? (Have to get in a khuk reference, this is the HI Forum)

Or else!

:p :p :rolleyes: :confused:

I do want to know more.
Bill Marsh
 
Manoucher

I don't think you're going to find very many participants due to legal considerations.

I'm not sure I understand the parameters of the experiment in any case. I tend to write verbose postings, but if I were trying to exhort money I would simply write - 'If you do not leave [x amount of y currency] in [z location] I will [insert threat]'?

Since you mention not using proof-reading software - I suspect you might be looking for peculiarities of spelling?

It seems to me that the basic idea is can one correlate two different types of writing (two different styles) with a single author - could you recast the test into writing a business letter or some other (non-threatening) style?

--B.
 
Manoucher,
The United States National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency monitor Internet traffic (including emails) for keywords associated with terrorist activities (including kidnapping and ransom). Meaning no offense, but Germany has been associated with terrorist activities since the Munich Olympics, right through the 9/11 attacks. I am afraid that your research project could subject its participants to unpleasant encounters with agents of the US government. Good luck, but no, thanks.
Berk
 
Sounds intersting to me.

It would something I would talk about, not something I would do, with someone overseas.

It's the legal side of the project and vagueness of your "post" that has me concerned.

Sorry, but unless I could help you with your research without legal issuses, I think you're on your own.
 
Dear Friends,

thank you for your posts. My project is the style analysis. Partly it is based on spelling mistakes checks and some style variables. I could chaneg it to business letters as well, that would not be the problem.

I understand your concerns, but believe me I am a very harmless academic guy:) . The threating letters will only be simple ones and not in the realm of big crime issue.

I guess I should change the subject of my research!

Thanks anyhow.

Regards,

manoucher
 
Where is Blues? He would probably know alot about potential problems with this. It sounds like possible trouble to me. Sorry.
 
Man, you may end up with an empty in basket. One of the problems I see is when you solicit something like this the sender knows it is a staged effort and I believe that staged efforts regardless of whether they be a threat or concocted business letter are never the same as the real thing.
 
Amu Bill,

Exactly that is our research problem. A very good point. I have been trying to tackle this problem for a long time to no avail. Let's put a small part of my research question here so everyone understands what is all about. Please do not share this with our competing universities ;) :

"Hard sciences are not the only methods which have been used by forensic scientists. As a soft science, psychological profiling has been systematically developed and applied in the USA to help law enforcement officers to catch criminals by investigating the crime scenes and establishing psychological profiles and thus narrowing down the pool of suspects (Douglas & Olshaker, 1995). The analysis of the language has also been an accepted method in police investigations. In an empirical research, 300 people were asked to write short texts about asking a cashier to hand over the money and these texts were analyzed subsequently. There were not even two texts which showed similarities in contents (Steinke, 1990a:324). This offers a promising way for forensic linguistic evidence.
There are lots of criticisms of forensic linguistics (especially in the field of analyzing written texts); however, one should be careful in criticizing this field. We cannot say that this field is useless. As we have seen above, other fields of forensic investigations are neither perfect nor complete. They also have to go through major improvements and changes. In addition, they are controversial, too. On the other hand, criticisms help forensic linguists to be more careful in their analyses and to find better ways of improving their methods. But, it doesn't mean that they should stop working in this field altogether. In criticizing forensic linguistics, one should not ask whether "forensic linguistic text analysis" is possible and hence it could be used as evidence in the courtroom (Kniffka, 1992:191). This is an overgeneralization. One has to differentiate between different cases. As Kniffka (1996:27) puts it „forensic linguistics is neither "all nonsense“, as one general linguistics colleague flatly stated, nor is it a magic cure“. Forensic linguistics is not "armchair" linguistics. It has to analyze real-world cases and try to get hand-on experience from them. One can learn forensic linguistic text analysis only by doing it (Kniffka, 1992:192). Another important issue of criticism is related to major mistakes and blunders which forensic linguists made in the past. A forensic linguistic text analysis should not be based on one and two certain linguistic features only. One has to apply a holistic approach towards language analysis. Otherwise, we will experience the same blunders which were made in the past. In one case, a forensic linguist found the unusual orthography of "des weiteren" in contrast to the standard "desweiteren" in German as a significant feature for identifying the suspect as the author of an unknown text of a terrorist group. The interesting point is that he made the same mistake in writing his testimony himself. Based on this testimony, the suspect was kept for two years in custody and then a court had to declare the testimony, which was based on the identification of a single linguistic feature, as meaningless and not enough for convicting the suspect (Brückner, 1992:230-271; Wisnewski, Landgraeber and Sieker, 50-9).
This is a good lesson for forensic linguistic analysis. In spite of being a sad and hard lesson, we know now that forensic linguistic text analysis cannot only be based on the identification of a single linguistic feature. All features have to be investigated and be put into correlation with each other. As we will see later, this is one of the tenets of modern forensic linguistic text analysis. FLDD (Forensic Linguistic Differential Diagnosis) is based on an analysis of a conjunction of configurations (Kniffka, 1996:75-123).
Like any other field of applied linguistics, the problem of forensic linguistics is twofold. On the one hand, there are many researchers on the theoretical side who are not really willing to work and cooperate in the real world. However, as Kniffka (1996:28) points out it is much more important to apply linguistic methods for language analysis to real-world problems and offer some help for the people involved and the judiciary than conducting detailed theoretical analyses of sentences and utterances, involving enormous scientific efforts in a seminar in the "ivory tower". On the other hand, there are many so-called experts of language who don't have any theoretical background in linguistics and work in practice (Grewendorf, 1990:247). These people have done a big disservice to forensic linguistics as a scientific field. In an applied field, we cannot do without solid theoretical concepts and methodology and at the same time as Kniffka (1990b:484) puts it we cannot rely on "heuristic casuistry" by applying our common sense to analyze written texts. Both methods, namely theoretical and applied linguistics have to be combined with each other and make up a solid framework for forensic linguistic text analysis.
The other problem of forensic linguistic methods is that these methods are only able to make probabilistic judgments and therefore are criticized by some lawyers who are used to their deterministic statements based on the "yes-no" questions (Gibbons, 1994:323). The concept of probability in stylistic analysis is very important since according to Dolezel (1969:10), the foundations of the statistical theory of style can be summarized in a simple statement: style is a probabilistic concept. However, making a case for deterministic statements only is not realistic since many legal judgments are made "on the balance of the probabilities" (Gibbons, 1994:323). On the other hand, it is important to take into consideration that the judicial notion of probability is polycriterial and not only restricted to the single criterion of mathematical (Pascallian) probability (McMenamin, 1993:51). Miron (1981:406) also emphasizes that the determination of a common source for two or more communications must be probabilistic in nature since the speech and writing of the same individual might differ from one occasion to another."
Besides, as McMenamin (1993:50) points out evidence from stylistics is demonstrative (real) in two ways: first, written language can speak for itself and second analysis of these documents can be represented in summaries, charts and diagrams. Evidence of writing style is regarded as substantial and thus having probative force and legal significance. However, it is important to take into consideration that in spite of having strong substantive value in some cases, stylistic evidence can never have absolute probative value (McMenamin, 1993:51). We have also to be aware of the fact that stylistic evidence could serve as circumstantial evidence and not as a direct evidence. The difference between these two types of evidence is that direct evidence gives the investigators clear direction and focus relevant to some event or action, such as a latent finger print, whereas the circumstantial evidence offers direction but lacks distinct focus (Bevel and Ross, 1997:21).


For our website in UK go to:

http://www.builder.bham.ac.uk/forensiclinguistics/welcome.asp


for consulting firms operating in this field see:

http://www.thetext.co.uk


for seeking terrorists using anthrax see:

http://www.thetext.co.uk/anthrax.pdf


for a link of lists see:

http://wwwscience.murdoch.edu.au/teaching/m235/forensiclinguistics.htm


for a related field forensic semiotics see:

http://www.cyberprofessional.com/lingo


I hope I could clarify a little. We forensic linguists are only good guys and I have a double dgree one in Business Administration and one in English Linguistics. The first one I use for my job in banking industry and the second I am trying to get my PhD in. Hope this helps my friends.

Regards,

Manoucher

:)
 
Manoucher,
I fear that your discipline would fail to meet the Daubert test for admissibility currently announced by the US Supreme Court, and followed in most state jurisdictions. Needs a lot of empirical validation and peer review before it will ever be accepted in American courts. I frankly am skeptical about the prospects. With all due respect, don't quit your day job.
Berk
 
No I will not quit my job. You will be interested that this has been used in the USA in many cases more than in Europe. Dr. Shuy, an Ameriacn, was the trend-setter and Dr. Miron works for FBI doing the same thing I think should be part of the BSU (behavioral science unit). I think this unit was set up by Douglas (read his book "Mindhunter").
Thanks for the link. Financial industry is much more rewarding I just want to get my advanced degree, something done for the family;), you know what I mean.

Manoucher
 
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