Forensic linguistics involves the application linguistic knowledge in legal settings. Legal settings within this context include police caution, legal statutes and jury proceedings. Forensic linguistic takes analyses of textual evidence such as text messages, phone calls, written documents, wills, and essays and decipher them within the accepted legal language. Furthermore, legal proceedings such as witness and detainee statements, police records, and police interview and court interactions are brought within the insights of the forensic context of law.
As an expert trained in the role of language within criminal justice system, forensic linguist takes up a number of jobs that enhance the achievement of justice. These include providing advice to the legal profession such as police, lawyers, and judiciary on the safety of evidence. These places a foreign linguist at the critical role in ensuring that justice for all parties is achieved within the realms of the law. In addition to the above, a foreign linguist act as expert witness in proceedings or court of the prosecution or defence and undertake or use research in to trends and patterns of behaviour that are influenced by linguistic and socio-linguistic factors.
The key themes that encompass the work of a forensic linguist are authenticity, truth, fairness and equality. The authorship of textual evidence and legal processes must demonstrate authenticity. The true author of the documents under examination must be ascertained with utmost accuracy. A forensic linguist must also discharge duties in fairness and equality by demonstrating high levels of linguistic competence, knowledge and practice. It is through these core competencies and key themes that enable forensic linguists to comprehend whether they understand and make themselves be understood by the court prosecutor and the defence during court proceedings.
The analyses of the manner in which forensic linguists approach their work reveal that they employ various techniques to ensure delivery of justice. These professionals collect data through observation, recordings and transcripts, speech or writing samples, and language testing and analyse the same data by examining linguistic features, discourse strategies, and socio-cultural aspects. Furthermore, forensic linguists work by examining links to other data such as language corpora and socio-cultural practices. Complex clause structures such as conditionals, elision, defining vs. non defining relative clauses and idiomatic phrases are examined by these professionals to ascertain the truth and authenticity of the legal materials. Lexical interpretation, phonological and socio-cultural issues are examined closely on the basis of the given evidence.
This career demands familiarity with legal processes and practice such as power relationships and agency. In addition to the above, it draws critical skills and knowledge that remain fundamental in discharging the duties. Forensic linguistic enhances an individual’s knowledge in techniques of plagiarism identification. The most common techniques of plagiarism detection are copy catch and turnitin. It also reinforces the capacity to raise personal awareness in linguistic and socio-linguistic issues, developing approaches for assessing and evaluating linguistic for socio-cultural awareness and competence and influences skills in undertaking analyses on changing perceptions and challenging assumptions.