Summer School 2009

The ninth edition of our Summer School starts tomorrow. We are expecting 20 students from 11 countries and have planned 18 sessions and two special presentations. Among our guest tutors this year are Prof. Lawrence M. Solan of Brooklyn Law School, Prof. Peter Tiersma of Loyola Law School, and James F. Fitzgerald, formerly of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The programme is available here.

\ Posted on 28 June 2009

CFL at IAFL9

It is now just over three weeks until the ninth biennial conference of the International Association of Forensic Linguists, to be held in Amsterdam from 6 to 9 July 2009. CFL will be represented by ten papers - follow this link for abstracts. There will also be a CFL poster session devoted to our recent casework and research.

\ Posted on 11 June 2009

Summer School update

Registration for the ninth edition of the International Summer School in Forensic Linguistic Analysis is now closed. Given the nature of the course and our desire to foster optimal standards of classroom interaction we can only accept 20 participants each year. Please contact us if you would like to be placed on the reserve list or find out about next year's edition.

\ Posted on 18 May 2009

CFL at the iIIRG Conference

At the annual conference of the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group at Teesside University, held from 14 to 16 April with some 150 participants, Malcolm Coulthard provided a keynote address and Kate Haworth, Nicci MacLeod and Yvonne Fowler presented papers. Immediately following the conference Malcolm, Tim Grant and Krzysztof Kredens gave a one-and-a-half-day Forensic Linguistics Masterclass to a group consisting mainly of police officers, which covered aspects of forensic lingusitic analysis and included sessions on 'working with an interpreter'.

\ Posted on 17 April 2009

Aston Interpreter Network launched

Last week the first meeting of the Aston Interpreter Network was attended by 12 interpreters representing some 20 languages. Created by CFL's Yvonne Fowler and Krzysztof Kredens, the network is meant to foster a community of public service interpreters, particularly those working in legal contexts, and provide a forum for exchange of ideas and best practice between academics and practitioners. If you are a practising interpreter and would like to join us, please contact us.

\ Posted on 25 March 2009

Police training day in Wales

As part of CFL's professional training programme, Tim Grant and Krzysztof Kredens delivered an intensive day-course in forensic linguistics to trainee Interview Advisors at the Gwent Police Training Centre near Newport in Wales. The course covered elements of forensic text analysis, interviewing with an interpreter and a discussion on choosing and working with expert witnesses.

\ Posted on 12 March 2009

New member of staff

We are delighted to announce that Kate Haworth will be joining us from Monday, March 9th. Her training and experience as a barrister will add an extra dimension to our work and we hope that some of the findings presented in her recently completed PhD on police investigative interviews will provide the basis for an application for research funding. Kate is not entirely new to the Centre, having taught on the two most recent editions of our Summer School.

\ Posted on 7 March 2009

CSI:SFX

As part of CFL's ongoing commitment to community engagement, Krzysztof Kredens provided an introduction to forensic linguistics to 80 students at St Francis Xavier Sixth Form College in London on Friday, 13 February. His presentation was delivered at a conference on English language organised annually by Dan Clayton, an English teacher at the college. The theme this year was CSI:SFX...

\ Posted on 17 February 2009

CFL Interviews update

Two new interviews have just been posted in the CFL Interviews section of our website. Nicci MacLeod spoke to two recent visitors to Aston, Gavin Oxburgh about his interest in investigative interviewing, and Maria Teresa Turell about forensic linguistcs in Spain and an ambitious authorship analysis project she is in charge of at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. More interviews with forensic linguists will be added soon.

\ Posted on 15 January 2009

A recent case

Marcus Alder was sentenced this week to 14 years' imprisonment for firearms, fraud and extortion offences. Tim Grant provided evidence in the October trial held in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. Amongst his activities Alder had pretended to be the lover of a wealthy recluse, Philip Tyssen-Gee. Tim's evidence was that Alder wrote with a consistent and distinctive style and that features of this writing style could be found in a suicide note that was found in Tyssen-Gee's home. Alder also pretended to work for UK security services and had produced an MI5 identity card complete with spelling mistakes. The case has been reported on the BBC news website.

\ Posted on 18 December 2008

Upcoming talks at CFL

We are pleased to announce two upcoming talks by visitors to the Centre for Forensic Linguistics. On 26 November, Samuel Tomblin of Lancaster University will report on his research into lay judgements of authorship. Two weeks later, on 10 December, Gavin Oxburgh will talk about investigative interviewing. Both are open events; if you would like to attend either of them please contact us.

\ Posted on 19 November 2008

IIIRG Annual Conference

Details of the annual International Investigative Interviewing Research Group conference are now available from the Group's website. The conference, whose 2009 theme will be 'Putting Theory into Practice: The Dilemmas of Law and Psychology', will be immediately followed by a Forensic Linguistics Masterclass in Investigative Interviewing, co-run by the IIIRG and CFL.

\ Posted on 22 October 2008
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Forensic Text Analysis Day Course

It is now possible to register for this one-day event, to be held on 12 December 2008 at Aston University. The course will examine the techniques and findings of authorship analysis and introduce students to the potential and limitations of the approaches used. For more details, follow this link.

\ Posted on 18 October 2008
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Summer School 2008

Last week, the eighth edition of the International Summer School in Forensic Linguistic Analysis was held at Aston University. The Centre for Forensic Linguistics hosted 20 participants, who travelled from Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Germany, Lithuania, Nigeria, Oman, Portugal, Spain, the USA and within the UK. The teaching team included CFL's Malcolm Coulthard, Tim Grant and Krzysztof Kredens, as well as four guest tutors. Eighteen 1.5-hour teaching sessions (including lab-based practical ones) were provided; the participants were also treated to a guided tour of the Birmingham Crown Court in Newton Street, where they had the chance to sit in on proceedings.

\ Posted on 26 September 2008
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The day after...

Following his BA Festival of Science lecture, Tim Grant's research into text messaging has attracted widespread attention from the British media. The links below will take you to some of the more interesting articles based on the many interviews Tim gave last week. It's interesting to see how what is essentially the same issue has received a different treatment in the different news stories. Critical Discourse Analysis, anyone?

BBC News
The Daily Telegraph
The Independent
The Financial Times
The Scotsman
The Daily Mail
Liverpool Daily Post

UPDATE: Tim has also been interviewed for Digital Planet, a weekly programme on BBC World Service. To listen, follow this link.

\ Posted on 8 September 2008
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A play about a forensic linguist on BBC Radio 4

Today's Afternoon Play on BBC Radio 4 told the story of a Matthew Coleman, who 'has a sideline developing the art and science of linguistic forensics' and helps solve a murder case. The play will be available from BBC's iplayer for another seven days.

\ Posted on 5 September 2008
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A forensic linguistics title nominated for the BAAL Book Prize

Malcolm Coulthard and Alison Johnson's An introduction to forensic linguistics - Language as Evidence has been shortlisted for the British Association for Applied Linguistics annual prize for the outstanding book in the field published in English in the world in 2007. The prize will be awarded at the next BAAL conference, to be held from 11 to 13 September 2008 at Swansea University.

\ Posted on 25 July 2008
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CFL enters into collaboration with iIIRG

CFL has entered into an official collaboration with the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group. The iIIRG brings together academics and practitioners who carry out research in investigative interviewing of victims, witnesses and suspects of crime. The group's focus on strong interaction between academia and practitioners is a major benefit as it helps to shape research to focus more directly on practitioner issues. The iIIRG currently has strong links with the University of Teesside and the Norwegian Police University College. The Memorandum of Agreement signed between CFL and iIIRG on 15th July 2008, allows both organisations to build on and formalise a collaboration which already involves joint research initiatives and data sharing, teaching exchanges and the running of practitioner conferences and workshops. The second iIIRG annual conference, to be held at the University of Teesside from 14th to 16th April 2009, will be followed by a 1.5-day Masterclass in Linguistics and Investigative Interviewing run by CFL.

\ Posted on 22 July 2008
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Text messaging study - can you help?

Tim Grant's Joseph Lister Award lecture at the Festival of Science of the British Association for the Advancement of Science will be held at the University of Liverpool between 12 and 1pm on Monday 8th September. His talk on 'Txt crimes, sex crimes and murder - the science of Forensic Linguistics' will be based on authentic data, which Tim has been collecting on this website. If you would like to attend the lecture, tickets can be obtained here. To contribute text messages to the data collection please follow this link and fill in the simple form. You do not need to attend the lecture to contribute data but if you do your messages may be analysed as part of the lecture!

\ Posted on 16 July 2008
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Expert Linguists in US Supreme Court

On June 26th 2008, the US Supreme Court overturned by a majority of 5-4 the Washington D.C. ban on handguns as unconstitutional. Writing the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia referred to the linguistic analyses supporting the D.C. law as 'unknown this side of the looking glass (except, apparently, in some courses on Linguistics)'. This case is an interesting example of how two sides (majority and minority opinion) can look at the same piece of text and arrive at opposite conclusions. The Opinion and Dissent documents are available from the FindLaw website.

\ Posted on 07 July 2008
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PhD opportunities at Aston University

Aston University is inviting applications for fees-only bursaries for study at the School of Languages and Social Sciences. Forensic linguistics is one of the eligible areas - for details please follow this link .

\ Posted on 20 June 2008
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Working with an interpreter workshop

It is now possible to register for this event, to be held on 16 June 2008 at Aston University in Birmingham city centre. Please download the registration form - in pdf format here or as an MS Word document here. For details of the programme, see the events section of this website.

\ Posted on 26 May 2008
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Forensic linguistics in the news (again!)

A feature on the work of forensic linguistic experts has appeared on the BBC News website today. Tim Grant was interviewed by Kathryn Edwards and spoke about his evidence in a case involving a terrorist suspect, as well as the activities at the Centre for Forensic Linguistics. Tim made it clear the idea of a linguistic fingerprint should be treated with caution. Explaining the possible weight of forensic linguistic evidence he said, "It's like giving a description of someone who has red hair and blue eyes. That's something quite unusual and can help you build a picture of the suspect, but it's not enough to convict someone on." The story is available from the BBC News website.

\ Posted on 21 May 2008
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Forensic Linguistics Summer School update

The eighth edition of the International Summer School in Forensic Linguistic Analysis will take place between 15 and 19 September 2008 at Aston University. The programme is now available here. To register download the registration form - in pdf format here or as an MS Word document here.

\ Posted on 21 May 2008
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CFL officially launched

The CFL launch event on Tuesday attracted over 70 participants, an eclectic mix of linguists (including expert forensic linguists), forensic consultants, police officers and lawyers. We'd like to thank everybody for the interesting questions, inspiring comments and stimulating coffee-break discussions. We will soon be posting pictures from the day on this website.

\ Posted on 15 May 2008
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Forensic linguistics on BBC Radio 4

An interview with Tim Grant for 'Word of Mouth', a programme exploring the way in which English is used nowadays in a variety of contexts, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 today. When interviewed by Michael Rosen last week, Tim covered many areas of forensic linguistics but the final edit concentrated on investigative techniques and discussed the Jenny Nicholl murder trial, sociolinguistic profiling of authors from written texts and the UNABOMBER case.

\ Posted on 06 May 2008
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CFL Launch Symposium update

We are pleased to announce that prof. M. Teresa Turell of Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona has accepted our invitation to give a talk at the launch symposium. The final programme for the event on 13 May 2008 is now ready and available in the events section of this website.

\ Posted on 25 April 2008
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A lecture on forensic linguistics in Brazil

On April 4th Malcolm Coulthard gave a lecture on forensic linguistics at the Catholic University of Pelotas in the south of Brazil. Despite the event being billed for 6.30-8.00 on a Friday evening, some 300 academic staff and students turned up, some of whom had travelled by coach from a university over an hour away. A week later Malcolm received an email from a student saying Brazil now has its own Malcolm, a local professor who has developed his own plagiarism detection software.

\ Posted on 18 April 2008
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IIIRG Conference

Dr Tim Grant appeared as an invited speaker giving a keynote address to the first International Investigative Interviewing Research Group conference held at the University of Derby on 26 and 27 March 2008. The talk "Linguistic insights into the Investigative Interview" was delivered to an audience of about ninety police officers, practitioners and academics. Research presentations were delivered by delegates from across the world including representatives from China, Australia and across Europe. The other plenary speakers were Dr. Rebecca Milne of University of Portsmouth, speaking on "Investigative Interviewing: Harmonising research and practice", Professor Mark Kebbell of Griffith University, Australia, speaking on "How can suspected sex offenders be interviewed effectively and ethically?", and Gary Shaw, National Interview Advisor from the UK National Police Improvement Agency speaking on "The revised ACPO interviewing strategy".

PowerPoint slides from Tim Grant's presentation can be downloaded here.

\ Posted on 3 April 2008
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CFL Launch Event

The new Centre for Forensic Linguistics at Aston University will be launched on 13 May 2008. The Centre, the first of its type in the world, combines leading-edge research, postgraduate and professional instruction and investigative forensic practice. The one-day launch conference with invited delegates from local and national police forces, the legal profession and academia will demonstrate the range and depth of the Centre's activities.

From the Centre, Malcolm Coulthard, Professor of Forensic Linguistics, will talk on 'The Work of the Forensic Linguist', Dr Krzysztof Kredens about the role of the interpreter in legal contexts and Dr Tim Grant about 'Investigative Linguistics as a Forensic Science'. In addition, Larry Solan, Don Forchelli Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School and former President of the International Association of Forensic Linguists, will give a lecture entitled 'The Lawyer as Insincere Actor'. In the evening, following the Official Opening of the Centre by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Coulthard will deliver his inaugural lecture, 'The Linguist as Detective and Expert Witness'.

\ Posted on 18 March 2008
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Language rights in court

An interesting case involving language rights is to be heard before a South African court. Last October, Ntombenhle Nkosi, Pan South African Language Board Chief Executive Officer, complained to the Equality Court against her son's school, where his mother tongue, IsiZulu, is taught as a second additional language. Ntombenhle Nkosi claims that her son is being discriminated against because, unlike pupils with Afrikaans or English as their first language, he receives substandard education in his native Isi Zulu. Accounts of the case can be found here and here.

\ Posted on 17 March 2008
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Text messages in the courtroom

Malcolm Coulthard provided expert evidence in a murder trial last week. His analysis of text messages alleged by the police to have been sent from the victim's mobile phone by the accused man was heard before Teesside Crown Court. An interesting account of the case and the role of forensic linguistics in the investigation and court proceedings can be found here.

\ Posted on 25 January 2008
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