Inaugural Lecture by prof. Malcolm Coulthard,
Director of the Centre for Forensic Linguistics

13 May 2008, 6:30 pm, Warwick Lecture Theatre, Aston University Main Building

The Linguist as Detective and Expert Witness

Linguists are ever more frequently being asked to help the police and the courts when there is a dispute over the authorship of a written text - suicide note, abusive or threatening letter, email or text message and even research questionnaire! In this lecture I will outline the underlying concepts linguists use to approach such data and illustrate with examples from real cases including the recent trial of David Hodgson for murder.

One area of disputed authorship which interests academics is plagiarism and I will outline the linguistic principles underlying the Copycatch Investigator detection program, now being used by UCAS - the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service - to check all personal statements. I will illustrate this section with extracts from Undergraduate student essays and UCAS personal statements.

While most forensic linguists enjoy being detectives, they find acting as expert witnesses in Court a very stressful and usually frustrating experience. I will give a linguistic explanation for this and at the same time illustrate how it is possible to present linguistic evidence clearly to a jury if one is allowed to do so.