Forensic Linguistic Advice, Investigation and Research

FLAIR is the consultancy arm of the Centre for Forensic Linguistics and we offer consultancy services in all areas of forensic text analysis.

We have experience in criminal and civil cases across a range of jurisdictions and have worked internationally for police and associated security agencies, private corporations, the UK Criminal Cases Review Commission and defence solicitors. We have offered evidence in cases involving murder, rape, stalking, fraud and a variety of other crimes. We have provided expert opinion on the production and authorship of disputed witness statements, threatening letters and suicide notes and of emails, internet relay chat conversations and of mobile telephone text messages. In cases where a single text is produced we may be able to provide a sociolinguistic profile of the writer including their cultural and educational background and possibly their age and gender. In comparative cases, where a range of texts of known authorship can be produced alongside the queried or disputed document, we are able to describe the likelihood of the disputed document having been written by a particular author. FLAIR consultants have also provided evidence on the assessment of a suspect's English language competence and the appropriateness of interview without an interpreter, on disputes of meaning in transcripts of covert recordings and of trademark infringements.

In plagiarism cases, copyright infringement and intellectual property theft we have provided evidence of the relationship between texts including whether or not one has been based upon another. Such cases have involved accusations of literary and academic plagiarism including work on books, journal articles, PhD theses and student essays. It has also included work on links between patent applications and internal research documents in the banking and financial sector.

All FLAIR reports are quality checked against explicit criteria and are read and commented upon by at least one other FLAIR consultant before being provided to the client. We will be happy to discuss your case and provide an estimate of cost after a preliminary examination of relevant texts.

We do not take work in forensic speech analysis including transcription of tapes or forensic speaker identification. We do not take work in forensic document analysis including the identification of marks or inks or handwriting analysis. We do not take work to comment upon the intention of a writer, for example their intention to carry through a threat expressed in a text. In all these areas we are happy to refer clients onwards to experts in the area and have excellent contacts with forensic phoneticians, document and handwriting analysts and forensic psychologists with expertise in profiling and threat analysis.

printer-friendly version