International Association of Forensic Linguists Tenth Biennial Conference

Date: Monday 11th - Thursday 14th July 2011

Venue: Lakeside Conference Centre, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

TO REGISTER FOLLOW >>THIS LINK.

The Conference Brochure IS NOW AVAILABLE and can be dowloaded here. Please note the programme contained therein is still subject to a few changes and should not be treated as final. We will post the final version on Sunday 10 July.

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Registration is now open for the tenth international conference of The International Association of Forensic Linguists (IAFL10). The conference will be held at the Centre for Forensic Linguistics, Aston University, U.K, and will be based entirely on Aston's attractive campus in the heart of Birmingham, including delegate accommodation. Delegates will therefore have easy access to all conference activities, the extensive campus facilities and all the amenities of Birmingham city centre right on their doorstep. Aston also enjoys excellent transport links via road, rail and air, with Birmingham International Airport only a short distance away. The conference dinner will be held at another internationally famous local attraction, Aston Villa Football Club, offering fine dining with a stunning view of the famous pitch.

Confirmed plenary speakers

Prof. Ray Bull: Professor of Forensic Psychology, University of Leicester, UK
Prof. Ron Butters: Professor Emeritus of English and Cultural Anthropology, Duke University, USA, and President of the International Association of Forensic Linguists
David Allen Green: Lawyer and writer; legal correspondent of the New Statesman; blogs as JackofKent; head of media practice at Preiskel & Co. He is an active advocate for the reform of English libel law.
Daniel Greenberg: Parliamentary Counsel for the UK Government 1991-2010; now Parliamentary Counsel at Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP; General Editor of Annotated Statutes, Westlaw UK and Editor of Craies on Legislation, Stroud's Judicial Dictionary and Jowitt's Dictionary of English Law.
Dr Martha Komter: Lecturer in Dutch Language and Culture, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Prof. Peter Patrick: Professor of Sociolinguistics, University of Essex, UK
Prof. Roger Shuy: Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, Georgetown University, USA

Call for papers

The conference will be a forum for the discussion of all aspects of forensic linguistics/language and law including, but not limited to, the following:

Legal Languages

The history of legal languages
The role of literacy in legal languages
Written legal genres (including warnings)
Critical approaches to legal languages
Language education for law professionals

Legal Discourse

Courtroom, police and prison language
Investigative interviewing
Bilingual courtrooms and second language issues within the legal system
Power and common law examination
Language addressed to the judge and jury in common law courtrooms
The readability/comprehensibility of legal documents
Interviews with children in the legal system
The communicative challenges of 'vulnerable' witnesses

Language minorities and the legal system

Language testing of asylum seekers
Language and disadvantage before the law
Courtroom interpreting and translating

Law on language

Language rights
The right to silence
Offensive language/Group vilification

Investigative linguistics and language evidence

Forensic phonetics and speaker identification
Linguistic determination of nationality
Authorship analysis and plagiarism
Computational author identification or profiling
Trademarks

(1) INDIVIDUAL PAPERS are invited for presentations of 20 minutes, with a further 10 minutes allowed for questions. Abstracts should be 250-300 words long and should be submitted via this form. Unsuccessful proposals may be offered to be presented alternatively as a poster (see below).

(2) COLLOQUIA, scheduled for 2-hour blocks, with a maximum of two linked sessions. Organisers may organise as they choose, but time should be allocated for presentations, discussion and audience response. Organisers serve as the liaison between participants and the conference organisers. Proposals will also be reviewed by the scientific committee. Proposals should be 250-300 words long, with an indication of participants and a brief description of their contribution. They should be submitted via this form.

(3) POSTERS. Proposals for posters should be up to 250 words long. Posters should be of A0 size (841mm x 1189mm) in portrait orientation. Posters may be accepted for research projects (for example from student dissertations) where no data has yet been collected.

(4) GRADUATE PROJECT WHIRLWIND. It is proposed that we hold a session of 1.5 hours designed to enable current PhD researchers and graduate students (and recent graduates of such programmes) to make contact with others who may be facing similar issues in their research and receive advice from more experienced researchers. The session will comprise a series of strictly timed 5 minute slots where presenters might wish to speak about how they got access to sensitive data, how they overcame a particular analysis problem or how their research question changed over the course of their PhD. The five minute slots will be interspersed with 10 minute discussion sessions. To participate in the whirlwind no abstract is required, and you may of course submit an abstract for an individual presentation, colloquia or poster, alongside your participation in the whirlwind. If you would be interested in participating in such a session please indicate your interest on the electronic admission form and we will contact you with further details nearer the conference.

Scientific Committee

Janet Ainsworth, Ron Butters, Janet Cotterill, Diana Eades, Phil Gaines, Chris Heffer, Alison Johnson, Frances Rock, Larry Solan, Peter Tiersma.
Chair: Malcolm Coulthard
Secretary: Sam Tomblin

Registration

To register online, please follow this link.

Fees

Early bird rate:

Student IAFL member: £225
IAFL Member: £250
Non-member: £300

After May 1st 2011:

Student IAFL member: £250
IAFL Member: £300
Non-member: £350

Day rates will be available once the programme is announced.

IAFL10 Organising Committee

Malcolm Coulthard
Tim Grant
Kate Haworth
Krzysztof Kredens

To contact the organisers, please email: forensic[AT]aston.ac.uk or use the contact form on this website.

Student travel grants

We are pleased to announce that financial support is available for two postgraduate students to attend the conference. These grants are made in honour of (1) Professor Malcolm Coulthard, the Founding President of the International Association of Forensic Linguists, and (2) Professor Roger Shuy, whose generous founding gift of a postgraduate travel fund has made a second award possible. In naming the awards after these two preeminent scholars in our field of study, the IAFL acknowledges their immense contributions to the establishment and promotion of the field. The awards provide a waiver of conference registration and accommodation fees, as well as reasonable travel costs up to a maximum of £800.

Each award is available to a postgraduate student who intends to present a paper at the conference. In deciding who should receive the awards, preference will be given to applicants who:

(1) reside outside Western Europe (including the UK and Ireland), Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand;

(2) provide evidence of the potential to contribute to the development and promotion of the discipline of forensic linguistics; and

(3) are deserving of financial assistance to attend the conference.

Applications should be submitted by email to Dr Krzysztof Kredens at k.j.kredens[AT]aston.ac.uk. Each application should be in the form of a 300-400-word statement detailing the applicant's qualifications and academic experience and addressing each of the criteria in the paragraph above. The abstract of the paper the applicant intends to present at the conference should also be appended to the email message.

Applications will be processed by the local Organising Committee in co-operation with the IAFL Executive Committee. The deadline for applications is 18 January 2011. Winners will be announced on 14 February 2011.

Selection Committee
Prof. Ron Butters, IAFL President
Dr Tim Grant, IAFL Treasurer and Local Organising Committee member
Justice Peter Gray, IAFL Executive Committee member
Dr Kate Haworth, Local Organising Committee member
Dr Krzysztof Kredens, IAFL Secretary and Local Organising Committee member