Example research essay topic: Forensic Linguistics Part 2 - 1,588 words

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... interest. The organization of this workshop will become an interdisciplinary forum of discussion. It will involve the participation of law scholars, computer science technicians and linguists. 4 The really interesting thing is for the lawyer to discover that linguistics exists, more than that, have some relevant expertise to offer them. The best way to become a valued consultant to attorneys is to first become a distinguished linguist in your own chosen field of expertise. Different legal cases need expertise from different linguistic sub-fields, so no one is be able to serve all lawyers in any case.

For instance, there are many criminal cases in which the evidence is recorded conversations. Such cases could require expertise ranging from acoustic phonetics to socio-linguistics. On the other hand, there are some cases that need semantic and pragmatic expertise. In any case, the more distinguished you are in your own right, the more valuable you can be to the lawyer who calls on you. 3 A review of recent research on language and the law focuses on four areas: legal language, problems of legal communication, language legislation and forensic linguistics. Legal language is seen as a function of the shift from oral to written language.

Forensic linguistics is concerned with language in various contexts, all of which have crime and criminality as a central issue. On the descriptive side, we examined the characteristics of a range of forensic contexts, including the language of the police and the language of the courtroom. We also examined the role and scope of forensic phonetics in speaker identification. (4). Remembering linguistics, first of all we have to remember that it is a scientific study of language. It is a basic discipline in the sense that it bridges the social sciences, the natural sciences, and the humanities. Linguistics is an exciting field, not only because of its own achievements, but also because of its contributions to other fields.

Linguists are playing vital roles in the analysis of language in the judicial process. Lets looks at specific discoveries of linguists. Diana Eades, in her study of Australian courtroom discourse, discovered yes / no questions are not considered coercive in Australian Aboriginal interactions. But rather they are understood as an invitation to explain or elaborate. The difference in cultural meaning attached to silence can also lead to partial communication in the courtroom. It can be compared with Western English-speaking societies, where silences longer than a few seconds are barely tolerated in.

Tag questions can be a source of misunderstanding in testimony that must be interpreted. Whereas negative tag questions in English require a negative answer to deny an accusation: You stole the money, didn't you? No, I didn't. Tag questions in many other languages, including Spanish and some Asian languages, can be answered either negatively or affirmatively with no change in meaning.

There are also unreserved issues in forensic linguistics. Many of the refer to the area of speaker identification. For example, to what degree can non-expert listeners accurately identify the accused persons voice on the tape? Are the automatic speaker recognition technologies any more valid? How does voice disguising affect forensic speaker identification? And how much do speech variability factors, such as the influence of a common cold on a person's voice, affect forensic speaker identification? 4 The legitimacy of linguists as expert witnesses in the courts is another arguable issue among both linguists and legal professionals.

What types of linguistic evidence should be allowed and under what circumstances? Should linguists be allowed to interpret complex legal language for jurors? Are linguistic analyses considered scientifically valid? The growing tendency of research in the area of forensic linguistics provides proof of the value of linguists and linguistic knowledge in the legal arena. Increasing cooperation between linguists and law professionals can help in the identification of innocence or guilt. Forensic linguistics contributes much to the overall improvement of an imperfect justice system.

I think it is time to look at some specific details of linguistic issues. We look at the rules that linguists use while doing their job: At the court, only speech sounds of similarly spoken words should be compared between voice samples. Comparison of the same speech sounds should be avoided. When using spectrograms from direct and enhanced copies, both should be visually compared to words from the known or questioned voice sample.

Number of comparable words is determined by the total number of different words present in both samples that meet the forensic standards. A similar or nearly similar word appearing more than once in one or both samples should be counted only as one comparable word. (5). Another interesting issue is that the trial process looks at the statements presented from a police officer who wrote these statements. These statements are supposed to be written down as near as possible in the suspects own words.

But they are in fact the police officers written versions of what was said in the interrogation room. They are simultaneously reports of previous talks held in the police interrogating room and part of the interaction in the courtroom, both of which are conducted for a different purpose. Thus, suspects are held accountable for what they supposedly told the police, and if they argue with this, judges can rebut their protests by pointing out that they themselves have told this to the police. Susan Ehrlich explored the ways in which feminist discourses or ideological frames regarding women and sexual violence can be introduced into the discursive space of a trial. resulting in the contextualizing of complainants experiences of sexual assault. In her article, she illustrates how direct examination can serve to structure and contextualize the testimony given by witnesses in ways which are not typically associated with direct examination questioning strategies.

While not an adversarial context, the direct examination of the civil trial analyzed here displayed properties of trial discourse more often associated with cross-examination. 5 Language in legal settings is characterized by highly technical vocabulary and terms used in specialized ways. It is also plagued with lengthy noun phrases, heavy use of passive voice, multiple negatives, and complex grammatical structures. We can look at the above paragraph to view an example of the language complexity. The lack of comprehensible language in jury instructions can have dire consequences. In the early 1990 s, a convicted murderer argued in U. S.

federal court that his death sentence should be overturned on the grounds that the jury instructions were so incomprehensible that the law could not have been effectively communicated to the jurors. At the same time, individual judges' attempts to simplify or clarify instructions for the jurors have led to reversals by appellate courts, leaving judges with little choice but to use the established language and, in response to jurors' requests for clarification, to simply refer the jurors back to the original instructions. By studying linguistics, one can come to understand how humans acquire language, how language and communication function, and how to teach and learn foreign languages more effectively. It is to improve your own skills of communication, as well as your ability to analyze information and think critically.

In forensic linguistics, you chase the same goals only they refer to the law. Mention linguistics and the law, and most people think of police cases involving handwriting or stylistic analysis to develop a writer profile for some piece of evidence. Although written language analysis has a long history of use, both in police investigations and in courtroom trials, and is, perhaps, a prototype of so-called forensic linguistics, it is but one task among many performed by forensic linguists today. 3 This paper gives an overview of modern forensic linguistics and discusses the increasingly important role of linguists and of linguistics in police investigations, courtroom trials, and other areas where language and the law cross. There is no consensus among linguists and legal experts as to a definition of the term forensic linguistics.

Some come to a narrow definition such as "the use of linguistic techniques to investigate crimes in which language data constitute part of the evidence. " Others refer to a broad interpretation of forensic linguistics. It is perceived as the study of the intersection between language and the law. Linguistics has many more or less obvious connections with other disciplines, some of which we " ve just mentioned. Psychologists study how language is learned and used. Anthropologists and sociologists examine the role of language in culture and society. Philosophers are interested in the nature of sense and reference.

Computer scientists try to develop artificial models of the structures and processes involved in language use. Physiologists want to understand how language is produced and perceived by the brain, mouth and ear. Some of these connections are made within linguistics itself. For instance, the Penn linguistics department includes specialists in socio-linguistics, psycholinguistics, historical linguistics and computational linguistics. In other cases, the work may be carried out within another field, or at least another department like psychology, computer science, philosophy, anthropology or history. 4 We could continue the list of connections almost indefinitely, and could also expand each item at length. But lets conclude that forensic linguistics play a very important part of trail processes and will take a significant part of the future law development.

Bibliography: J. N. Levi and A. G. Walker. Language in the Judicial Process.

London: J. Law press, 1994. John Gibbons. Language and the Law. London: Longman, 1994. Roger She.

The Use and Abuse of Language Evidence in the Courtroom. Oxford: Basic Blackwell, 1990. web web

Research essay sample on Forensic Linguistics Part 2