From Confessions to Computational Stylometry: A Comprehensive Review of Forensic Linguistics in the 21st Century

• Shahab Rehman

  Author

The relationship between applied linguistics and law has become a fascinating and diverse area of study that incorporates both theory and practise on the practical application of law and real-life practise in law into the study. This has changed over the years, as, whilst this field has been involved in individual facets of the law language, it has come to be a well-established interdisciplinary discipline termed forensic linguistics. Currently, it incorporates the knowledge of sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, psycholinguistics, and even computational approaches to the study of legal texts, verbal interactions and institutional communication. The review also provides an in-depth review of the current body of knowledge on this subject. It discusses the historical foundations of the field, the theoretical basis of the field, the methodological developments of the field, and the practical issues of the field. We follow the path of the development of forensic linguistic techniques beginning with the early confessions and trademark cases to the contemporary approaches such as corpus approach and computer programmes of authorship determination and legal translation. We also examine the intricacies of court room conversances, the police interrogation, and the barriers to communication experienced by the nonnatives in courtroom situations. In the process, we resolve on the current disputes on the trustworthiness and admissibility of linguistic evidence in the courtroom and emphasise on the importance of interdisciplinary partnership to ensure that legal procedures are more equitable and acceptable. Last, but not least, the report identifies growing trends like quantitative tool usage (e.g. corpus linguistics, stylometry), the development of expert witness procedures, and the increasing effect of globalisation and multilingualism on the language of law. Combining the main results of the powerful research and recent developments, this review will not only trace the existing trends in the research but will identify future possibilities in developing the theoretical progress into the practical revision of the law.

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