Forensic Linguistics

An introduction to basic forensic linguistics is a great way to show students the power of language and how it’s examination can be used to help the police convict criminals.

 

The well-known case of Derek Bentley remains a fascinating example of the importance of forensic linguistics. In 1952, Bentley was sentenced to death because the prosecution argued that the phrase ‘Let him have it, Craig’ was an instruction to his friend to shoot a police officer. Bentley’s defence believed that it was meant as a plea to Craig to hand over his weapon. Bentley was hanged in 1953, but received a full pardon in 1998. Forensic linguistics played a key role in the investigation to clear Bentley’s name.

 

In more recent years, the police have used forensic linguistics to examine text messages. Typically this might involve establishing the idiolect of people linked to a crime and then using this as evidence to show the source of a text message. In 2008, experts proved that David Hodgson had sent texts from his murder victim’s phone. For example, the murder victim had previously used “my” and “myself” in her texts; in contrast Hodgson frequently used Yorkshire dialect in the text messages, using “me” and “meself.”

 

In more unusual cases, forensic linguistics have proved that signed ‘confessions’ could not have been spoken or written by the person under arrest, but were, in fact, fabricated by the police themselves.

Forensic linguistics is a good way of showing to students, yet again, that the real world study of language can be pretty fascinating.

Lesson ideas:

Prepare a crime scene for students, with a series of text messages, letters and emails. Using a close study of the linguistic features, like contractions, irregular spellings, colloquial language, sentence structure, etc., they can first build up a picture of each person’s idiolect from texts they are known to have written. They can then study the unknown documents and match them to the suspects in the case.

Want to find out more?

Try this non-fiction read:

Wordcrime: Solving Crime Through Forensic Linguistics written John Olsson and published in 2012.

Watch:

Peter Medak’s film ‘Let Him Have it’ from 1991, staring Christopher Eccleston as Bentley.

By Annabel Wall for Smart Learning.