Txt Crimes, Sex Crimes and Murder - The Science of Forensic Linguistic

Text and instant messaging may soon cease to be an anonymous method of communication as advances in forensic linguistic research make it possible to identify the sender and also predict the gender and age of the author with some degree of success. Cellular News reports.

"At the UK's BA Festival of Science, Dr Tim Grant, the Deputy Director of the Centre for Forensic Linguistics at Aston University, describes how language analysis is increasingly playing a key part during police investigations and court cases to help identify the author of incriminating material, whether it be a threatening note, documents planning a terrorist attack or a sexually explicit chat room conversation involving an adult and a child.

... Linguistic evidence demonstrating who sent a particular text message has been significant in a growing number of cases where criminals have attempted to use them as alibis. These include difficult murder cases where victims’ bodies were never found, such as the recent prosecution of David Hodgson, who was convicted in February of the murder of his ex-lover Jenny Nicholl."

... Dr Grant has put together a database of more than 7000 texts as part of his research into text messaging style and variation between individuals and groups of individuals. The public can contribute to his ongoing research by submitting text samples to www.forensiclinguistics.net/texting. His study seeks to establish base rate information for certain features in texting language, and will also highlight how groups of people who text one another frequently grow more similar in their texting style."

emily | 12:09 PM | SMS used by the Police |
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