Simply put, forensic linguistics can be defined as the interface between law and linguistics. To be more precise, the discipline of forensic linguistics has branched into different aspects of the legal practice. These aspects include the application of linguistic tools and models in the interpretation of various legal provisions; expert involvement in legal proceedings to establish the reliability of witness testimonies, police reports, and other documents; and analysis of speech samples (texts and audio/video recordings) as part of the body of evidence for the prosecution of criminal conduct.
Among these applications, the following processes are included:
- Analysis and authorship attribution for anonymous texts and identity fraud cases
- Linguistic plagiarism (legal and administrative documents, academic papers, literary texts, song lyrics, screenplays, teleplays, theater plays, etc.) and semiotic plagiarism (images—photographs and illustrations—scenography, choreography, etc.)
- Speaker recognition, voice comparison (of possible suspects in anonymous calls), and author profiling through regional and social features
- Recollection and analysis of witness testimonies, confessions, and suicide notes (among other types of documents) in order to establish their reliability in terms of coherence, logical structure, and possible contradictions
- Analysis of circumstances in which punishable linguistic conduct may have occurred: defamation of character, corporate defamation, libel, slander, threatening, discrimination, advocacy of genocide or terrorism, harassment, among many others
- Linguistic evidence for civil law proceeding: trademark and contractual disputes, product liability, misleading commercial practices, infringement of copyright
- Analysis of evidential linguistic information with sufficient material
In each case, a price estimate based on length and complexity is given.
