Linguistics in the Courtroom? The Role of Forensic Linguistic Analysis in Witness Testimonies

 by Isobel Geddes

Forensic Linguistics, defined by Farinde as the study of language in the context of law, is often used in conjunction with witness testimonies. Many issues come into play in cases when there has been a misunderstanding; either something critical has been said in a foreign language or the police assumed that the person would be able to speak English. Additionally, when in court, suspects may use words/sayings that present the wrong meaning due to a literal translation not portraying the same thought process, for example. This means a judge or jury may make a wrongful decision based on the suspect’s literary choices which may seem unusual as a result of not speaking in their native language. I am going to give a brief outline of various different aspects that are pivotal to this field, although this isn't an exhaustive list.

One common case that is found is that the suspect is said to have given a confession or testimony in a language which they aren't knowledgeable enough in to actually understand what is being asked/what they are saying. For example, they have been quoted with vocabulary or grammar which is above their level of comprehension in the language. In cases like these, experts will use proficiency testing to analyse the level of understanding of the language. From then on, it can be used to prove that the statement the candidate gave might not have been what they intended to get across and a lack of context can lead to a misunderstanding. A simple example might be the use of the word ‘yes’ which can be said to affirm something, but also to imply that they may continue, such as ‘go on’. 

Forensic translation also plays a key role as part of this field. The evidence in court is not always oral, and in fact there are numerous occasions in which written evidence is used without being written in the English language. Consequently, forensic translators are required to help in such situations, with the aim of translating the evidence as accurately and faithfully as possible, whilst taking care to ensure that any important facts are not compromised. However, forensic translation isn't so straightforward and translators are given specific rules that are combined into a three-stage functional model, known as a 'forensic analysis model’. In certain cases, it may be possible that the forensic translator is required to explain their decisions made during the translation process to the court. Furthermore, if disputes occur over the quality of the translation-based evidence, translators are called in to prove that the translation that has been submitted is faithful and accurate to the original source document, although this does not happen often. 

Finally, linguists may be required for speaker analysis; involving speaker profiling, speaker comparison and automatic speaker recognition and verification. Speaker profiling consists of an expert who will listen to speech samples and, with the aid of specialist software, analyse speech and accent features that allows them to localise someone to a certain region or demographic background. In speaker comparison, experts will compare speech samples of a certain known individual with speech samples of an unknown speaker. They then proceed to analyse the features in these samples to express a degree of support as to whether the samples are of the same speaker. Finally, automatic speaker recognition and verification is conducted by technology that is able to extract biometric information from speech samples. These samples are then compared with others to verify if the same person speaks in multiple samples or to perform automatic speaker comparison. It is important to note that this is different from automatic speech recognition systems, as these recognise words as opposed to speakers.