30.1649, Review: Forensic Linguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Olsson (2018)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-1649. Tue Apr 16 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.1649, Review: Forensic Linguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Olsson (2018)

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Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2019 21:13:38
From: Brett Drury [brett.drury at gmail.com]
Subject: More Wordcrime

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36473257


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-3297.html

AUTHOR: John  Olsson
TITLE: More Wordcrime
SUBTITLE: Solving Crime With Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Brett Mylo Drury

Forensic Linguistics has recently emerged into the public consciousnesses
through Netflix’s dramatization of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who
unwittingly revealed his identity through the publication of his
anti-technology thesis. His use of the phrase of  “can’t eat your cake and
have it too” was identified by his brother who informed the authorities.  In
conjunction with this surge of interest from the general public, there has
been an increased interest from the research community, in particular there is
a centre of excellence at Aston University located in the UK. In addition,
Belinda Maia,  from the University of Porto has over the years arranged some
excellent Forensic Linguistics  workshops.  This research has in turn been
used in criminal and civil trials in various jurisdictions.  Against this
background John Olsson has published More WordCrime, which is his second
attempt to publicize Forensic Linguistics  to the public at large.   

More WordCrime is divided into four parts: “Toolkit”,  “Confronting
Authority”, “The Authority To Confront”, and “Life in Forensic Linguistics”.
Each of these of parts contains one or more chapters which is loosely related 
around the the theme of its containing part. In total the book contains 22
chapters, most of which are 20 pages or shorter. The large number of chapters
and their relatively short length is both a source of strength and a weakness
of the book. The short length of the chapter ensures that the casual reader
does not got bogged down in technical detail, but the motivated reader will
feel short changed about the lack of depth of each chapter.  Olsson does
provide some suggestions for extra resources, but this is not for every
chapter, and the number of suggested resources is limited. In addition Olsson
tends to veer off topic into politics, which detracts from the central theme
of the book. The most obvious example of this is in Chapter 2: “The Linguistic
Tragedy of Hillsbrough”, where the majority of the chapter is devoted to
authoritarian power structures in British Society.  These minor quibbles
aside, this book is a well written introduction to Forensic Linguistics for
the general public.   

The structure of this review will be centered around each part of the book in
order of publication and the chapters it contains. 

Toolkit

The Toolkit Part of the book contains a single chapter: How To Do Forensic
Linguistics. This chapter breaks down Forensic Linguistics into constituent
parts as  well as discussing the limitations  of  Forensic Linguistics, such
as the fact that Forensic Linguistics cannot determine if the authors are
telling the truth. The chapter also describes the different role of the
forensic linguist as an  expert and the solicitor (lawyer) in a criminal
trial.  The remainder of the chapter describes the process of document
analysis as conducted by the forensic linguist, as well as the linguistic
phenomena that the expert is looking for, which are: Spelling, Grammar,
Lexicon, and Idiom.  Spelling is the spelling and punctuation  habits of the
author  nder study, such as misspellings as well as the use of certain
recurring spelling patterns such as using an ‘s’ in words such as ‘organise’ 
rather than the more common ‘organize’.  Grammar refers to the sequence of
words, and the rules of grammar that  are uniquely interpreted by the author
under study. Lexicon refers to the word choice by the author, whereas Idiom
refers to unique multi-word expressions such as the aforementioned   “can’t
eat your cake and have it too” which can be traced to the author.  Olsson
concludes that the  forensic linguist can’t definitively attribute authorship,
but only offer an opinion. 

Confronting Authority

Confronting authority contains five chapters: ''The Linguistic Tragedy of
Hillsborough'',  ''A pink handled kitchen devil knife and other
fabrications'', ''I didn''t have a gun'', ''All quiet at the endz'' and ''Wars
and words''.

''The Linguistic Tragedy of Hillsborough'' covers a sporting event, which is
burnt into the conscienceless of the British Public,  where there were 96
fatalities and 766 injuries which was due to the negligence of the Merseyside
Police. The Police covered up their negligence, and with the aid of The Sun
newspaper attempted to attribute blame to the fans themselves.  

The beginning of the chapter is a brief discussion of the general role of 
Forensic Linguistics in determining what is happening when people in power
cover up a tragedy or an abuse of power. Olsson describes a presentation given
by his students from the University of Bangor to lawyers about the ability of 
 Forensic Linguistics to assist in criminal investigations. Olsson makes some
statements about the inability of computers to match the language analysis
abilities of humans, a statement which this reviewer cannot agree with.

The  majority of the chapter is concerned with the events that occurred
before, during and after the tragedy as well as the subsequent cover up by
various political actors. Olsson provides some example statements made by the
aforementioned political actors as well as providing some evidence of
collusion between high ranking police officers when making statements to the
inquiry. The chapter rounds off with a discussion of the power of state and
its agents,and its relationship with the  individual. 

This chapter is by far the longest of the book and probably the weakest, as it
veers off topic and descends into a political diatribe.    

''A pink handled kitchen devil knife and other fabrications'' is also
concerned with evidence fabrication. Olsson describes various techniques how
police officers collude in recording and making statements. And how that there
is a pressure from the attitudes of senior ranking officers to implicitly
force police officers to produce similar sounding statements. He also
documented some experiments that show human recall of actual words used to be
poor after a short period of time.  He also stated that lexical dense phrases
are unlikely to be used in spoken language. This brings us to the “A pink
handled kitchen devil knife” chapter title. This statement was allegedly  used
by a defendant when he admitted to a stabbing. Along with poor recall of
speech, and the very low probability of a “lexically dense” phrase being used
in everyday speech, it is very likely that this phrase was fabricated to gain
a conviction.  Olsson also discussed copying and pasting chunks of text from
one statement to another, and provided an obvious example where two police
officers colluded to such a degree that their IDs and names where used
interchangeably in both of their statements.  Olsson, however concludes that
judges are indifferent when they come across obviously colluded statements
from police officers.

''I didn’t have a gun” is a short and concise chapter about defendant
statement fabrication by police. This chapter described an occurrence where  a
youth was forced to sign a confession that he did not write or agree to. The
chapter picks apart the contradiction of vague statements such as “towards the
beginning of August” and the specific  “a Wednesday  towards the beginning of
August”. The vagueness in the statement is used to demonstrate
untrustworthiness. The chapter dissects the alleged confession with obvious
examples of phrases which the defendant is unlikely to use. And finally the
author concludes that police use questions that elicit a denial as a way of
framing language to infer guilt.

''All quiet at the endz'', describes an attempt by the police to infer that
performers in a rap video had committed criminal offences that they describe
in their rhymes. This chapter at least demonstrates the limitations of
Forensic Linguistics as this was not possible.

The Confronting Authority part concludes with ''War and Words'', which
describes the use of misleading language in the recent Brexit referendum where
the UK voted to leave the European Union. Like the first chapter in this part,
it shows Olsson at his weakest where the chapter descends into a politics
essay. The linguistic part  of this chapter focuses on manipulative language
such as framing. The chapter signs off with a barb at the people Olsson
assumes voted to leave by declaring that there are no “pure British people”. 

The Authority To Confront

This part of the book contains six chapters: “Not a case of plagiarism”, “How
old? What gender”, “Alarm and Distress”, “The prosecutor of the ICC v the
President of Kenya”, “The Facebook murder” and “The sting”.

‘Not a case of plagiarism” centres upon a case of plagiarism  within a
university where a student had suddenly increased her grade from 60% to 80%
from her midterms essay to her end of course essay, and the University in
question took the view that this increase in performance could only be due to
cheating.  Her situation was compounded by her posting a request for help on
the Internet. The chapter describes Olsson’s contempt for essay mills who in
his opinion produce low quality essays and he goes on to describe the
characteristics of an essay produced by an essay mill. These characteristics
include: nonsensical references and poor quality content. Olsson compared her
midterm essay with her final essay and compared a number of linguistic
indicators including hyphenated words and the method of referencing.  This
indicated that the mid-term and final essays were written by the same person,
and therefore the final essay was not  plagiarised.

“How old? What gender” is concerned about a sexual offences trial where a text
message was purported to be sent by females under the age of 16.  The text
message stated that they were willing to partake in sexual activity with  the
defendant.  A second text message was sent from an adult stating that they
could  procure minors for sex.  The chapter describes social linguistic
variation, where the author changes the manner in which they express
themselves in written form. This characteristic is more prevalent in females
under the age of 16. In the case of the text messages Olsson concluded that
the text message allegedly written by females under the age of 16 was likely
to be written by an adult. 

“Alarm and Distress” is a short chapter that describes a series of threatening
letters sent to a business woman. The business woman had a suspicion of a
possible suspect, a businessman that she had romantically rejected. The use of
various specifics phrases such as “D’You” in other correspondence authored by
the man indicated that her initial hunch was correct.

The prosecutor of the “ICC v the President of Kenya” chapter is concerned with
the indictment of President Kenyatta for post election violence in 2008. In
this chapter Olsson was tasked with discovering if the witness statements 
were the product of collusion or were written individually. Olsson found
evidence of “evidence-tampering, collusion between witnesses and mass
plagiarism.” He concluded that there was one author behind all of the witness
statements. In part due to Olsson’s work the charges were dropped against
Kenyatta. The evidence that Olsson could show was limited, but he manages to
show some heavily redacted documents and their similarities.

“The Facebook murders” describes the role of Facebook messages in assisting
the investigation of a murder of a female teenager. The case involves a
deception by 33 year old convicted rapist who arranged a date posing as a
fellow teenager. The 33 year old sent messages over Facebook posing as a
teenager, as well as the father of the teenager. Olsson found that the
messages sent by the fictional teenager and the 33 year old shared linguistic 
features. After murdering the teenager the 33 year old sent messages to her
colleague. The language in these messages did not conform to the expected
idioms of a young person. This research helped in the conviction of the 33
year old.

“The Sting” chapter describes a businessman who was manipulated by a female
model to unwittingly smuggle a suitcase full of cocaine. The businessman never
met the model, but communicated with her through the Internet. The businessman
was fired from his job and he was prosecuted for drug trafficking based upon 3
emails that were purportedly sent by the businessman, indicating that he knew
that the suitcase contained narcotics. Olsson concluded that these emails had
not been authored by the businessman, but likely by a  Spanish speaker with
knowledge of the drug trade.

Life in Forensic Linguistics 

This part is the largest of the book as it contains ten chapters: “Nothing is
not important”, “When authorship is not authorship”, “A letter for Mrs Joe”, 
“The strange pose of Mrs Mottle”, “The love letters of Dr X”, “The invisible
Bronski”, “Dissing the opposition”, “The concrete tomb”, “A particularly
unpleasant man”, and the “ The mysterious Mr Erdnase”.

Nothing is not important” discusses the role of unique or non-standard
punctuation and its role assisting the forensic linguist.  The chapter
provides a number of examples of the aforementioned phenomena, and as fitting
for the modern age,  Olsson also provides some examples of emjoi idioms. He
ends with the chapter by stating that he ensures that his students transcribe
documents so that they improve their observations and are able to identify
these non-word idioms.

“When authorship is not authorship”, is concerned with wills, and the specific
problems that they create for the forensic linguist. Wills are an expression
of intent of the testator; however the testator may not be the author of the
will because a 3rd party could write the will.  This unique characteristic of
a will renders authorship analysis ineffective for determining if a will
represents the true wishes of the testator.

“A letter for Mrs Joe” addresses the authorship of a poison pen letter sent to
the wife of a particularly staid couple which accused the husband of
womanizing.  The author claimed that “she” was sleeping with the husband, and
had only just become aware that he was married. The husband managed to gather
some specimens of writing from a number of his colleagues at his workplace.
Olsson found a number of idioms that were unique not only to the poison pen
letter, but to the writing specimens from one individual. The evidence however
was not conclusive.  Although the individual was not confronted, they
confessed to writing the letter to a third party.    

“The strange prose of Mrs Mottle” chapter concerns the authorship of
inflammatory letters to the board of trustees of a charity that was set-up to
protect  a certain species of wildfowl. One of the trustees was accused of
misappropriating funds. He wrote a series of letters complaining about his
treatment. His “wife” wrote a number of more colourful letters to the board.
Olsson performed some analysis on the letters from both the wife and her
husband. He examined the number of common expressions that are more than six
words long,  the register  and the orthography of the letters. He found three
common expressions, and deduced that this would be unlikely if the letters
were written independently. In addition the register of the  letters was
similar because both authors used “pompous and archaic expressions”. Finally,
the use of punctuation was similar in both specimens of letters. Olsson
concluded that the letters were written by the same person, a fact reinforced
by the fact that the wife had died several years before the letters were
written.

“The love letters of Dr X” chapter described an incident where a female
Pakistani doctor practicing in the UK had been accused of writing love letters
to a elderly male patient.  In this case Olsson looked at idioms. Idioms can
be good determiner to separate native and non-native speakers of English. In
this case the love letters showed evidence that the author had a strong
familiarity with English idioms. In addition the standard of writing and
comprehension displayed by the doctor was weak, which was in contradiction to
the level of English demonstrated by the author of the love letter. Olsson
concluded that the doctor was unlikely to be the author of the love letters.  

“The invisible Bronski” chapter follows the format of the previous chapters in
this part where distasteful communications are targeted at individuals. In
this case the malevolent communications took the form of reviews of products
of a specific businesswoman. The reviews contained accusations of child abuse.
In conjunction an identifiable person started posting critical reviews, but
these were written in a manner so that the reviews avoided libel. The problem
in this case was to determine if the identifiable author was also the author
of the  distasteful reviews. Again the chapter describes some analysis
performed by Olsson which included the analysis of redundant language. Olsson
concluded that the identifiable author authored both the  distasteful reviews
and the non-libel ones.

“Dissing the opposition” is a short chapter that discussed the positing of
fake negative product reviews of a manufacturer by a competitor. Olsson
compared the fake reviews with the text of websites of direct competitors. He
found that one competitor’s website matched the writing style of the fake
negative reviews.

“The concrete tomb” chapter describes an incident where a native French
speaker (Christophe) had gone missing for two years. His last known
communication was an email he sent to an acquaintance that stated he was
“going on holiday” . After these two years had passed, a male (Sebastien)
confessed to murdering  Christophe as an accomplice to another male (Dominik).
The  authorship challenge was to determine if  Christophe’s last communication
was written by him or another author. The chapter discusses the unique writing
habits of French speakers, in particular the use of accents. The chapter
presents a number of examples of writing from both Christophe and Sebastien.
Olsson concludes that it was likely that  Dominik was the author of the email.

“A particularly unpleasant man” is centred around a murder case and an alibi
for the alleged murderer that was based upon mobile phone messages sent from
the victim's phone. The chapter follows a familiar path where an analysis is
conducted, and Olsson concludes that the alleged murderer sent the messages
after he had committed the murder.

The final chapter discusses the authorship a famous magic book, Expert. There
were a number of suspected  authors. Despite the analysis by Olsson, he was
unable to conclude conclusively who was the author. 

Evaluation  

This is a popular book which linguists may find lacking a depth; however it is
an excellent introduction to the field for the beginner or casual reader. It
is a large number of chapters, some having 10 pages or less. This keeps the
pace of the book fast, but contributes to the book’s lack of depth. Many of
these chapters are similar and consequently the book feels repetitive. However
in general, despite these criticisms, it is an excellent popular book
discussing the application of a academic subject.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Brett is currently the Head of Research at Scicrop, a start up located in Sao
Paulo, Brazil. He holds a PhD in Computer Science, and a qualifying
undergraduate law degree. He is interested on the quantifying impact of the
language of the law upon the justice system.





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