This unit provides students with a foundational understanding of the intersection of language, law, and crime in the realm of forensic linguistics on both national and international levels. With a specific focus on authorship attribution, linguistic profiling, and investigations of language crimes such as threat texts, plagiarism, defamation, and incitement to hatred, terrorism, discrimination and genocide, the unit enables students to grasp fundamental concepts, theories and practical applications in forensic linguistics. Emphasising the role of linguistics in legal investigations, the course introduces discourse analytic tools, as well as computational and statistical tools, to decipher style and meaning in various social and professional contexts, online and offline. Students will acquire the skills to navigate multifaceted challenges in this rapidly growing field, critically exploring the linguist's crucial role as an expert witness. They will ultimately appreciate the investigative and evidential value of data analysis, describe the criminal nature of diverse forensic texts (written, spoken, and multimodal), and develop key skills in identifying and applying linguistic methods for text analysis.
PRESCRIBED TEXT - THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF FORENSIC LINGUISTICS
