Forensic linguistic authorship analysis of disputed texts

Nini, Andrea (Participant)

Linguistics and English Language (L5)

Impact: Legal impacts, Societal impacts

Public summary

Forensic Linguistics is the application of linguistics to forensic problems. One of these problems is the analysis of anonymous documents to determine their authorship, such as in cases of texts that happen to become evidence in court cases. With the increase in use of the internet in modern times, more and more crimes are committed online, for example on the dark web, where the clues left by the perpetrators are predominantly linguistic. My research is focused on quantifying and understanding individuality in language and on applying this knowledge to help the delivery of justice in cases involving disputed documents. My research is applied regularly to either help law enforcement to investigate serious crimes or is presented as evidence in court.

Impact date	2016
Category of impact	Legal impacts, Societal impacts
Impact level	Engagement

Related content

Activities
Forensic applications of sociolinguistics
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
The likelihood of lexicogrammatical overlap
Activity: Talk or presentation › Oral presentation › Research
Analysis of a disputed police statement
Activity: Consultancy, spin-outs, CPD & licensing › Consultancy & Services › Research
From Jack the Ripper to cybercrime: linguistics as a forensic science
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
Language models as cognitively realistic mathematical models of grammar
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
The use of forensic linguistics for investigative purposes
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
The Language Model as a mathematical model of the lexicogrammar in Cognitive Linguistics
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
Forensic authorship analysis and the Dickens Code Project
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
International Association for Forensic and Legal Linguistics (External organisation)
Activity: Membership › Membership of professional association › Research
The Ayia Napa rape statements
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
A forensic linguistic analysis of the Jack the Ripper letters
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
Experimental evidence on the individuality of lexicogrammar
Activity: Talk or presentation › Oral presentation › Research
Interpretable cognitive linguistic authorship analysis using the Likelihood Ratio framework
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
The Ayia Napa statements
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
Forensic authorship profiling as court evidence: The Ayia Napa rape statements
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
How much sociolinguistic knowledge do LLMs have? Using LLMs for English variety profiling
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
The likelihood ratio framework in forensic authorship analysis
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Teaching
Analysis of a disputed set of poems
Activity: Consultancy, spin-outs, CPD & licensing › Consultancy & Services › Research
Authorship Analysis for Investigative and Forensic Purposes
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Teaching
Small language models for human-interpretable authorship analysis
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
International Association for Forensic and Legal Linguistics (External organisation)
Activity: Membership › Membership of committee › Research
Can AI fool a forensic linguist? Detecting AI impersonation of an individual’s language
Activity: Talk or presentation › Oral presentation › Research
4th European Conference of the International Association for Forensic and Legal Linguists
Activity: Participating in or organising event(s) › Participating in a conference, workshop, exhibition, performance, inquiry, course etc › Research
The use of authorship profiling evidence in court
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
A forensic linguistic analysis of the Jack the Ripper letters
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
The use of the likelihood ratio in forensic authorship analysis cases
Activity: Participating in or organising event(s) › Participating in a conference, workshop, exhibition, performance, inquiry, course etc › Research
Forensic Linguistic evidence in authorship analysis cases
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Teaching
Grammar is a biometric
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
Forensic Linguistics Casework group
Activity: Participating in or organising event(s) › Organising a conference, workshop, exhibition, performance, inquiry, course etc › Teaching and Research
A more interpretable method for the analysis of an author’s language
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
How Linguistics can help to eliminate unnecessary complexity in modern Natural Language Processing
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
The use of the likelihood ratio in forensic authorship verification cases
Activity: Participating in or organising event(s) › Organising a conference, workshop, exhibition, performance, inquiry, course etc › Research
Authorship profiling for forensic purposes
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research
Using language models for authorship analysis
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research

Research output
Bridging the gap between stylistic and cognitive approaches to authorship analysis using Systemic Functional Linguistics and multidimensional analysis
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Assessing the suitability of forensic authorship analysis methodologies for speech data
Research output: Contribution to conference › Abstract › peer-review
A corpus analysis of idiolectal n-grams
Research output: Contribution to conference › Abstract › peer-review
Likelihood ratio based authorship verification methods applied to forensic voice comparison tasks
Research output: Contribution to conference › Abstract › peer-review
The Statistical Approximation Hypothesis: A Cognitive Linguistic explanation for the effectiveness of function word frequency
Research output: Contribution to conference › Abstract › peer-review
A Theory of Linguistic Individuality for Authorship Analysis
Research output: Book/Report › Book › peer-review
Production vs Perception: The Role of Individuality in Usage-Based Grammar Induction
Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review
The idiolectal information in long character n-grams: An experiment using paraphrasing
Research output: Contribution to conference › Abstract › peer-review
Attributing the Bixby Letter using n-gram tracing
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Register variation in malicious forensic texts
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Validation in Forensic Text Comparison: Issues and Opportunities
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Cognitive Linguistic forensic authorship analysis using the likelihood ratio framework
Research output: Contribution to conference › Abstract › peer-review
Examining an author’s individual grammar
Research output: Contribution to conference › Abstract › peer-review
Idiolect: An R package for forensic authorship analysis
Research output: Non-textual form › Software
Individuality in syntactic variation: An investigation of the seventeenth-century gerund alternation
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Developing forensic authorship profiling
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Corpus Analysis in Forensic Linguistics
Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceeding › Entry for encyclopedia/dictionary › peer-review
Evaluating the usefulness of embedding phonetic representations into an authorship analysis-based framework for the comparison of spoken data
Research output: Contribution to conference › Abstract › peer-review
Linguistic Individuality in Lexicogrammatical Alternations
Research output: Contribution to conference › Abstract › peer-review
The Dickens signal - investigating the authorship of "The Two Brothers", a ghost story transcribed from shorthand
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Forensic authorship analysis of the Ayia Napa rape statements
Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
Why do function word frequencies vary across individuals? Evidence in favour of The Statistical Approximation Hypothesis
Research output: Contribution to conference › Abstract › peer-review
A formal model of lexicogrammatical individuality
Research output: Contribution to conference › Abstract › peer-review
An authorship analysis of the Jack the Ripper letters
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Press/Media
Forensic linguistic analysis used for appeal against accusation of using AI to write coursework
Press/Media: Other
The Dickens Code project and forensic authorship analysis
Press/Media: Blogs and social media
Forensic Linguistic evidence for the Ayia Napa rape case
Press/Media: Other
VARIOUS MEDIA: Jack the Ripper letter mystery solved by Manchester researcher
Press/Media: Research

Prizes
IAFPA Research Grant
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)