Forensic Assessment of the Grok "Interview" under RI/KKP

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my parents for their support in completing this thesis. I would like to thank my father for going over the entire document almost as many times as I have, and my mother for reminding me to take a breath every now and then. I would like to thank my advisors, Drs. Joyce Sirianni and Peter Biehl, for their guidance when I did not know where to begin, and especially to Dr. Sirianni for her assistance throughout this process.

The international journal of speech language and the law, 2016

Forensic linguistics is a discipline that concerns General Linguistics, in particular Applied Linguistics and Forensic Science. Today, it is an autonomous discipline with its own methodology and it can regard any text, written, recorded or produced orally, that is somehow involved in a legal proceeding or in a criminal context. “Literally any text or item of spoken language has the potential of being a forensic text” (Olsson 2008, 1). The forensic linguistics expert who analyses recorded spontaneous speech needs a number of different skills across several disciplines (Chaski 1998, 2001a, 2001b): Phonetics and phonology, necessary for the study of the articulatory sound system of human speech, the sound inventory which characterizes a language or a dialect and the rules that govern the adjustments and changes that occur in spontaneous speech1; Morphology, to study the smallest units of language with meaning, the organization and the study of the internal structure of words; Syntax, to be aware of the rules that govern the internal structure of sentences, how words can be combined to create linguistically acceptable sentences; 1 In a recent court case, the non-competence of linguistics, phonetics and phonology on the part of a consultant to the Public Prosecutor led to a recording in South American Spanish being confused with one in Iberian Spanish and the subsequent arrest of an innocent party (pp 10061/11, against Oscar Sanchez, the Court of Appeal, 7th Criminal Division, Court of Naples). Chapter Three 48 Semantics, the study of meaning, the relationship between the meaning of (single) words and the meaning of (complete) sentences; Pragmatics, necessary to understand the use of language during a normal conversation and in all types of interactions and dialogue; Historical Linguistics, to study the evolution of a language and what the possible and predictable changes may be; Sociolinguistics, for the language used by a speech community, the study of the variables characterizing the language analyzed, focusing on differences of religion, social class, educational levels, gender, place of residence (city versus countryside, mountains versus coast), the interaction and interference between different languages and between language and dialect, and mixed-language production; Dialectology, to ensure a correct identification of dialects, local variables, regional dialects and their borders, the identification of isoglosses or isophones; Dialectometry, to study the distances between dialects and their internal regularity; Psycholinguistics, to understand how psychological and mental systems work in a human language; Neurolinguistics, to study the human nervous system and the neuroanatomical functioning of the brain; Computational Linguistics or Computer Science, to be able to use software and tools that help the expert during the analysis of the language and performance of individual speakers; Statistics, to analyse the results of a linguistic analysis, describe the phenomena and provide objective answers; Phonetics and Acoustic Signal analysis, to conduct an acoustic analysis of sounds, identify characteristic features, filter noisy signals, identify anonymous speakers, support the transcription of sound signals with low quality (Romito 2000); and, Law, to act in accordance with the procedural rules. The definition in The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Linguistics (2010) reports that “forensic linguistics helps courts to answer three questions about a text—what does it say, what does it mean and who wrote, typed or authored it?”—confirming the initial interest in the written text. The first study was made in 1930 (second edition Bryant 1962) and analysed the function of words in legal language. Forensic linguistics was first used in a courtroom to gather evidence in 1968, when Jan Svartvik (Svarvtik 1968) showed in The statements: a case for Forensic Linguistics how style and grammar could be measured, and thus become elements of evidence in a court case (Fitzgerald 2004). This court case and especially A Training Program for Expert Forensic Transcribers 49 the publication of Svartvik are seen as the birth of a new discipline that came to the attention of the world with the arrest of the Unabomber in 1996 in the woods of Montana2. The first analyses, therefore, took place on written texts. Nowadays, with the development of telecommunications, there has been an increase in analyses conducted on acoustic recordings rather than on written declarations. The analyses that can be carried out on recorded sounds are: the identification of a sound or a noise; the determination of the originality or authenticity of the tape, support or recording; speech signal filtering; noise reduction or emphasis of a voice and, in general, an increase in intelligibility; the identification of an altered voice; speaker characterization; a comparison and perceptual comparison of two voices; speaker identification by objective methods; the transcription of interceptions and analysis of meaning in relation to noisy recordings. Unfortunately, forensic linguistics or phonetics does not exist as a teaching course in Italian universities. It is impossible, therefore, to establish whether it concerns Criminalistics, Investigative Science or Applied Linguistics or even Human Sciences, as is the case in other countries. Furthermore, academic scientific research on issues related to Forensic Linguistics does not stimulate great interest. The enthusiasm registered in the US and the UK has gradually faded in Italy after an initial surge in the 1970s and 1980s. Experts do not cooperate with each other and they tend to be graduates, accountants, engineers, linguists, sound engineers, doctors and so on. A similar task has never been given to people coming from such diverse academic paths and backgrounds (Romito 2010; Romito and Galatà 2008; Romito et al. 2008). We believe that only an appropriate training course could develop competence and increase the confidence of judges towards this discipline.

2012

International Journal of Forensic Mental Health

Australian Review of Applied Linguistics Vol 34, No 1 (2011) pp. 108-111

The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics deals with the most recent and prominent discussions, debates, topics, research approaches and methodologies utilized in Forensic Linguistics, a discipline concerned with the study of language and the law. The editors commence the volume with a broad introduction to the field, and a clear outline of the purpose and structure of the book, followed by a compilation of thirty-seven original chapters by contributors from a wide range of professions and a range of different countries. The stated aim of the volume is to provide a handbook, not a textbook; as such it aims to be "a comprehensive advanced introduction to core issues and topics in contemporary forensic linguistics" (p. 2), as well as a specific resource for undergraduates or postgraduates new to the area.

2017

This edited volume is a useful addition to the body of academic literature bringing information to the English-speaking world about the practice of forensic linguistics in non-English-speaking countries – a body which, despite valuable contributions in the current journal and elsewhere, remains too small. A particularly welcome aspect of the book is its inclusion of several chapters on an area too lightly covered in academic literature in any language, namely transcription of covert recordings (conversations captured secretly, by telephone intercept or by ambient or undercover recording, and used as forensic evidence in criminal trials). In this, as in other topics covered, another commendable aspect of the book is the intertwining of theoretical and practical topics captured by its title. The contents are based upon papers presented at the conference Theories, practices and instruments of forensic linguistics organised by the book’s editors in Rome, 1-3 Dec 20141. After an introduc...

Confessions in the Investigative Interviews: A Forensic Linguistic Analysis of Robert Bryndza's The Girl in the Ice, 2024

This study analyses the selected chapters of Robert Bryndza's crime thriller The Girl in the Ice (2016) in the forensic context of Andrea Douglass Brown's murder from the perspective of Aubry and Caputo's (1965; 1980) investigation strategies. Frequently used by police officers in the investigative interviews, these strategies include the sympathetic approach, leading questions, rapport building, and constant repetition of one theme. This critique highlights the cordial yet goal-oriented way of carrying out the investigative interviews that achieve their aim of finding out the truth; the interviewee is either innocent, or the actual culprit, or just a partner in the crime. Through qualitative content analysis, the study focuses on the case where Linda, during the investigative interview, conceals the information regarding the murder of her sister, Andrea, and thus, becomes partner in the crime. It is pertinent to underline the significance of suspects' emotional state during the police investigations even if the suspects are the real culprits in the crime being investigated. Highlighting the manipulative linguistic practices of the police detective characters, previously limited to active violence, but now exercised in more indirect ways and with seemingly positive undertones, is the central concern of the study. We conclude that language as a tool of communication is exploited to feed the vested interests of the detective characters in the novel.

Forensic linguistics is known to be a subfield of applied linguistics that involves the study of language and the law; however, it was only recently -around a decade ago -that it was named so. Unfortunately, forensic linguistics still does not prove to be very familiar among many people, even those affiliated with law and English departments at various institutions. The purpose of the present study is to identify the field of forensic linguistics and distinguish its different aspects. The paper thoroughly discusses the distinctive subfields that fall under forensic linguistics, including author attribution, stylometry and the field's aid in homicide investigations.