10. Case Study. Внимательно изучите статью научного обозревателя ввс. Заполните бланк, соответствующий информацией из текста.

The case for forensic linguistics

By Elizabeth Mitchell Science reporter, BBC News, Liverpool

Text message analysis is becoming a powerful tool in solving crime cases.

In February 2008, linguistic evidence contributed to the conviction of David Hodgson in the murder of Jenny Nicholl.

The case highlighted how people choose their own text language "rules" - which they tend to use throughout all their messages.

Forensic linguists showed that text messages sent from Jenny's phone after she went missing had a style that was more similar to that of David Hodgson.

Jenny Nicholls' body was never found, but the jury accepted the prosecution's view that Hodgson had been sending texts on her mobile after her presumed death and found him guilty of murder.

The case is illustrative of what can be achieved by analyzing mobile messages, said Dr Tim Grant from the Centre for Forensic Linguistics at Aston University.

He is speaking here in Liverpool at the British Association Science Festival.

Identifying the author of an anonymous text message might seem like an impossible challenge as they are typically very short and fragmented.

Traditionally, forensic linguists use a descriptive approach.

They demonstrate that there are several stylistic features that are consistently used in messages where they know the author.

For example, Jenny Nicholl used "my" and "myself" while David Hodgson often adopted Yorkshire dialect, using "me" and "meself."

Forensic linguists look to see whose style is most similar to that used in any disputed texts.

11. Прочитайте текст. Ответьте на вопросы.

1. What is forensic stylistics?

2. What are the main types of questioned authorship problems?

3. What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative approaches?

4. What is stylometry?

5. How is question writing analysis accomplished?

6. What does this analysis result in?

7. What is author identification based on?

TEXT

STYLISTICS AND QUESTIONED AUTHORSHIP

Forensic stylistics is the application of the science of linguistic stylistics to forensic contexts. The focus of forensic stylistics is author identification of questioned writings.

There are at least three types of questioned authorship problems. First, one may want to determine if one author wrote all the writings in a questioned set, i.e., if a particular writing, which may or may not be already accepted as part of a body (canon) of known writings, is consistent with the rest of the known writings. Second, one may be asked to compare a questioned writing with the writings of a large number of possible authors, if there are no obvious suspect authors. Third, the most common type of forensic problem is to assess the resemblance of a questioned writing to that of one author or a small number of candidate authors, if in fact possible suspect authors can be identified by external (nonlinguistic) means.

Linguistic stylistics uses two approaches to authorship identification: qualitative and quantitative. The work is qualitative when features of writing are identified and then described as being characteristic of an author. The work is quantitative when certain indicators are identified and then measured in some way, e.g., their relative frequency of occurrence in a given set of writings. Certain quantitative methods are referred to as stylometry. Qualitative and quantitative methods complement one another and are often used together to identify, describe, and measure the presence or absence of style-markers in questioned and known writings.

Typical cases of questioned authorship present a questioned writing to be compared or contrasted to the known reference writings of questioned writing one or more candidate authors. Such an analysis is accomplished by examining the writing style of all available questioned and known writings. The writing style is exhibited in underlying linguistic patterns internal to the habitual language used by the author. Results of this analysis may be 1) determination of resemblance of questioned writings to a common canon of known writings, 2) elimination or identification of one or more suspect authors, or 3) inconclusive with respect to data that support neither elimination nor identification.

Author identification is based on two well-documented facts: author-specific linguistic patterns are present in unique combination in the style of every writer, and these underlying patterns are usually established enough to be empirically described and measured by careful linguistic observation and analysis, making author identification possible.