Forensic Linguistics: Phonological Variation
A case study of written and spoken texts in police offices and courts in Jordan
Introduction
Language can deliver truth as well as assist in hiding it. However, it is also evidence of the truth in itself. This potential of the language can be utilized for the delivery of justice, investigation purpose and the sake of the rule of law. The forensics linguistics is used for the investigation of crimes and judicial procedures and court trials (Prema, 2018). The Forensic Linguistics covers the language of the trial, the language in the investigation and the language of the law and the law interpretation. Several institutions and universities have developed training and programs in applied linguistics. The application of forensic linguistics ranges from all stages of phonetics to discourse analysis deals for the investigation, trial, and its ultimate interpretation. The various applications of the Forensic Linguistics include speaker identification by witnesses and victims, identification of regional or social accents, recognition of dialects, voice recognition, age recognition of speaker and telephone speaker identification in terms of auditory phonetics (Jordan, 2002). In terms of acoustic phonetics, voice quality, speaking speed, phonetics manifestations, impact of intoxication on speech, improvement of the audio records for the disputed utterances and identification of disambiguating speech. Likewise, the semantics, including the interpretation of the sentences, phrases, words and texts, the interpretation of the police interviews, warnings and cautions by police, speech discourse and jury instructions (Rosenhouse, 2013). The discourse and pragmatics, the stylistics and questioned authorship and the language of the law and court. The interpretation and translation, including the courtroom interpretation, dialect differences, and testimonies are also to be examined. Signature discrimination, identification, handwriting, and plagiarism detection are all included in this field. The examination of forensic linguistics and its phonological variation in terms of the case study of Jordan police, courts and police offices (AI-Tamimi, 2001).
References
AI-Tamimi, F. Y. (2001). Phonetic and Phonological Variation in the Speech of Rural Migrants in a Jordanian City. The University of Leeds.
Jordan, S. N. (2002). Forensic Linguistics: The Linguistic Analyst And Expert Witness Of Language Evidence In Criminal Trials. Biola University.
Prema, D. S. (2018). A Note on Forensic Linguistics in India. DLA News, 42(1).
Rosenhouse, J. (2013). General And Local Issues In Forensic Linguistics: Arabic As A Case Study. Comparative Legilinguistics, 53.
