Linguistic Fingerprints

My husband has a saying about if you don’t have it in writing you don’t have squat. This is even more true now than ever before because textual sleuths find clues these days, not in fingerprints or handwriting, but in word choice, spelling, punctuation, character sequences and in subtle (and usually subconscious) patterns of sentence structure. Forensic linguistics has a controversial subspecialty, author identification, and authors are identified through these clues found in the treasure trove of written communication we create everyday…in email, in texts and in tweets. Private companies want to find out which disgruntled employee has been posting bad stuff about the boss online. Police and prosecutors seek help figuring out who wrote a threatening e-mail or whether a suicide note was a forgery and forensic linguistics seek to provide answers. There are debates about the acceptability of this new science in courts of law now but as error rates drop and techniques become more refined forensic linguistics will become more important. The new whodunit will become a who wrote it, something to think about the next time you consider posting a rant on Face Book!