An Introduction to Forensic Phonetics and Forensic Linguistics

This textbook provides a practical introduction to the fields of forensic phonetics and forensic linguistics. Addressing how these fields are both distinct yet closely related, the book demonstrates how experts from both fields can work together to investigate and deliver justice in complex legal situations.

With pedagogical features including real-life case studies, exercises, and links to further reading, topics covered include:

• Profiling from spoken and written texts


• Disputed meaning, and how meaning is made and evolves


• Interviewing techniques, including working around those who might be considered linguistically vulnerable


• Author and speaker determination


• Audio enhancement and authentication of recordings


• Language analysis in the asylum procedure (LAAP)

Accompanied by online audio and video resources as well as signposting readers to freely available software to aid their studies, this book is the ideal springboard for students beginning work in forensic phonetics, forensic speech science, forensic linguistics, and law and language.

"An Introduction to Forensic Phonetics and Forensic Linguistics is an authoritative and timely introduction to the use of linguistic science in the courtroom, providing the theoretical background and a practical discussion of the intricacies of speaker identification, earwitness accuracy, dialect variation, and other evidentiary issues. This book will be of value to experts in the fields of linguistics and phonetics, as a guide to solid forensic practices, and also to those present in the courtroom, as a caution against inferring greater reliability than an expert has claimed. Academics in these fields have been waiting for years for a book of this calibre to appear."

Sandra Ferrari Disner, University of Southern California, USA