Forensic Linguistics: A Brief Overview of the Key Elements

The present study scrutinized a framework and brief overview of the key elements of forensic linguistics covering the discipline, the history and development of it, and the use of linguistic evidence in legal proceedings. Moreover, the typical types of linguistic evidence such as author identification, forensic stylistics, discourse analysis, forensic phonetics, forensic transcription and variation (intra-author and inter-author) are explored. Following a brief introduction to the field that examines some general issues, areas directly related to forensic linguistics are put forward. To this end, a section on document examination, software forensic, semiotics and plagiarism detection are included. Besides, the study pays its attention to some forensic applications of descriptive linguistics such as forensic linguists, text types, author, and the linguistic investigation of authorship. The article concludes by suggesting that lawyers and linguists should work more closely with each other in the interests of justice and that not only should linguists improve their understanding of law issues but also the lawyers should benefit from the hindsight experiences of linguists as consultants and expert witness. The present study also suggest that the future of forensic linguistics will be promising if linguists work on law issues, and also on acquiring qualifications, skills and knowledge in other related disciplines in order to better prepare them for working in and with courts.