Forensic Lingustics

Forensic Linguistics is the application of linguistic knowledge to the relevant areas of the justice system. Forensic linguistics knowledge is useful when interpreting certain types of evidence. For example their skills can be used to identify voices over recordings or phone calls. This is called Forensic Phonetics. A Forensic linguistic is able to identify speakers in various situations for example during hoax or obscene phone calls, a fraudulent deal over the "phone" and during ransom demands. However there are limitations to interpreting data in this way. For example it may be difficult to understand someone's accent over the phone, and the recording itself may be of poor quality. It is important to remember that at that speech evidence does not have the same status as evidence based DNA or fingerprints. DNA evidence is evidence that can be assumed to be constant, whereas characteristics of a person's speech are not constant. This is because there no two utterances from the same speaker which are exactly identical. A persons voice can also deviate from the norm which can affect the speakers voice that are outside of their control. For example having a cold, being stressed, and experiencing fatigue. In other words, a speaker with a cold can temporarily sound hypo nasal. It is important to recognise that evidence based on speech is far from constant It is therefore important to approach evidence based on speech with great caution.