forensic linguistics
Sign in to saveAlso known as FL, linguistic criminal law, language and the law, legal linguistics, linguistic crime, linguistic tax, linguistic tariff
application of linguistics to forensics
~40 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Forensic linguistics, legal linguistics, or language and the law is the application of linguistic knowledge, methods, and insights to the forensic context of law, language, crime investigation, trial, and judicial procedure. It is a branch of applied linguistics.
Forensic linguistics is an umbrella term covering many applications to legal contexts. These are often split between written and spoken items. It is common for forensic linguistics to refer only to written text, whereas anything involving samples of speech is known as forensic speech science.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “forensic linguistics” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.