LINGUIST List 13.3153

Mon Dec 2 2002

Confs: Ling Evidence for Forensic Purposes

Editor for this issue: Karolina Owczarzak <karolinalinguistlist.org>

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  • Louise McNally, Ling Evidence for Forensic Purposes, Barcelona Spain

    Message 1: Ling Evidence for Forensic Purposes, Barcelona Spain

     Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2002 10:52:27 +0100
    From: Louise McNally <mcnallyupf.es>
    Subject: Ling Evidence for Forensic Purposes, Barcelona Spain


    FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT

    UNITAT DE VARIACIO LINGUISTICA (UVAL) Institut Universitari de Linguistica Aplicada (IULA) Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)

    INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON: THE USE OF LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE FOR FORENSIC PURPOSES: CONCEPTS, METHODS AND APPLICATIONS Barcelona, April 24-25, 2003

    The international workshop on 'The use of linguistic evidence for forensic purposes: concepts, methods and applications' has been set up to attain a two-fold aim:

    a) to contribute to the discussion of forensic linguistic matters at an international level, by bringing together some of the most world-known forensic linguists with a long practice around the world, and

    b) in so doing, to help to launch forensic linguistics in Spain, where some professional people have acted as experts, but their practice has been very isolated.

    Also, the launching of forensic linguistics has to be viewed in the context of the stronger links to be established between academics and society.

    As the Forensic Linguistics web page http://www.clg.bham.ac.uk/forensic/ states:

    "Forensic Linguistics can be defined as the interface between language and the law. This discipline includes the study of a number of areas, which have to do with the use of linguistic evidence within diverse public contexts and professional settings such as:

    - The use of linguistic evidence (phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, discourse) in court to identify speakers and writers of a specific linguistic variety, style or register. - The analysis of signature and text forgery with criminal ends. - The analysis of authorship attribution of both spoken and written texts. - The readability/comprehensibility of legal documents. - Courtroom discourse. - Legal interpretation and translation in multilingual settings "

    >From a methodological point of view forensic linguistics expertise and research is implemented by means of a series of tools, software, and quality statistics which allow forensic linguists to show a much more rigorous and scientific performance to be used by the public administration (magistrates, the judicial school, the police) and private institutions and companies, and also by professional people (judges, lawyers, attorneys, solicitors, notaries, psychologists, doctors).

    It was not until the nineties that forensic linguistics emerged very forcefully. Firstly, the experts' performance became much more professionalized; secondly, an increase in the publication of articles and chapters in a number of forensic linguistics topics took place, and their content was much more methodologically grounded than before; thirdly, the International Association of Forensic Linguistics was founded in 1992, and finally, Forensic Linguistics: The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, a peer-reviewed journal published twice a year in June and December, published its first issue in 1994.

    The pioneer, technological and applied character of forensic linguistics seems to be sufficient to justify its general and particular interest and thus the organisation of this workshop, which will become an interdisciplinary forum of discussion involving the participation of law scholars, computer science technicians and linguists.

    WORKSHOP STRUCTURE The workshop will be organised around 40-45 minute presentations followed by a 10-minute debate period.

    INVITED SPEAKERS & TOPICS: Enrique Alcaraz, Universitat d'Alacant. Linguistica y lenguaje forense. Teoria y practica: analisis de tres casos practicos.

    Janet Cotterill, Cardiff University. Linguistics Applied: exploring the analytical boundaries of Forensic Linguistics.

    Malcolm Coulthard, The University of Birmingham. On the use of linguistic evidence for forensic purposes: concepts, applications and methodology in cases of disputed authorship.

    Carlos Delgado Romero, Policia Cientifica de Madrid. La Linguistica en las tecnicas de investigacion forense del habla.

    Peter French, The University of Birmingham & York University. Uses of Forensic Speech Analysis Evidence in Criminal Investigations and Trials.

    John Gibbons, Hong Kong Baptist University. Control of information and control of the interviewee in questioning in legal contexts.

    Joaquin Gonzalez-Rodriguez, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. Forensic Analysis of Speech Evidences Under the Bayesian Approach with Automatic Speaker Recognition Systems.

    Sandra Hale, University of Western Sydney. The impact of the interpreter on the evaluation of witness character in the adversarial system.

    M. Angeles Orts, Universidad de Murcia. The room for complexity in contractual cases. Analysis of two legal cases.

    Luis Perez Gonzalez, Universidad Europea de Madrid. Perspectivas de desarrollo del peritaje linguistico en Espana: Condicionantes especificos de un marco legal cambiante

    Dolors Poch, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona & Bernard Harmegnies, Universite de Mons-Hainaut. La fonetica forense ante la variabilidad del habla.

    Larry Solan, Brooklyn Law School (New York). Forensic Linguistics in American Courts.

    Roger Shuy, Georgetown University (Washington D.C.). What Can Linguistics Say About Criminal Intent?

    Peter Tiersma, Loyola Law School (Los Angeles) Linguistic Experts on Meaning and Interpretation in American Courts

    M. Teresa Turell, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. How can quantitative analysis support qualitative evidence in cases of plagiarism in literary translation?

    David Woolls, CFL Software Development (Odiham, Hook, Hampshire). Saying the same things differently; saying different things the same way. Rapid diagnosis and detailed investigation of academic malpractice using electronic tools.

    WORKSHOP LANGUAGE The workshop language will be English, although a few presentations will be in Spanish, in which case conference interpreting will be available.

    WORKSHOP ORGANISER: M. Teresa Turell Head of the Language Variation Research Unit (UVAL) Institut Universitari de Linguistica Aplicada Universitat Pompeu Fabra c/ La Rambla 30-32 08002 BARCELONA e-mail: teresa.turelltrad.upf.es Tel: +34 93 542 22 50 Fax: +34 93 542 23 21 http://www.iula.upf.es/uval http://www.upf.es/dtf/personal/materesaturell/index.htm

    Registration & hotel booking: to be announced soon. Conference Office: to be announced soon.