An Introduction to Forensic Phonetics and Forensic Linguistics (Learning about Language)

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.

Adrian Leemann is Professor of German Sociolinguistics at the University of Bern, Switzerland.

Ria Perkins works as a civil servant for the Ministry of Defence, and is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics in Birmingham, UK.

Grace Sullivan Buker is a Lecturer in Forensic Linguistics and Cross-Cultural Communication at Northeastern University, USA.

Paul Foulkes is Professor of Linguistics and Phonetics at the University of York, UK.