Forensic Linguistics
"Linguistic Clues, Criminal Cues"
What is Forensic Linguistics?
What We Do
Forensic linguistics is the application of linguistic knowledge, methods, and insights to the legal system. It involves analyzing language-related aspects of legal cases and investigations. Here are some key areas and applications of forensic linguistics:
Authorship Attribution: Determining the author of a particular piece of writing by analyzing stylistic features.
Voice Identification: Analyzing speech patterns to identify or eliminate suspects.
Text Analysis: Examining written documents, such as ransom notes, suicide letters, or threatening messages, to uncover clues about the author.
Trademark Disputes: Analyzing linguistic similarities and differences in trademark infringement cases.
Legal Language: Evaluating the comprehensibility and clarity of legal documents and witness statements.
Discourse Analysis: Analyzing conversational exchanges, such as police interviews or court testimonies, to detect inconsistencies or signs of coercion.
Language Crimes: Investigating cases involving linguistic offenses, such as plagiarism, perjury, or defamation.
Forensic linguists work with law enforcement agencies, legal professionals, and sometimes private clients to provide expert analysis and testimony in both criminal and civil cases. The work often requires a deep understanding of language structure, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics.
About
My name is Irene J. Orellana
I am a Forensic Linguist with 6 + years of experience in research and analysis. I received my BA in Linguistics from Cal State Long Beach and received my MA in Forensic Linguistics from Hofstra University. I have experience in accomplishing transcription during live wires for DEA, HSI, ICE and local police departments. I have also assisted in conducting authorship analysis on capital murder cases for the Innocent Project as an intern during grad school.
INVESTIGATIVE WORK
Studies
Our Linguistics Research Center thrives on interdisciplinary collaboration, a cornerstone of our work since establishment in 2021. Dive into our current areas of exploration.
Title IX Case
May 2024
Authorship analysis on a title IX case from a university student seeking help. The student needed validation on the suspected person. An authorship analysis was then conducted on the anonymous text messages and the known text messages.
Defamation Case
August 2022
Insurance CEO was seeking help in identifying the person sending defamation emails to their stock holders. There was a total of five ex-employees and two years worth of emails as data. There was three emails in total to compare to the employees emails. All five had features that were similar to the Q (questionable) documents. However, in one the Q documents is was made noticeable the use of British-english grammar. Which in turn was only used by one of the ex-employees. Case was then determined in mediation.
Study: The Language of Persuasion Used by the Mexican Cartel
May 2021
The study focused on the analysis of the language of persuasion used by the Mexican drug cartel and discusses how they use persuasion as an influence tool. The cartel on instances have used the language of persuasion to recruit and influence others. With the tactical knowledge of the language of persuasion used, one can implement social awareness on how the drug cartel recruits and maintains power over others. It could also prevent the cartel’s recruitment tactics from crossing over to the United States and other parts of the world. The study compared the language of the drug cartel with the language of persuasion and power used specifically by cults, Nazi propaganda, ISIS’ recruitment, the Italian mafia, and the language used to incite the insurgence of the Capitol on January 6th. With this knowledge researchers can find ways to prevent recruitment of the cartel and form a counterattack. Future work can investigate the language of persuasion by the Mexican drug cartel.