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Beyond Grammar: Forensic Linguistic Awareness
- naouress
- Nov 30, 2020
- 3 min read
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
― Carl Sagan
Writing is a mirror that reflects the writer’s thoughts, emotions, orientations, origins, and even intentions. Writing is meaningful. Rarely does one stop and inquire, while in the process of writing: “How much information am I conveying to the world about myself in what I am writing right now?”
Regardless of the genre one is writing about, every single written word can give information about its writer, otherwise fields like text analysis and sentiment analysis would not exist ;)
To put it simply, written pieces that are destined to be shared publicly with the world are considered data. Depending on the degree of attachment of the writer to their content, conclusions and results can easily be reached.
What writers should revise before publishing their work are the following points:
Stylistic fingerprint is meaningful
The sentences chosen carry structure and meaning. Every writer has their own linguistic identity when it comes to the choice of sentence and statement structures. For example, some would write using the passive form, others tend to be more inclined to the use of active voice. Some would love to use simple sentences, others make more use of complex, compound, or compound complex sentences. The lexical preferences are meaningful and indicative of the linguistic style of writers. You might think that if one varies their sytle and makes it always unpredictable, chances are their linguistic identity might remain hidden. Not true, in forensic linguistics, even the absence of a certain stylistic pattern is a style in itself. If it is the case that sometimes you use “can’t”, other times you use “cannot” and if that variability features a great number of your articles, algorithms are more likely to detect that very stylistic orientation. Linguistic style becomes a forensic matter when it comes to issues such as authorship attribution and plagiarism.
The Use of “I” in the absence of a DISCLAIMER
Ifyour writing has to do with sensitive information or confessions, you have better insert a disclaimer that shows your distance from or proximity to the shared information in a clear way. Some writers shared sensitive past stories about their mental disorders and and psychological issues and then found themselves confronted with what they have written. Such situations can have significant consequences, especially if the writer is a fan of the first person pronoun “I”. The us of “I” is meaningful. If in a disclaimer, one announces that the written information reflect a reported story or that it belongs to the fiction genre, for instance, it would certainly mitigate the direct information attribution to its writer.
Epistemic modality
Expressing ideas can be performed through the use of modality. Modality has two types. The deontic modality allows the expression of ideas through the use of modal verbs like “will”, “can”, “may”, “should” and so on. The epistemic modality can manifest itself in possibility as well as in varied degrees of certainty and doubt. The use of epistemic modals indicates the speaker or the writer’s degree of commitment to their speech act: weak vs. strong speech act. For instance, “That is definitely wrong” is way stronger than “That might be wrong”. Sensitive information that might have legal repercussions have better be expressed in a less strong way so that some distance is kept between the writer and the piece of information.
Hate Speech, Threat, and Criminal Intent
Article writers whose niche is based on reviews and critical accounts of other people: celebrities, influencers, or competitors are more susceptible to being sued, if their work instigates hate or shows criminal intent toward the criticized person/object. Explicit and implicit forms of threat, hate speech, accusations, and criminal intent can all be exposed through the writer’s statements, calls for action, and directive social actions inserted between the lines of their writing. Hedging the voice is meaningful and always useful when it comes to the criticism of others. Notice the difference between: “Michael, you are a racist” and “Michael, I see that your humour contains racist jargon”. Writing with forensic linguistic awareness adds a sense of responsibility towards the communicated messages and the chosen styles in one’s written work.
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