Towards the modelling of forensic authorship methods in the light of aspects of idiolect, text, author and genre relations
Currently, some prominent forensic linguists rely on notions of the idiolect to undertake forensic authorship comparisons. The first project questions the validity of this doctrine, firstly by examining how authorship and its subsidiary activity of attribution, based on concepts such as style and individual distinctiveness, came into existence. The writings and casework of several forensic linguists are quoted from: it is seen that the notion of distinctiveness has been embraced by these practitioners to the neglect of a balanced observation of variation. A mobile phone corpus was built in order to evaluate the degree of variation in this form of written language. It was found, as expected, that variation is the norm and not the exception - contrary to the claims of some forensic linguists. The second project studies the nature of variability in genre and non genre text, examining factors which can contribute to author or textual variation, including aspects of register and context. An experiment into genre variation is carried out in order to discover the sources and causes of variation. The experiment shows that variation is not author based, but is genre dependent, related mainly to questions of time and
Olsson, John Gabriel
Towards the modelling of forensic authorship methods in the light of aspects of idiolect, text, author and genre relations. Currently, some prominent forensic linguists rely on notions of the idiolect to undertake forensic authorship comparisons. The first project questions the validity of this doctrine, firstly by examining how authorship and its subsidiary activity of attribution, based on concepts such as style and individual distinctiveness, came into existence. The writings and casework of several forensic linguists are quoted from: it is seen that the notion of distinctiveness has been embraced by these practitioners to the neglect of a balanced observation of variation. A mobile phone corpus was built in order to evaluate the degree of variation in this form of written language. It was found, as expected, that variation is the norm and not the exception - contrary to the claims of some forensic linguists. The second project studies the nature of variability in genre and non genre text, examining factors which can contribute to author or textual variation, including aspects of register and context. An experiment into genre variation is carried out in order to discover the sources and causes of variation. The experiment shows that variation is not author based, but is genre dependent, related mainly to questions of time and
towards model forensic authorship method light aspect text author genre relation currently prominent forensic linguist rely notion undertake forensic authorship comparison first project question_validity doctrine firstly_examine authorship subsidiary activity attribution base_concept style individual distinctiveness come_existence writing several forensic linguist quote see notion distinctiveness embrace practitioner neglect balance observation variation mobile phone corpus build order_evaluate degree variation form write_language find expect variation norm exception contrary claim forensic linguist second project study nature variability genre non genre text examine factor_contribute author textual variation include aspect register context genre variation carry order discover source cause variation show variation author base genre dependent relate mainly question time