Organisation profile

FORGE (Forensic Linguistics Research Group) is based in the Linguistics and English Language (LAEL) department. The FORGE is open to all Lancaster University academics, students, and visiting scholars who are interested in forensic linguistics research.

At the FORGE, we adopt a very broad definition of forensic linguistics. Below is a far-from-complete list of topics and areas we are interested in, and invite talks on:

• Analysis of author
  e.g. accent/dialect, authorship attribution, idiolect and variation, psycholinguistic profiling, sociolinguistic profiling, etc.
• Analysis of process
  e.g. closing speeches, ethics, formulating expert opinions/statements, gaining/giving informed consent, interview versus interrogation, issuing cautions/warnings, jury instructions, methods of (cross-)examination, opening statements, testifying, reading rights, translation, voir dire, etc.
• Analysis of text-meanings
  e.g. aggression, deception, discrimination, hate-speech, incitement, (industrial) espionage, manipulation, (online) grooming, etc.
• Analysis of text-types
  e.g. affidavits, contracts, expert opinions, legislation, witness statements, suicide notes, terrorist manifestos, wills, etc.
• Analysis of theoretical/methodological approaches to FL
  e.g. computational/corpus linguistics, (critical) discourse analysis, data collection, cleansing, and storage, dialectology, linguistic “fingerprints”, psycholinguistics, (socio)phonetics, sociolinguistics, stylistics, transcription, etc.

Any Lancaster University academic or student interested in the field is welcome to attend, and we particularly invite talks from academics in related fields (e.g. computing, criminology, law, psychology, sociology, etc.).