LLS Colloquium: A theory of linguistic individuality for forensic linguistics

On Wednesday 12th October 2022, Andrea Nini (Manchester) will be presenting on "A theory of linguistic individuality for forensic linguistics".

Talk: A theory of linguistic individuality for forensic linguistics

Although linguists from different traditions have expressed their belief that each and every person is unique in the version of the language they know and use, a concept often called idiolect, this area of investigation remains seriously underdeveloped. This kind of knowledge is needed because of forensic applications of linguistics such as authorship analysis. In these cases, forensic linguists tend to devise and adopt ad hoc methodologies that vary depending on the case and that tend to be often purely qualitative. A better understanding of linguistic individuality would be useful to move the field towards a more scientific approach to this problem.

In this talk I will firstly introduce the audience to authorship analysis and then review the direct and indirect evidence in favour of a theory of language that should account for a large amount of individuality and uniqueness. I will then present a few elements of a novel formal theory of linguistic individuality, at least for what concerns the lexicogrammar of a language, and then finally detail some of its predictions for future research.

The talk will take place at 3pm, and there will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end. There will also be an informal wine reception afterwards in the Department of Language and Linguistic Science (Deborah Hines Room, 2nd floor). Everyone is welcome!