In Linguistics as a Forensic Science, students will learn a paradigm for forensic linguistics which meets both legal and scientific standards. This paradigm enables linguists to produce the reliability testing and calculated error rates that are expected of fully-admissible scientific evidence. Examples of this paradigm at work are drawn from the four corners of forensic linguistics: identification, text-typing, intertextuality and linguistic profiling. Software tools that support this paradigm will be demonstrated and students will use one application for participating in and designing an experiment.

Students interested in forensic linguistics should take courses in syntax, phonology, computational linguistics, corpus linguistics and typology.

Bringing a laptop to class is optional, but access to a computer for participating in course activities is mandatory.