Forensic Linguistics Abroad: Establishment of the Subject

Abstract

The article deals with the development of forensic linguistics as an interdisciplinary sphere of scientific research abroad. The article dwells on various approaches to the definition of the subject of the given research area (any text regarded in the legal context can be an object of research of forensic linguistics; presentation of forensic linguistics as a branch of applied linguistics in which linguistic theories and methodological approaches are used to solve legal problems; synthesis of sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis making it clear who speaks, who is spoken to, when, where and with what purpose something is said). The author defines the chronological frames of the development of the discipline: the first works in the given area refer to the early 1960s; the word combination “forensic linguistics” was first used in 1968. The foreign forensic linguistics was first formed as judicial linguistics, therefore the term forensic linguistics is usually translated into Russian depending on the context as “lingvisticheskaya ekspertiza” (linguistic expertise) or as “sudebnaya lingvistika” (judicial linguistics). The article dwells on significant criminal cases and trials which demonstrated the need for forensic linguistics as an independent sphere of theoretical and applied research and showed the importance of design and development of forensic linguistic methodology: the judicial error of 1949 that lead to the execution of T. Evans and brought up the problem of determination of the credibility of evidence in court; trials on trademarks, for example the claim of the owners of the multinational fast food restaurant chain “McDonalds” against the “Quality Inns International” corporation which announced opening an economy class hotel chain under the name “McSleep”. Special attention is paid to the specificity of formation of forensic linguistics in the USA, Great Britain, Australia, Germany and Austria.