Forensic Phonetics

Abstract

AbstractAn overview of forensic phonetics is presented, focusing on speaker identification as its core task. Speaker profiling/speaker classification is applied when the offender has been recorded, but no suspect has been found. Auditory speaker identification by victims and witnesses becomes relevant when no speech recording of the offender is available. It can take the form of familiar‐speaker identification or unfamiliar‐speaker identification, and in the latter case a voice line‐up/voice parade can be carried out. When recordings of both the offender and a suspect are available, a voice comparison is done by an expert in forensic speech analysis. Current issues and domains in voice comparison analysis include the Bayesian approach to forensic reasoning and the Likelihood Ratio, the use of formant frequency measurements, non‐analytic perception and Exemplar Theory, forensic automatic speaker identification, and the interaction between different methods.