„Fraud in Judicial System‟ as a Language Crime: Forensic Linguistics Approach

Abstract

Forensic linguistics is a discipline coordinated with legal goals in the judicial system, focusing on all branches of linguistics including phonetics, semantics, discourse etc. This science is not so known in Iran; whereas, it can have a lot of applications in judicial system. Fraud is a kind of crime in which language plays a central role in forming. There are three conditions in forming of fraud: first; dishonest tools to cheat others, second; victim’s lack of knowledge about dishonest tools, third; the lost possession belonged to the victim. At least, realization of the second condition requires swindler to deceive his victim by language. The author aims at providing a conceptual structure for the crime of fraud with linguistic analysis. Having reviewed different cases in courts and Bureau of Police Investigation, the author offered a conceptual frame with six components including requirement/greed, proposal/advertisement, perlocutionary effect, agreement based on commitment speech act, problem (not realizing of commitment speech act) and completion. This is a field research and applies at analysis-description method.