Variation in Linguists' Analyses of Author Identification

Abstract

TN 1983 AN UNSIGNED, TYPEWRITTEN, LIBELOUS letter was sent to the board president of a corporation, accusing by name some of the corporation's managers of engaging in unlawful activities. A copy of the letter was received by local law enforcement officials. The libeled parties filed suit against someone they suspected of writing the letter. The legal action was complicated and involved cross-complaints of various sorts, so I have simplified the legal presentation here, though not in ways relevant to the point of this discussion. My focus here is solely on the matter of expert witnessing by five linguists. In the hope that it may prove helpful to linguists who are or may become involved as expert witnesses, I describe this action as it evolved, briefly considering the methodologies used by the plaintiffs' experts in their analyses and the criticism of those analyses made by the defendant's experts. From an examination of what the various linguists testified to, I also draw some practical conclusions for linguists engaged as experts in an adversarial setting. As sources of information, I have used the depositions of the five linguists, including written reports made by two of them. In my discussion I call the defendantJohn Smithy; I call the first expert Linguist 1, the second Linguist 2, and so on. I sometimes refer to the anonymous letter as Document A (for anonymous) and to 38 business letters known to be authored by the defendant as Documents B. For the sake of anonymity, I use masculine pronouns for all five linguists and for all parties to the action.