https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/gateway/plugin/WebFeedGatewayPlugin/atomInternational Journal of Speech, Language and the Law2023-12-12T15:01:38+00:00Philipp Angermeyer, Alison May, Kirsty McDougall, Radek SkarnitzlA.J.May1@leeds.ac.ukOpen Journal Systems<p><em>The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law</em> is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles on any aspect of forensic language, speech and audio analysis. <a href="https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/about">Read more about the journal.</a></p> <p> </p> <p><a href="https://journal.equinoxpub.com/GL/Metrics"><strong>Metrics</strong></a><br />Journal Impact Factor: 0.44 (Clarivate Analytics, 2021 data)<br />Eigenfactor Score: 0.000070 (Clarivate Analytics, 2020 data)</p> <p>H-Index 2021: 30</p> <p><a href="https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/56921">SCOPUS</a>:<br /><span style="font-size: 0.875rem;">CiteScore 2021: </span><span class="value fontMedLarge lineHeight2 blockDisplay" style="font-size: 0.875rem;">1.1<br /></span><span style="font-size: 0.875rem;">SJR 2021: </span><span class="value fontMedLarge lineHeight2 blockDisplay" style="font-size: 0.875rem;">0.181<br /></span><span style="font-size: 0.875rem;">SNIP 2021: </span><span class="value fontMedLarge lineHeight2 blockDisplay" style="font-size: 0.875rem;">1.224</span></p>https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/27532Book announcements2023-12-19T17:45:04+00:00Richard Powell2023-12-19T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/27414'The Impact of Plain Language on Legal English in the United Kingdom' Christopher Williams (2023)2023-12-19T17:45:04+00:00Mami Hiraike Okawara
<p><em>The Impact of Plain Language on Legal English in the United Kingdom</em><br />Christopher Williams (2023)<br />Routledge, 206 pp</p>
2023-12-19T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/27369'Discourse and Diversionary Justice: An Analysis of Youth Justice Conferencing' Michelle Zappavigna, James Martin (2018)2023-12-19T17:45:04+00:00Xiaoqin WuShuyuan Qiu
<p><em>Discourse and Diversionary Justice: An Analysis of Youth Justice Conferencing</em><br />Michelle Zappavigna, James Martin (2018)<br />Palgrave Macmillan, xxv + 352 pp</p>
2023-12-19T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/27368'Digital Grooming: Discourses of Manipulation in Cyber-Crime' Nuria Lorenzo-Dus (2022)2023-12-19T17:45:04+00:00Mengna LiuJinshi Chen
<p><em>Digital Grooming: Discourses of Manipulation in Cyber-Crime</em><br />Nuria Lorenzo-Dus (2022)<br />Oxford University Press, 240 pp</p>
2023-12-19T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/27343Authorship attribution, idiolectal style, and online identity2024-03-06T15:53:13+00:00Mashael AlAmr
<p><em>Assistant Professor</em><br /><em>Department of English Language</em><br /><em>College of Language Sciences</em><br /><em>King Saud University</em><br /><em>Riyadh 11495 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia</em></p> <p>Awarding Institution: University of Leeds, UK<br />Date of Award: 14 October 2022</p>
2024-03-06T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/27273Multilingual legislation and plain language2023-12-19T17:45:05+00:00Paolo Canavese
<p><em>Faculty of Translation and Interpreting (FTI)</em><br /><em>Centre for Legal and Institutional Translation studies (Transius)</em><br /><em>University of Geneva</em><br /><em>Switzerland</em></p> <p>Awarding Institution: University of Geneva, Switzerland<br />Date of Award: 5 April 2023</p>
2023-12-19T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/27087IAFPA 2023 conference report2023-12-19T17:45:06+00:00Ben Gibb-Reid2023-12-19T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/21000Do you read me?2023-08-16T09:11:47+00:00Felicity Deamer
<p>This paper argues that there are three separable but related dimensions that are important to the legal notion of consent. One is a consenting state of mind, the ‘going along with’ a plan of action, which may or may not be communicated or even reflected upon, but which certainly can be. A second is displaying behaviour which reveals or is an expression of consenting. Another is intentionally communicating consent. I illustrate how the communicative act is often vitally important as evidence of an underlying consenting state, but the underlying consenting state has to be postulated and brought to the fore since consensual actions (e.g. sexual intercourse) can, and more often than not do, take place without the communicative acts, and the communicative acts might for various reasons be made in the absence of the genuinely consenting state of mind. The arguments I put forward offer a reframing of cases in which an apparent intentional communication of consent was treated as consent, rather than as a piece of evidence which may or may not be indicative of a consenting state of mind. This paper emphasises that we must not allow the importance of something as evidential to eclipse the underlying phenomenon, which is itself, however hard to access otherwise, the thing of primary legal importance.</p>
2023-08-16T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/22946How similar are the formants in the speech of bilingual speakers?2023-08-16T09:11:46+00:00Peggy P. K. MokHolly S. H. FungGrace W. L. CaoChun Wai Leung
<p>This study investigated whether a stronger accent in the L2 of Cantonese-English bilingual speakers with high levels of English proficiency correlates with greater convergence of corresponding vowels (four monophthongs (/i a (a) c u/ and five diphthongs /ai au ei ci ou (eu)/) between their two languages in identical phonetic environments. No consistent effect of accent rating was found in either acoustic or perceptual similarity measures. Much individual variation and vowel-specific patterns were observed. The results demonstrate that the formant patterns in one language or one vowel cannot predict those in another language or another vowel, even with highly comparable materials and speakers with a relatively strong accent. Possible reasons and implications for the lack of correlation between accentedness and vowel convergence are discussed.</p>
2023-08-16T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/23263Age, sex and first language for the forensic linguistic profiling of teenagers in Catalan2023-08-16T09:11:45+00:00Roser Giménez García
<p><em>Margarita Salas Postdoctoral Research Fellow</em><br /><em>University of Barcelona</em><br /><em>Barcelona</em><br /><em>Spain</em></p>
2023-08-16T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/23788‘A shifting precipice of unsettled law’?2023-08-16T09:11:43+00:00John Terry Dundon
<p>This paper provides an up-to-date summary of how the US legal system treats evidence that uses the forensic stylistics method of authorship attribution analysis. Many scholars in both law and linguistics have written about some of the more notable cases on this issue, but none have attempted to trace the entire line of relevant case law since the advent of modern forensic stylistics, and relatively few summaries of any case law have appeared in the last ten years. It is hoped that a fresh look with updated legal research can add new insights for litigants, lawyers and linguists alike.</p>
2023-08-16T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/24331Pausing and the ‘Othello Error’2023-08-16T09:11:42+00:00Stephanie C. JatKirsty McDougallAlice Paver
<p>The idea of detecting deception from speech is very attractive from a law enforcement perspective, yet research considering the possibility has yielded conflicting results, due to the practical difficulties in investigating the topic. Scientific research is yet to provide forensic linguistics with a reliable means of discerning lies from truths. The present study explores the relationship between truthfulness and pausing behaviour. Various aspects of the acoustics of pausing behaviour were investigated for Standard Southern British English in 30 mock police interviews from the DyViS database (Nolan et al. 2009). A novel distinction was made between prescribed and unprescribed lies, to delineate a potential source of differences in the unscripted content of speakers’ untruthful responses. Among pause duration measures, statistically significant differences were found across all three response types (truth, prescribed lie, unprescribed lie) for response latency, between truths and lies for initial filled pauses, and between unprescribed lies and the other response types for silent pauses. For pause frequency measures, only internal filled pauses showed a statistically significant difference: truths differed from both types of lies, but prescribed lies did not differ from unprescribed lies. Theories of cognitive effort and attempted control are drawn on in accounting for these findings.</p>
2023-08-16T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/24565Perceptual instability in police interview records2024-01-25T08:31:34+00:00James TompkinsonKate HaworthFelicity DeamerEmma Richardson
<p>This article examines whether the representation of linguistic features within transcripts and audio recordings of police interviews can influence people’s perceptions of the interviewee. We specifically examine the influence of the representation of pauses through an experimental methodology. Participants were presented with a police interview either in audio format or in one of a series of transcript formats and asked to make a series of judgements about the interviewee. We manipulated both the presence and representation of pauses within the audio and transcript stimuli to assess how this would influence perceptions. Results showed differences between perceptions of the interviewee in the audio and transcript conditions, and that different representations of pauses within transcripts created perceptual instability between participants. The findings illustrate that the presence and representation of linguistic features in transcripts can affect perceptual judgements. We argue this should be explicitly considered by those using transcripts within the legal system.</p>
2023-08-16T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/26388'New Advances in Legal Translation and Interpreting' Junfeng Zhao, Defeng Li and Victoria Lai Cheng Lei (2023)2023-08-16T09:11:39+00:00Ran Yi
<p><em>New Advances in Legal Translation and Interpreting</em> <br />Junfeng Zhao, Defeng Li and Victoria Lai Cheng Lei (2023)<br />Springer. 264pp</p>
2023-08-16T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/26680'Forensic Linguistics in Australia: Origins, Progress and Prospects' Diana Eades, Helen Fraser and Georgina Heydon (2023) 2023-08-16T09:11:38+00:00Alexandra Grey
<p><em>Forensic Linguistics in Australia: Origins, Progress and Prospects</em><br>Diana Eades, Helen Fraser and Georgina Heydon (2023)<br>Cambridge University Press. 90 pp.</p>
2023-08-16T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/26758IAFLL 2023 conference report2023-12-19T17:45:07+00:00Jinjin LinMengna LiuJinshi Chen2023-12-19T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/25886‘Is he a barrister or not?’2024-02-22T12:42:35+00:00Natalie BraberJane ChingJane JarmanOlivia StevensJeremy RobsonNikolas Pautz
<p>Barristers present formalised legal arguments before courts and tribunals. As a result, considerable focus is placed on their oral skills. However, people are frequently judged by the accent they use. Those with a more standard accent – ‘Received Pronunciation’ (RP) in the UK – can be perceived as more intelligent and eloquent. This creates a barrier to social mobility because accent-based bias can discriminate against those with non-standard accents. This article examines how the public perceives barristers in England and Wales with different accents and investigates experiences of barristers to establish whether accent discrimination disadvantages certain speakers. It includes an online survey of the general public which found that RP and South-East English accents are still seen as more prestigious. In addition, interviews with barristers illustrate how accent discrimination is widespread and affects career progression.</p>
2024-02-22T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/26387Book announcements2023-08-16T09:11:40+00:00Richard Powell2023-08-16T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/18865Reduced statement credibility in interpreter-mediated interviews2023-04-14T19:06:19+00:00Nadja CapusFranziska Hohl ZürcherMirjam Stoll
<p>In this article, we examine whether the participation of an interpreter in police–suspect investigative interviews affects the perception of statement credibility based on the written record of the interview and, whether this relationship is influenced by the interaction style as depicted in the written record. This study thus addresses the question of whether the credibility problems observed in interpreter-mediated investigative interviews are carried forward to the case file and is based on the content analysis of 102 actual written records of police–suspect interviews conducted in Switzerland. Our results show, first, that written suspect statements are indeed considered to be less credible when an interpreter participates in the interview. Second, this effect is mediated by the questioning style and the fragmentation of discourse. According to the written records of interpreter-mediated interviews, interviewers use a more controlling questioning style and suspects provide shorter answers, which in turn results in reduced statement credibility.</p>
2023-04-14T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/20899English and Bislama in the Vanuatu Supreme Court2023-04-14T19:06:19+00:00Cindy Schneider
<p>Nowadays many postcolonial societies endorse multilingualism. But Leung (2019) observes how, in the legal process, ostensible linguistic equality may disguise substantive inequality. She characterises this as a situation of ‘shallow equality’. This article investigates the balance between substantive and shallow equality in the Supreme Court of the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. Vanuatu is highly multilingual, with over 100 languages. Although the Constitution officially supports all languages, the court ultimately demands competence in English. To investigate this tension I analyse observational and interview data from the field, using a theoretical framework which incorporates language planning, ideologies and practices (Spolsky 2004; 2012; 2021). Results confirm Leung’s thesis. The Court does support multilingualism – particularly the local lingua franca, Bislama – but a ‘shallow equality’ persists. Nevertheless, constitutional protections lead to more positive outcomes than would otherwise eventuate. Also, modest practical measures could be implemented to improve substantive linguistic equality</p>
2023-04-14T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/23955How we use automatic speaker comparison in forensic practice2023-04-14T06:38:14+00:00David van der VloedTina Cambier-Langeveld
<p>Automatic methods are rapidly gaining ground in forensic speaker comparison, next to the existing auditory-acoustic methodology, performed by human experts with an academic background in phonetics. In this article we set out the steps that were taken before we could introduce the automatic method and start combining the two methods (software and human) in casework. We further provide a comprehensive explanation of the automatic method (originally written for readers of forensic reports) in the appendix. We discuss the legal reception of the combined approach, based on a court ruling in an appeal case in which the reliability of the speaker comparison was challenged by the defence. We also address the important issue of how conflicting results from the two methods may be dealt with in practice.</p>
2023-04-14T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/24678Language as evidence2023-04-14T06:38:14+00:00Awni Etaywe2023-04-14T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/25491A tribute to Peter French on the occasion of his retirement from his role as founding editor of the Journal2023-04-14T19:06:01+00:00Malcolm CoulthardJames Tompkinson
<p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p>
2023-04-14T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/25496Obituary for Hermann Josef Künzel (10 April 1950–18 October 2022)2023-04-14T19:07:27+00:00Angelika Braun2023-04-14T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/25587Book announcements2023-04-18T07:36:27+00:00Richard Powell2023-04-14T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/25804Editorial2023-04-14T06:38:12+00:00Philipp AngermeyerAlison MayKirsty McDougall2023-04-14T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/20214Style variability in disfluency analysis for forensic speaker comparison2021-10-19T08:12:02+00:00Lauren HarringtonRichard RhodesVincent Hughes
<p>Disfluencies are a natural part of speech, often going unnoticed by both speaker and listener. Recent research on disfluency profiles (McDougall and Duckworth 2017, 2018) shows that they contain speaker-specific information which could be analysed and compared in forensic speaker comparison (FSC) casework. Since samples in FSC tend to be mismatched for speaking situation and style, the present study investigates the consistency of speakers’ disfluency production across three forensically relevant tasks: a mock police interview, a paired conversation and a voicemail message. Disfluency production was found to differ significantly across tasks; in some cases, extreme within-speaker variation was observed. The results demonstrate that a speaker’s disfluency behaviour is unlikely to remain consistent across different situations. However, it was found that some individuals who demonstrated unusual production of a particular type of disfluency showed relatively consistent production of that type across all three tasks. Consequently, we recommend that disfluency analysis is not used in FSC where there are marked differences in speaking style or situation, unless distinctive disfluency production is observed in a sample.</p>
2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/20340A forensic phonetic investigation of regional variation and accommodation in West Yorkshire2021-10-15T11:20:02+00:00Katherine Elizabeth Earnshaw
<p>This thesis presents an examination of regional variation and speech accommodation in two socially salient features of West Yorkshire English. The first aim of this research is to consider the extent to which local level variation exists across the West Yorkshire boroughs of Bradford, Kirklees and Wakefield. The second aim is to evaluate the effects of speech accommodation, the process whereby speakers adapt their speech production according to whom to they are talking (Giles, 1973; Giles & Powesland, 1975; Trudgill, 1981), in forensically-relevant contexts. The findings from these examinations inform how generalisable population data is for West Yorkshire across the three boroughs and also demonstrate to what extent accommodation could impact forensic speaker comparison (FSC) casework.</p> <p> </p> <p>The specific features examined in this thesis are the West Yorkshire face vowel and word-medial, intervocalic /t/. The motivations for examining these variables are twofold. Firstly, previous investigations of West Yorkshire English have suggested that these variables may be realised in different ways across the region and secondly, both variables appear to be socially salient in the speech community under investigation. As speech accommodation has been found to occur more often and to a stronger degree with respect to features that are socially salient (Cao, 2018; Smith & Holmes-Elliott, 2015; Trudgill, 1986), it was expected that the participants in this investigation would accommodate in respect of these speech parameters. However, the main focus of this investigation is to examine the magnitude and direction of any accommodation behaviour, and to evaluate the potential consequences this may have for FSC outcomes.</p> <p> </p> <p>This study is one of the first to make use of the newly published West Yorkshire Regional English Database (WYRED; Gold, Ross, & Earnshaw, 2018). The study analyses the speech of 30 males from West Yorkshire recorded completing three semi-spontaneous speaking tasks that utilise different interlocutors. Participants are equally split across the boroughs of Bradford, Kirklees and Wakefield and form a homogenous population in terms of age, gender and language background, enabling a systematic evaluation of regional variation. For the analysis of face, measurements are taken of the first three formants at 25%, 50% and 75% across the total vowel duration. Using these measurements, a series of statistical analyses are conducted in order to establish levels of variability across boroughs and across tasks. Additionally, realisations of intervocalic /t/ are analysed auditorily and assessments of variability between boroughs are carried out as well as an examination of changes in T-glottaling rates across tasks. For both speech parameters, accommodation is evaluated using an acoustic-phonetic approach whereby the participants’ realisations are considered in relation to those of their respective interlocutors.</p> <p> </p> <p>The findings of the investigations presented in this thesis reveal that face productions vary at the local borough level, specifically in terms of midpoint F2 values, whereas /t/ productions are not regionally stratified across West Yorkshire. Based on these results, recommendations are outlined for delimiting the relevant population for FSC casework involving West Yorkshire speakers. With regards to speech accommodation in face and /t/, results show that accommodation behaviour is highly variable across participants, both in terms of the direction and amount of accommodation present. All participants were considered to accommodate in at least one speech parameter, and a small number of participants displayed very high levels of within-speaker variability across tasks, highlighting the level of potential impact that speech accommodation can have on socially salient speech parameters. The consequences of these findings are addressed from both a FSC casework perspective and also in terms of sociolinguistic research practices more generally.</p>
2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/21607Cross-currents2022-07-08T17:55:54+00:00Dima Rusho2022-07-08T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/25642Deceptive indicators2023-12-19T17:45:07+00:00Michelle LigovichYasmin RichardsDavid ClarkeDavid Keatley
<p>Correctly identifying when an individual is lying based on their nonverbal communication has been a central aim of researchers and practitioners. Traditionally, research has focused on individual ‘tells’ or indicators of deception. More recently, researchers have focused on clusters and sequences of nonverbal gestures; however, these methods can lead to complex outputs that are difficult to interpret. The current research uses a newly developed temporal method, Indicator Waves, to analyse the concurrent and sequential nonverbal communication of individuals caught verbally lying on tape. The analyses show the complexity of nonverbal behaviours in simplified wave diagrams and the importance of using linguistics to code nonverbal deceptive behaviours accurately. Statements made by individuals were analysed using Statement Analysis and nonverbal gestures related to lips, head, eyes and upper body were shown to change between deceptive and truthful individuals, both in the lead-up to lying and post-lying. This research is the first to use Indicator Waves in deception detection and provides a new simplified approach for understanding complex patterns of nonverbal communication in lying.</p>
2023-12-19T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.