FORENSIC LINGUISTICS, LANGUAGE ANALYSIS, FORGERY, Ph.D., M.A., B.A.

Expert Witness No. 1093

Illinois

FORENSIC LINGUISTICS: The application of the principles and methods of linguistics to the language of legal proceedings and documents.

My areas of expertise:

1. Forensic Semantics: Analysis of and expert opinion on the meaning of words, phrases, clauses, paragraphs, etc., in legal, personal, and commercial communication (e.g., contracts, wills, cases of copyright infringement or plagiarism).
2. Forensic Stylistics: Analysis of the syntax, style, word choice, spelling, punctuation, rhetorical strategies, and other features of anonymous, disputed, or forged documents (including e-mails); expert opinion on authorship and/or characteristics of author.

We all leave linguistic fingerprints on everything we write. If they are there, I will find them.

OVERVIEW - QUALIFICATIONS

A professional lifetime devoted to the analysis of language and the understanding of stylistic nuance:

Doctoral dissertation (University of Chicago, 1973): an analysis of code-switching (i.e., variation in the speaking style of an
individual).

Undergraduate and graduate studies of English syntax: with an in-depth understanding of language structure, I can (1) identify the
vocabulary and grammatical choices that characterize an individual writer's style and (2) recognize errors that no native speaker would
make and thus determine whether a document has been written by a speaker of a foreign language.

Twelve years of teaching English linguistics and composition (including graduate seminars in stylistics and in the structure and process
of written language) have sensitized me to (1) the correlation between a writer's level of education and his/her deviations from Standard
English and (2) the particular locutions favored by individual writers.

Twenty years as a corporate speechwriter/ghostwriter have provided an even deeper understanding of the nature and variation of individual
style, as I analyzed and replicated the natural speech of many different speakers - a challenging task, because most of them came from
the same general background, and the differentiating elements were often few and subtle.

Also wrote for executives who had distinct and idiosyncratic speaking styles, e.g., Burroughs CEO (an economics PhD, former Treasury
Secretary and German immigrant); Philip Morris CEO (an Australian); Kraft Senior VP of R&D (an Englishman).

Examination of thousands of student papers, corporate publications, and countless other written documents has enabled me offer expert
opinion on plagiarism and anonymous or disputed authorship by judging whether particular words, phrases, or other linguistic elements
could occur by chance in two separate documents - or whether the documents are the product of the same hand.

Developed an original, multi-dimensional approach to stylistic analysis that goes beyond language elements to include rhetorical
strategies and intellectual breadth/depth, thus enabling me to identify stylistic similarities (the "writer's fingerprints") at
deeper and more subtle levels.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: LEGAL CONSULTING

1979 - Present