Part 1. Anonymous extortion - Assignment for the language profiler

Alarm bells ringing in the management. Ralf Rasend slams a stack of documents on the table and shouts, "This shit must never happen again!" He looks at twelve concerned faces. The situation is serious! Everyone knew that the takeover would be tricky. Even at the highest level, there had been long debates about the sense and nonsense of this step. In the end, a decision was made by the board, and an agreed communication strategy was set after the initial negotiations. Everything was to be treated as top-secret until then. Ralf Rasend quotes from the letter he received that morning through the central mail: "Alpha AG, Mr. Ralf Rasend, personal/confidential! You are about to make the biggest mistake of your so far picture-perfect 'career'. You will not 'survive' the acquisition of Omega OHG. Instead of creating a playground for your ego, you should focus on the core business. (...) It is clear at first glance that the numbers have been manipulated, and Omega is significantly overvalued. Someone has really 'dolled up the bride' here. This does not improve our situation, but makes it more serious. Unfortunately, you leave us no choice but to protect the company, its employees, and ultimately also you(!)! Give up your plans in this regard, otherwise we will be forced to make the study attached to this letter accessible to the staff shortly. Going to the media will not be far off then. And then you will have been the shining 'Mr. Clean' for the last time... (...) With that, everything has probably been said... Yours sincerely, concerned employees." The anonymous letter was accompanied by a copy of an internal business development document, which assumes the closure of a production and the elimination of 200 positions after the merger. Crime Scene Text - How Language Profilers Convict Anonymous Perpetrators The described case is a classic field of application for the language profilers at the Institute for Forensic Text Analysis. Their mission: Convict anonymous perpetrators. Their clients: Companies that wish for "silent" investigations - without involving the public prosecutor's office. Their most important task: Providing clarity! Besides all the strategic challenges that Ralf Rasend is facing now, his biggest problem would be to have an unidentified mole within his own ranks. Anonymous letters come in various forms. Cut-out and pasted colorful letter texts from magazines are - and have always been - the absolute exception. Every other form is a daily practice: handwritten or printed on paper, sent via email from anonymous foreign servers, to text messages on smartphones whose sender cannot be traced back technically. Letters, as in the case of Alpha AG, always carry traces and should therefore be carefully secured as evidence. Securing fingerprints, fiber traces, or DNA residues are classic forensic investigative approaches. Just like the analysis of the paper, writing instrument, handwriting, or printing method. Language profiling complements all conventional investigative approaches with another powerful method: Texts are examined for linguistic patterns to convict the perpetrator. The language profiler compares the anonymous letter with text material from possible suspects. Based on this, a comparative language analysis for author identification is prepared. The profiler analyzes whether a suspect can be identified or exonerated as the perpetrator. If a suspicious person is considered as a suspect, the profiler determines the likelihood. In the absence of possible suspects or comparison texts, a perpetrator profile is determined based on linguistic features. Through linguistic methods, perpetrators can also be convicted who threaten, defame, or blackmail from the anonymity of the internet. Just like those who are aware of the traditional investigative methods and therefore deliberately disguise or deceive. The language profiler has a great advantage on his side: A perpetrator who wants to achieve his goal must always communicate! Is there a linguistic fingerprint? Language always has a personal style. Because language is a highly creative process. In choosing each individual word, each introduction, each salutation, each form of politeness, each tense, each idiom, each punctuation mark, each capitalization, each active or passive construction, each emphasis, each sequence, each main and subordinate clause, the actor must make decisions. "You are about to make the biggest mistake of your so far picture-perfect 'career'." The perpetrator could have formulated this sentence in a hundred different ways. But he didn't. He did not write: "You are about to make the biggest mistake of your life...", he wrote "so far" instead of "until today", "previously", or "so far". Instead of sticking to the point, he chose a polemic second clause, and put the word "career" in quotation marks. He didn't have to do that either. An essential aspect of language profiling is that we form our spoken language, just like written texts, mostly unconsciously. We follow patterns that are deeply rooted in us. These patterns arise because our language is shaped from the beginning by our social and cultural environment. For example, by our parents, family, friends, school, profession, and last but not least by our individual personal interests. We have internalized them so much that we no longer consciously perceive them. Perhaps you also have people in your environment who use certain formulations, such as "exactly", "in this regard", or "explicitly" so frequently that you wonder if the other person is even aware of this peculiarity? Language patterns can ideally be almost as clear and distinctive as a well-readable fingerprint. The investigator must know exactly where to look for fingerprints during evidence collection. While a layman would search on the tabletop, a professional also searches underneath. The same goes for text analysis. Often, it is the subtle, not immediately visible patterns that ultimately lead to the perpetrator. The investigator needs the right brush, the perfect powder, the suitable foil, and in difficult cases special light or chemicals for securing. He has only one chance during securing. If he makes a tiny mistake, the trace is lost forever. The traces analyzed by the language profiler are more robust. The crime text is documented, black on white, forever and ever. To recognize patterns, a good copy is sufficient for the text investigator. The linguistic fingerprint has another advantage over the skin's papillary lines: It can reveal much more about the perpetrator than a classic fingerprint. For example, texts often provide clues about the number of authors, intentional distortions, mother tongue, regional origin, age group, gender, level of education, language proficiency, and under favorable circumstances even about the education and profession of the author. Databases that continuously document language and vocabulary are used in creating perpetrator profiles. For example, the word database of the University of Bonn, the vocabulary database of the University of Leipzig, the corpus of the Institute for the German Language, or the digital dictionary of the German language of the 20th century. Perpetrator profiles can offer particularly important investigative leads when suspects are initially lacking. However, the language profiler faces a challenge that the investigator in technical evidence collection does not know. Fingerprints are essentially unchangeable. They can change due to injuries, such as scratches or cuts, but the pattern underneath usually remains the same. The text investigator knows that language undergoes constant changes or can at least undergo changes. He takes this into account when evaluating his comparison texts. As well as very common or accidental errors. Therefore, the term "linguistic fingerprint" is to be understood more as a metaphor. Perpetrators who consciously disguise and deceive in the text ... To find out what happens next, read Part 2. Follow our blog on Xing to stay up to date.