[button color="blue" size="medium" link="https://se.speakers-excellence.de/blogs/2019/04/09/anonyme-erpressung-einsatz-fuer-den-sprachprofiler/" icon="" target="false"]To Part 1[/button] Article by Patrick Rottler, Language Profiler at the Institute for Forensic Text Analysis
Perpetrators who consciously disguise and deceive in text
In practical case work, we also deal with perpetrators who intentionally distort their language. For example, attempts are often made to pretend a foreign origin by using broken German and deliberately inserted errors. Frequently, the "we-form" is used, as in the extortion letter to Ralf Rasend, where individual perpetrators try to conceal their tracks or give more weight to their statement. In general, it is important to note: A perpetrator can only disguise what he is aware of! And since language largely operates on a subconscious level, there are usually enough linguistic traces left to assume or exclude a perpetrator. Whether this evidence can be proven or not ultimately depends on the amount of text available for analysis. The more text from the crime and the more comparison texts, the better the opportunities for the language profiler.
The methodical approach to cracking linguistic codes
Text analysis is carried out using linguistic methods established and further developed by Prof. Dr. Raimund H. Drommel in the German-speaking region. Every word and every character from the anonymous crime writing is compared with every word and every character from the comparison texts. In this process, deviations from standard German are sought. Systematically recurring linguistic errors have the highest significance. However, systematic anomalies that do not constitute errors from a linguistic perspective can also lead to the perpetrator. The higher the degree of deviation from general language usage, the more significant the findings.
Analysis fields in comparative linguistic assessments
Each text is analyzed on six levels, searching for matching patterns. For example, some people regularly use formulations like "until now," just like our anonymous perpetrator above, while others in the same context may use synonyms like "so far," "previously," or "until today." Or they may choose sentence constructions with "since" or "ever since." Such anomalies can run through entire texts, sometimes even through an entire lifetime. If the language profiler is able to identify four to five such patterns, a sort of linguistic fingerprint slowly emerges. Word choice comparison is the simplest of the six levels. The analysis then delves into the nuances of grammar in main and subordinate clauses. All crime and comparison texts are systematically examined in the following fields:
- Visual appearance of the text body, including spelling (phenotype)
- Expression units with predominantly grammatical function (morphology, grammatical morphemes, morphemes in the narrow sense)
- Sentence structure and grammar (syntax)
- Vocabulary, word usage (lexicon, idiomatics)
- All phenomena crossing sentence boundaries and thus constituting the text (textematics)
- Author-specific psychological characteristics reflected in language, for example, dominant basic motivation, dominant perception channel, or language behavior profiles obtained from texts (language psychology)
Requirements for comparison texts
To create a comparative linguistic assessment, the comparison texts must meet certain criteria. They must each be clearly attributed to a specific person and have been created/authored by that person. The texts to be compared should ideally belong to the same or a similar type of text. The best comparability is achieved when letters are compared with letters, reports with reports, concepts with concepts, short texts with short texts, and emails with emails. The compared texts should also not have too large time intervals between them. The temporal proximity of the texts is important to ensure that the perpetrator's linguistic behavior has not changed too much in the meantime. Sufficient text quantity must also be available: the more, the better.
Practical approach in investigations
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