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School of Culture History and Language · ANU College of Asia and the Pacific
Recorded speech and written texts are increasingly presented as scientific evidence in legal cases. This is due to the fact that the accessibility and anonymity of mobile phones and the internet mean that they are often exploited for criminal acts, but at the same time they leave records which can then be analysed as forensic evidence. This has led to the rapid growth of forensic voice/text comparison as a field of forensic science. The theories and techniques, which are necessary to analyse linguistic evidence, are introduced and demonstrated, with a particular focus on voice and text as linguistic evidence, using examples taken from various languages. In this course, we overview the process of forensic voice/text comparison, including extraction of individualising information from speech/text samples; modelling of speakers/authors, experimental procedures; calculation of evidential strength and performance assessment. Students are expected to demonstrate that they can appropriately apply their acquired skills and knowledge to actual linguistic data extracted from various languages, and then that they can provide an in-depth analysis of the data. They are also expected to critically discuss the results of the analysis by referring to the current issues of forensic voice/text comparison.
A paper summary & bibliographic assignment c.a. 500 words
Learning outcomes 1, 5, 6
1 x take-home assignment (1) on forensic text comparison c.a. 1000 words
Learning outcomes 2, 3, 4, 6
1 x take-home assignment (2) on forensic voice comparison c.a. 1000 words
Learning outcomes 2, 3, 4, 6
Final exam
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
This course requires a total of 130 hours of work, including 3 contact hours per week (lectures and tutorials). In addition to the required contact hours (lectures and tutorials), it is expected that students will spend an additional 6-7 hours per week on this course. In lectures, students will learn necessary theories and methodologies using various examples from a variety of Asian and non-Asian languages. In tutorials, students will put what they have learnt in lectures into practice, by working on actual linguistic data by themselves. Extra reading materials are provided for postgraduate students. Extra tasks will be assigned for postgraduate students in some of the assessment items in order to assess their higher-level critical thinking and in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the field. In the latter half of the course, students need to spend a substantial amount of time for their project using their own target language (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, English). This course may be offered as a summer/winter course. In this case, the course will be offered in an intensive mode, and the weekly contact hours and the outside-classroom study time will change accordingly.
Available on Wattle Preliminary Reading Books and journal papers used in this course - Aitken, Colin and Taroni, Franco (2004). Statistics and the Evaluation of Evidence for Forensic Scientists. Wiley. - Coulthard, Malcolm and Johnson, Alison (2007). An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics: Language in Evidence. Routledge. - Ishihara, Shunichi (2011). A forensic authorship classification in SMS messages: A likelihood ratio based approach using N-gram. Proceedings of the Australasian Language Technology Workshop 2011, 47-56. - Ishihara, Shunichi (2012). Probabilistic evaluation of SMS messages as forensic evidence: Likelihood ratio based approach with lexical features. International Journal of Digital Crime and Forensics 4(3), 47-57. - Kinoshita, Yuko, Ishihara, Shunichi and Rose, Phil (2009). Exploring the discriminatory potential of F0 distribution parameters in traditional forensic speaker recognition. International Journal of Speech Language and the Law 16(10), 91-111. - Lucy, David (2005). Introduction to Statistics for Forensic Scientists. Wiley. - Morrison, Geoffrey S. (2009a). Forensic voice comparison and the paradigm shift. Science & Justice 49(4), 298-308. - Morrison, Geoffrey S. (2009b). Likelihood-ratio forensic voice comparison using parametric representations of the formant trajectories of diphthongs. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 125(4), 2387-2397. - Morrison, Geoffrey S. (2011). Measuring the validity and reliability of forensic likelihood-ratio systems. Science & Justice 51(3), 91-98. - Morrison, Geoffrey S. (2012). The likelihood-ratio framework and forensic evidence in court: A response to R v T. The International Journal of Evidence & Proof 16(1), 1-29. - Morrison, Geoffrey S. (2013). Tutorial on logistic-regression calibration and fusion: Converting a score to a likelihood ratio. Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences 45(2), 173-197. - Robertson, Bernard and Vignaux, G. A. (1991). Interpreting Evidence: Evaluating Forensic Science in the Courtroom. Wiley. - Rose, Phil