Wordcrime: Solving Crime Through Forensic Linguistics

This book consists of short, bite-size chapters describing a wide variety of analyses the author made regarding the implications, reliability, or source, of words presented to him. He did this as a leading authority in the relatively new field of "forensic linguistics" that he has been a pioneer in formalizing.This isn't handwriting analysis. Nor is it exactly like the kinds of attribution studies that scholars have been doing for a long time in order to determine such questions as "Did Shakespeare really write all those plays?" Rather, Olsson's work is geared strictly toward giving impartial testimony in court, so it calls for both legal and linguistic knowledge.I had my attention called to this new discipline in an episode of TV's "Forensic Files." It seemed like a fascinating subject for anyone interested in writing, or in the meaning and nuances of words. As a result, I immediately bought this book, as well as Olson's textbook on the subject. Of the two books, "Word Crime" is aimed more at a general audience. Each chapter is a case study that describes some of the principles Olsson used in reaching a conclusion about certain contested statements.The chapters cover an amazingly wide range of topics. They include Olsson's analysis of both written and audio sources. Had a "suicide" note found beside a woman's body really been written by that woman - or did her husband write it to disguise a murder? Was a witness' statement spontaneous - or did his account have the earmarks of having been fed to him by police questioners? Were the charges of genocide made by two Rwandan women against one of their countrymen firsthand accounts - or were they based on hearsay? Was bestseller "The DaVinci Code" plagiarized by author Dan Brown - or is it original work? (In this last particularly interesting case, Olsson refrains from spelling out what opinion he rendered, leaving readers to form their own conclusion.)In general, this book didn't dampen my enthusiasm for pursuing the subject matter further. However sometimes Olsson's writing is a bit stuffy and uninspired. Some of the conclusions he rather laboriously arrives at seem obvious. Also, some of the cases he cites don't seem to warrant the analytic lengths he went to in order to render an opinion. For example, there's the case of the airplane pilot who had his flyers' Club privileges revoked and his plane and hangar confiscated when his fellow plane enthusiasts thought he was the author of some bitingly satirical articles about the Club in the local newspaper.Olsson also sometimes contradicts himself from one study to the next. In one place he warns that it's now deemed to be unproductive to use concordances in which you total up the number of times a word appears in a contested document as compared to a known document. However, then Olsson tells how he used various corpuses (similar to concordances) and also just simple Google searches to see how often a particular phrase appears in general usage. It's the same when it comes to considering the average length of sentences and the richness of the vocabulary used in two documents up for comparison. At first Olsson says such factors are "not indicative" of authorship, but in subsequent case studies he uses those very factors to help him reach an opinion.In other cases, Olsson appears to be somewhat biased, contrary to the strict code of conduct that any forensic scientist is supposed to follow. He reports the cases in which the courts or judges rendered decisions contrary to his recommendations, and in some of these cases, the reader might feel the courts were in the right. Also, many of these studies were conducted in England and so are based on questions of jurisprudence and police procedure that might be foreign to many American readers.But on the whole, this material is a real find. It opens a door to a whole new field of study. Better yet, it will likely sensitize readers to phrasing and nuance. Did the witness say, "I saw 'the' cut on his arm" - or "I saw 'a' cut on his arm"? That difference can make all the difference.Be sure to take advantage of the glossary at the end of the book that explains the more technical meaning of many of the terms that Olsson uses.

John Olsson is one of the world's top forensic linguists. He has testified in more than 500 court cases, published numerous research studies, and co-authored (with June Luchjenbroers) one of the field's leading textbooks,  Forensic Linguistics . In this book he teaches readers about forensic linguistics using the case study method.Each of the twenty-three chapters describes a case the author has contributed to as a forensic linguist. He has selected each one to illustrate particular aspects of his work. "My aim is not primarily to tell a good story, but to illustrate how interesting and complex language is, and how powerful a resource it can be when it enters the arena of the law." All of the cases are worth reading. These three are reasonably representative:Chapter 4, "Is  The Da Vinci Code  a Plagiarism?" examines an accusation that Dan Brown "borrowed without permission" major plot elements of his bestseller from another writer's book. Olsson addresses this question by examining the order in which the plot elements occur in each book. He also looks at instances where both authors made the same unusual or erroneous word choices. Olsson reports the legal outcome and invites readers to form their own conclusions.In Chapter 8, "Murder or Suicide," Olsson is hired by the family of a young man who has apparently committed suicide and left a suicide note for his family. Suspicious circumstances lead his family suspect the man was murdered and the note forged by the killer. In reaching his conclusions, Olsson considers both characteristic features of the young man's writing and the tone and content typical of authentic suicide notes.Chapter 20, "Return to Sender," occurs in the context of a woman's claim that she was sexually assaulted by her psychotherapist. As this trial approached the city's Social Welfare Division received an anonymous letter asserting that the woman suffered from several specific psychological disorders and was unfit to care for her children. Olsson's analysis addressed the scarcity of psychology terminology in everyday language and included a word choice comparison between the letter and the therapist's patient notes.Each chapter tells an engaging story and showcases at least one linguistic analysis technique. Good reading, a good introduction to the forensic linguistics specialty, and a well-crafted invitation to learn more from the author's weighty text. Nicely done, Dr. Olsson!

Fans of CSI, true crime books and mysteries looking for new plots and unique ways of solving crimes will find Wordcrime a deep and rewarding trove of reading.Internationally renowned forensic linguist John Olsson has created a work that is both highly readable and factually rigorous. This book simultaneously entertains and educates -- a nearly impossible feat in both fact and fiction.Indeed, some of the true-crimes have details that would have been unbelievable had they been written as fiction.Written in bite-sized chapters, Wordcrime takes a "from the files of ..." approach as Olsson explains the origins of some of the hundreds f cases he has worked on. Olsson leads us through the genesis of each crime, the methods he used to sleuth his way to the guilty party, and the resolution.Olsson devotes a small part of each chapter to explain some facet of forensic linguistics -- brief enough to be entertaining and long enough to impart a substantial degree of understanding.

Love this book. I have misplaced it recently but it's a pretty good read if you're into this subject. I'd like to get the 2nd one, too.

I wasn't very familiar with forensic linguistics, so I was interested in finding out about the tools that can be used to determine who had spoken or written material. While Olsson is not really a very compelling writer, the stories are fairly short, so I didn't lose interest.

I bought this to get a general view of the subject and there are many interesting insights, the chapter on suicide notes in particular. The author explains processes clearly without getting bound up in some of the more complex statistical analysis that linguistic forensics can involve.Despite the objectivity and impartiality required by the forensic linguist, our writer does clearly delight in some places that he was right and others wrong – notably in his evisceration of another so-called expert whose skills are evidently not up to standard.

A potentially interesting topic for a linguist like me, but sadly I found this book badly conceived and badly written. I read the first 30 pages, skimmed some of the rest, then gave up. Very disappointed.

This book is such an enjoyable read. It is clearly written, interesting, detailed - it really helped improve my knowledge in preparation for university starting up again in October.This book is a great purchase for those studying - or even those just interested in - the topic of forensic linguistics, or linguistics in general.Definitely worth the cost. Arrived quickly, well packaged and in good condition.

I was a bit disappointed. The book largely comprises an anthology of case-studies and anecdotes, whereas I was hoping for a little more "academic" content, explaining the theories underpinning forensic linguistics and the methodologies used. Perhaps these were discussed later in the book, but I'd given up before I got halfway through.

A study book, great for students, but very dry otherwise.The Author is great at blowing his own whistle, but I guess he is qualified to do so.