Linguistic Profiling When There Is No Known Murder Suspect
Roger W. Shuy · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2014
This chapter describes linguistic profiling, an investigative technique that can be used when anonymous threat messages have been received. Unlike psychological or behavioral profiling, which is based on the similarities of the text to other similar behavioral evidence, linguistic profiling is based on known, existing language evidence. Such messages usually reveal the intentionality and predisposition of their authors. Linguists search these texts for the presence of language features that might help identify the writer’s regional background, age, gender, education, race, ethnicity, and sometimes even religion as clues to authorship. The chapter then describes how linguistic profiling was used in two FBI cases, the famous case of the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, and a less celebrated case of bomb threats sent to a Gary Indiana women’s medical clinic.