Writing Wrongs

* Warning: Today’s episode contains discussions of threatening communication *
 
What makes something a threat? In today’s episode, our hosts Dr Nicci MacLeod and Professor Tim Grant are joined by Dr Isabel Picornell, who tells us about a case in which this was the central question.
 May 3rd, 2021, Scotland. Three days before the Scottish Parliament election and amidst fervent jabs being traded from supporters from all sides, a certain tweet stood out. “See you Galloway, we will get you, ye understand??” Twitter (now X) user @KyleHibee07 posted. This was condemned by supporters of the intended recipient, George Galloway, running for a seat at the time, who took this as a threat on the ex-Labour MP’s life. Our hosts and guest explore the issue of identifying threatening communications by examining this tweet.
Have a question for Nicci or Tim? Email us at writingwrongs@aston.ac.uk and we mayanswer it during an upcoming episode!
 Check out the official AIFL blog for more forensic linguistic goodieshere: https://medium.com/@AIFLblog
 If you have been affected by any of the themes in this week’s episode, please contact one of these free sources:
https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/
https://www.helpguide.org/find-help
 
Production Team: Jordan Robertson, Neus Alberich Buera, Karolina Placzynta, James Cresswell
Sound: James Cresswell
Editing: Angela Walker
Visual design: George Grant
Additional Voices: Mike Clarkson, Ian MacArthur, BrynMacArthur, Louise Martin, Ali Murray, David Steele, Paula Steele
 With our thanks to Dr Isabel Picornell
 Artwork image credits
Artwork image of George Galloway: By David Hunt from Warwickshire, UK - Stop The War - 32 - George Galloway, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3002252
Artwork image of Scottish flag: Jawad Ali on Vecteezy https://www.vecteezy.com/free-png/scotland-flag-waving
Artwork of  An Incident in the Rebellion of 1745, an oil on canvas, painting by David Morier is out of copyright and taken from the Wikipedia link below.
 For the painting that was part of the original tweet and to find out more about the battle of Culloden see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Culloden#/media/File:The_Battle_of_Culloden.jpg
Professor Tim Grant’s home page: Tim Grant - Aston Research Explorer
 Dr Nicci MacLeod’s home page: Nicci MacLeod - Aston Research Explorer
 Dr Isabel Picornell’s webpage: Forensic Linguistics | Qedforensics
 
Dr Isabel Picornell’s latest book, The Linguistics of Analysing Deception in Written Texts: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/linguistics-of-analysing-deception-in-written-texts/C257606CC51F70AAED702FBBDE7C41EC

Tickets here!

* Warning: Today’s episode contains discussions of murder and racial profiling *
 
Some time in the 2000s, somewhere in the USA. John Smith, an African American male defendant, has been accused of murder. While in jail awaiting trial, he makes a phone call to his cousin. It was believed John confessed to the murder. The defence disagreed, but needed linguistic assistance to help them. Elsewhere in the country, tragedy has struck. 7-year-old Leona Harris was attending a house party with her father, Robert. While standing in the front garden with some friends, they came under gunfire from a passing car. A number of the group were wounded – Leona and Robert fatally so. The police believed they had identified the gang responsible, and the individual who pulled the trigger, and brought him in to be interrogated. However, they needed more information to charge him with the murders. To obtain this, they approached a former member of the gang, Sidney Brown, to help them gather new evidence to arrest the prime suspect – Marcus Jeffreys. Sidney was provided with a mobile phone and instructed to call Marcus, the conversation being recorded and later transcribed. The prosecution’s case was that the transcript clearly showed Marcus agreeing to the proposition that he had committed the murders. Marcus’s defence disagreed.
 
In today’s episode, our hosts Dr Nicci MacLeod and Professor Tim Grant are joined by Professor of Linguistics John Baugh. He’s come to talk to us about his type of linguistic profiling, which occurs when someone’s speech triggers discriminatory bias against them. Through a discussion of two cases John has worked on, he explains how his expertise tackled linguistic evidence in the US criminal justice system.
 
For a list of our sources and more information about this case, please visit https://www.aston.ac.uk/writing-wrongs
 
Have a question for Nicci or Tim? Email us at writingwrongs@aston.ac.uk and we may answer it during an upcoming episode!
 
Check out the official AIFL blog for more forensic linguistic goodies here: https://medium.com/@AIFLblog
 
If you have been affected by any of the themes in this week’s episode, please contact one of these free sources:
 
https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/
https://www.helpguide.org/find-help
 
Production Team: Jordan Robertson, Neus Alberich Buera, Karolina Placzynta, James Cresswell
Sound: James Cresswell
Editing: Angela Walker
Visual design: George Grant
With our thanks to Professor John Baugh
 
 
 
Professor Tim Grant’s home page: Tim Grant - Aston Research Explorer
 
Dr Nicci MacLeod’s home page: Nicci MacLeod - Aston Research Explorer
 
Professor John Baugh’s home page: John Baugh | Faculty | The People of Rice | Rice University
 
Professor John Baugh’s book: Linguistics in Pursuit of Justice
 
Center for African and African American Studies at Rice University
 
 
Academic resources
 
Baugh, J. (2016). Linguistic profiling and discrimination. The Oxford handbook of language and society, 349-368.
 
Cotterill, J. (2003). Language and power in court: A linguistic analysis of the OJ Simpson trial. Springer.
 
Dixon, J. A., Mahoney, B., & Cocks, R. (2002). Accents of guilt? Effects of regional accent, race, and crime type on attributions of guilt. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 21(2), 162-168.
 
Fraser, H. (2020). Forensic transcription: The case for transcription as a dedicated branch of linguistic science. In The Routledge handbook of forensic linguistics (pp. 416-431). Routledge.
 
OJ Simpson Trial Transcript http://simpson.walraven.org/jul12.html
 
 
Other resources
 
BBC 2016, “Renting while black,” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-35464634.
 
The Fair Housing Act
Resources

*Warning: this episode contains descriptions of emotional abuse and manipulation* 
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 November 12, 2018, Madrid, Spain. 47-year-old Galician man Rodrigo Nogueira Iglesias is arrested near the Puerta de Atocha railway station. His crimes stretched back more than twenty years. Rodrigo frequented social media platforms and dating websites where he used fake profiles, pretending to be different people with different names and professions, all with the initial goal of attracting the attention of women who could be potential victims.
 We are joined by Dr Sheila Queralt – a friend of the Institute and Spain’s top forensic linguistics expert, having consulted on some 300 cases over the past 15 years and testified as a linguistics expert witness in criminal and civil trials across 10 countries, with cases reaching courts including the ECHR. Her work in forensic linguistics at ForensicLab continues through her Laboratory based in Barcelona, which provides linguisticanalysis of recorded conversations and voice messages, as well as written documents.
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In the episode, we make references to episodes 1.4 Romance Fraud, featuring a conversation with Dr Lis Carter, and 3.2 The Multiple Personas of an Online Child Abuser, featuring DrEmily Chiang.

 Have a question for Nicci or Tim? Email us at writingwrongs@aston.ac.uk and we may answer it during an upcoming episode! 
 
Check out the official AIFL blog for more forensic linguistic goodies here: 
https://medium.com/@AIFLblog  
 
If you have been affected by any of the themes in this week’s episode, please contact one of these free sources: 
https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/  
https://www.helpguide.org/find-help  
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Production Team:  Angela Walker, Jordan Robertson, Neus Alberich Buera, Karolina Placzynta 
Sound: James Cresswell 
Visual design: George Grant 
Editing: Angela Walker 
Additional voices: Salvador Alberich Castelló
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Illustration by Víctor Gomollón García. Reproduced with the illustrator's kind permission. The illustration was originally created for the book Estafas amorosas by Sheila Queralt Estévez (Larousse Editorial, 2022).
More information about the book:
https://www.larousse.es/libro/libros-ilustrados-practicos/estafas-amorosas-sheila-queralt-estevez-9788419250179/ 
Español
Ilustración de Víctor Gomollón García. Reproducida con la amable autorización del ilustrador. La ilustración fue creada originalmente para el libro Estafas amorosas, de Sheila Queralt Estévez (Larousse Editorial, 2022).
Más información sobre el libro:
https://www.larousse.es/libro/libros-ilustrados-practicos/estafas-amorosas-sheila-queralt-estevez-9788419250179/

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Professor Tim Grant’s home page: Tim Grant- Aston Research Explorer 
 Dr Nicci MacLeod’s home page: NicciMacLeod - Aston Research Explorer 
 Dr Sheila Queralt’s home page: SQ-Lingüistas Forenses
 
Decalogue for requesting a linguistics expert report by Sheila Queralt  
 News of the Nogueira Iglesias case in the Spanish press
 A guide to spotting romance fraudsters
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Academic sources
 Carter, E.(2024). The Language of Romance crimes: Interactions of love, money, and threat. Cambridge University Press.
 Chatten, A., Baxter, K., Mas, E., Pena, J., Tabachnick, G., Duncan, D., & MacKenzie, L. (2024). “I’ve Always Spoke Like This, You See”: Preterite-to-Participle Leveling in American and British Englishes. American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage, 99(1), 3-46.
 
Queralt, S. (2022). Linguistic Profiling: A Spanish Case Study. Methodologies and Challenges in Forensic Linguistic Casework, 44–62.

* Warning: Today’s episode contains descriptions of child sexual abuse material. *
 
In today’s episode, Dr Nicci MacLeod and Prof. Tim Grant are joined by Dr Emily Chiang, one of our Research Fellows at AIFL, about her research into identity performance in online child sexual abuse conversations.
By tracing 17 different personas from a single perpetrator, Dr Chiang explored linguistic differences in identity performance and online grooming strategies. Together, Dr Chiang and our hosts go over how her research may help future grooming and child sex abuse cases.
 
Have a question for Nicci or Tim? Email us at writingwrongs@aston.ac.uk and we may answer it during an upcoming episode!
 
Check out the official AIFL blog for more forensic linguistic goodies here: https://medium.com/@AIFLblog
 
If you have been affected by any of the themes in this week’s episode, please contact one of these free resources:
 https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/
https://www.helpguide.org/find-help
 
Production Team: Mark Round, Jordan Robertson, Neus Alberich Buera, Karolina Placzynta
Sound: Mark Round
Editing: Nicci MacLeod
Visual design: George Grant
Additional Voices: Karolina Placzynta
With our thanks to Dr Emily Chiang and Dr Zoe Adams
 
Professor Tim Grant’s home page: Tim Grant - Aston Research Explorer
 Dr Nicci MacLeod’s home page: Nicci MacLeod - Aston Research Explorer
 Dr Emily Chiang’s home page: Emily Chiang - Aston Research Explorer
 
Both Tim and Emily are part of the Europewide Horizon SALVUS project looking at the investigation of online child abuse and exploitation across Europe. You can find out more about the SALVUS project here: https://salvusproject.eu
 
Research Papers:
Deceptive identity performance: Offender moves and multiple identities in online child abuse conversations
 Online grooming: moves and strategies
 Do Perverted Justice chat logs contain examples of Overt Persuasio⁠n and Sexual Extortion? A research note respondingto Chiang and Grant 2017 and 2018.