The Effectiveness of Linguistic Analysis in Fraud Cases
The Effectiveness of Linguistic Analysis in Fraud Cases
This chapter examines the usefulness of linguistic analysis for the retaining lawyers in the eight fraud cases described earlier. None of the lawyers used their retained linguist as an expert witness but they used the analysis during the legal proceedings in various ways. Admittedly, eight cases is a very small sample, but the case results can give some indication of linguistic usefulness. Since two of the defendants were clearly guilty, linguistic analysis couldn’t help their lawyers very much. In three of the cases the lawyers used the linguistic analysis to negotiate favorable plea bargains to some of the charges. The remaining three cases resulted in not guilty verdicts for the defendants. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the advantages of using the inverted pyramid approach to analysis of language evidence and the virtues of using linguists as expert consultants versus the difficulties involved in using them as expert witnesses.
Keywords: linguistic analysis, plea bargains, verdicts, language evidence, expert consultants, convictions, plan A, consult, plan B, testify, disallowing linguistic experts, inverted pyramid value
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