The FORGE and the Lancaster University Phonetics Lab are delighted to announce our first joint external guest speaker of 2015: Dr Erica Gold. Erica began working at the University of Huddersfield in 2014, and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Forensic Linguistics. Details of her talk are below:

TITLE
What can Bayes do for you? Using phonetic and linguistic evidence in the courtroom

ABSTRACT
The forensic sciences are currently undergoing what Saks and Koehler (2005) have suggested is a ‘paradigm shift’. That is more and more forensic scientists are adopting the likelihood ratio framework for presenting forensic evidence in the courtroom. This talk will provide a basic introduction to Bayesian statistics and likelihood ratios, with an emphasis on phonetic and linguistic evidence. The presentation will consider the current methods for presenting phonetic and linguistic evidence in the UK, and also provide empirical results from likelihood ratio research using phonetic parameters. The talk will then conclude by looking at potential avenues for development in the field.

TIME & PLACE
W05, 1600-1700, Wed 04^th Nov, Frankland Colloquium

The FORGE and the Pragmatics & Stylistics Research Group (PaSty) are delighted to announce our first joint external guest speaker of 2015: Danuta Reah. Danuta is a crime novelist who has written books featuring forensic linguistics. Details of her talk are below:

TITLE
Language, Crime, and Death

ABSTRACT
Please be aware that this talk will involve reference to criminal cases, including murder.

Our language tells more about us that we realise – every time we speak or write, we give away things we don’t intend. This is the field of the forensic linguist, searching for the truth that is hiding behind the words. This talk looks at aspects of forensic linguistics: the man who was hanged because the word ‘the’ appeared in his statement – or did it? the way a voice identified a criminal decades after the crime. It also looks at the ways a novelist can weave stories around the secrets hidden in language.

BIO
Danuta Reah published her first novel, Only Darkness, in 1999. She has subsequently written seven novels, the latest being The Last Room. She had also published prize winning short stories. Crime – or dissent – runs in the family. Her father was declared an enemy of the state by Stalin, and one of her ancestors was hung, drawn and quartered in 1646 for his religious beliefs.

You can find out more about Danuta’s work and life at her website. Danuta is also on Twitter and Facebook.

TIME & PLACE
W04, 1600-1700, Tue 27^th Oct, Management School Lecture Theatre 3

The FORGE is pleased to announce our upcoming internal speaker: Prof Paul Baker (Linguistics & English Language). Details of his talk are below:

TITLE
Hate speech on the down-low: Jan Moir, Stephen Gately and the Daily Mail

ABSTRACT
This talk is concerned with the analysis of an opinion article about the death of pop star Stephen Gately published in the The Daily Mail on 23 October 2009. The article received the highest number of complaints to the Press Complaints Commission (over 25,000) ever recorded, with many people claiming that the author, Jan Moir, was homophobic, although the complaints were not upheld. A linguistic analysis reveals that while the article contains no clear-cut uses of homophobic language there are some ambiguous statements which could be interpreted in multiple ways. However, by complementing the linguistic analysis with a wider-ranging context-based analysis, including reference to discourse prosodies via the British National Corpus, social attitudes research, other Mail articles, the Press Complaints Commission guidelines and audience reception, I hope to show that a convincing argument can be made that the article probably was homophobic. In terms of making a case for the presence of “hate speech”, I argue then that we must go beyond the words in texts, to consider how they are positioned within social context.

TIME & PLACE
1400-1500, Thu 20th Nov, County South C89 (Meeting Room 7)

Lancaster University staff members and students are welcome to attend.

The FORGE is pleased to announce our upcoming internal speaker: Prof Paul J. Taylor (Psychology). Details of his talk are below:

TITLE
Email Physics: What can we infer about hierarchies, groupiness and deceit from everyday emails

ABSTRACT
Much can be inferred from the way an author changes his or her language during social interaction. I will describe our efforts to measure linguistic accommodation (or verbal mimicry if you’re a psychologist) and how these measures can be used to infer social position and social motive. I will report one study that demonstrates how mimicry in email replies varies as a function of recipient closeness in a way that fulfills Dunbar’s social brain hypothesis. I will report a second study that shows how a reduction in language mimicry amongst coworkers may be used to detect workers attempting an insider attack on their organisation.

TIME & PLACE
1400-1500, Thu 30th Oct, County South C89 (Meeting Room 7)

Lancaster University staff members and students are welcome to attend.

The FORGE is delighted to announce our first ever internal speaker: Dr Alistair Baron (Computing & Communications; Security Lancaster). Details of his talk are below:

TITLE
Using language analysis to predict age and gender with fake online personas

ABSTRACT
There are a variety of reasons why people choose to use fake profiles online, ranging from the perfectly innocent to deception in order to commit serious crimes. I will demonstrate how differences in language use can be utilised to predict age and gender, even when individuals are attempting to hide their true identity. The irregular nature of online texts poses significant barriers to language analysis, but by pre-processing texts with spelling normalisation, much of the negative impact can be nullified. It will also be shown that the spelling irregularities themselves can be used to aid age and gender prediction.

TIME & PLACE
1400-1500, Thu 09th Oct, County South C89 (Meeting Room 7)

Lancaster University staff members and students are welcome to attend. Note that this venue has a maximum seating capacity of 20.

IF YOU MISSED IT:

You can watch an earlier version of this talk.

The FORGE is delighted to announce our first ever external guest speaker: James R. Fitzgerald. Jim is a retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent who, during his long career in the FBI, worked on high profile cases such as those of the Unabomber, Jon Benet Ramsey, and the D.C. Sniper. Details of his talk are below:

TITLE
Uncovering staged suicide: Case studies in authorship attribution
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