PhonLab and FORGE are pleased to announce the next FORGE speaker of the academic year: Dr Christin Kirchhübel (Principal Consultant, Soundscape Voice Evidence). Details of the talk can be found below:

TITLE

Voice Analysis as evidence – the need for competency testing!

ABSTRACT

I will start the talk by giving a brief outline of the landscape surrounding the provision of evidential voice analysis services in the UK. I will then discuss the importance of integrating competency testing into the life of a forensic speech science practitioner. I highlight the challenges, but also present possible solutions.

TIME & PLACE

W07, 1400-1450, Mon 21st Nov 2022, County South C89. (Please note that this talk will not be streamed or recorded.)

UCREL and FORGE are pleased to announce the second FORGE speakers of the academic year: Prof Tim Grant and Dr Lucia Busso (York). Details of the talk can be found below:

TITLE

FoLD: a permanent, controlled-access, online repository for forensic linguistic research

ABSTRACT

This talk presents an innovative online resource for sharing and accessing forensic linguistics data, the Forensic Linguistic Databank (FoLD – https://fold.aston.ac.uk), developed in the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics (AIFL)  at Aston University, Birmingham. FoLD is a permanent, controlled access online repository for forensic linguistic data, including malicious communication data, investigative interview data, hate speech, and legal language.

Since access to relevant forensic linguistic data has been notoriously challenging since the conception of the discipline in the 1960s, FoLD represents the first attempt to provide researchers with the opportunity of sharing datasets of different levels of sensitivity and ethical concern.

In this talk we present the FoLD repository, how to donate data, and how to access already existing datasets from the website.

We further showcase a project carried out by researchers in the FoLD research centre at AIFL using data from FoLD.

TIME & PLACE

W04, 1400-1450, Mon 31st Oct 2022. Teams.

PhonLab and FORGE are pleased to announce the first FORGE speaker of the academic year: Dr Vincent Hughes (York). Details of the talk can be found below:

TITLE

Why uncertainty matters in forensics… (phonetics, sociophonetics, and just about everything else)

TIME & PLACE

W02, 1500-1550, Tue 18th Oct 2022. County South C89 or Teams.

Please note that due to an ongoing FORGE curse, David Kernot’s talk has been cancelled. We may reschedule once we’ve taken advice on how to cast counter-curse measures.

The Psycholinguistics Research Group and FORGE are delighted to announce a joint talk by our upcoming external speaker: David Kernot (Australian Department of Defence, Science and Technology). Details of his talk are below:

TITLE
The Application of Stylometric Analysis to Fake News: The statistical analysis of language variations for identity

ABSTRACT
The known and contested works of Shakespeare along with other Elizabethan playwrights have a rich tapestry of research around contested authorship. Using a series of algorithms based on aspects of the human referential process, sensory word use, and internal gender, we highlight several new claims about Shakespeare’s work. Drawing on embodied cognition, the research is then placed within today’s security landscape. By examining adversarial data, extreme, lone actor, and troll messaging, we suggest that early signs of radicalisation might exist to cue bigger systems.

TIME & PLACE
1230-1330, Tue 17^th Mar, Fylde D18

All are welcome to attend.

FORGE is delighted to announce a talk by our upcoming internal speaker: Luke Harding (LAEL). Details of his talk are below:

TITLE
Misleading silence under the Australian Consumer Law: Perspectives from linguistics

ABSTRACT
This talk considers the phenomenon of “misleading silence” as it is currently applied in a particular area of private law in the Australian legal system: section 18 (s 18) of the Australian Consumer Law (ACL). Misleading silence is of theoretical and practical interest in the case of s 18 as, according to that provision, “a person must not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive”. Yet the treatment of misleading silence is under-examined in academic scholarship around s 18, particularly with respect to linguistic perspectives on silence and their implications for understanding the operation of s 18. In this talk, I will first illustrate how misleading silence has been interpreted in cases decided under s 18. Second, I will discuss two distinctions that have figured as organising ideas in interpreting misleading silence under s 18, providing a critique from a linguistic perspective on silence. Finally, I will suggest some ways in which a consideration of misleading silence in s 18 cases opens up interesting lines of enquiry for research at the intersection of linguistics and the law.

TIME & PLACE
1100-1200, Thu 27^th Feb, County South D72

All are welcome to attend.

Please note that due to the upcoming strike action, Ryan Boyd’s talk has been cancelled. We will reschedule later this or early next academic year.

The FORGE is delighted to announce our external guest speaker: Kate Barber (T) (Cardiff University). Details of her talk are below:

TITLE
The reframing of rape in extremist online discourses

NOTES
THIS TALK IS ON A TOPIC, AND WILL CONTAIN EXTRACTS OF DATA, THAT SOME MAY FIND DISTRESSING.

DISCRETION IS STRONGLY ADVISED.

ABSTRACT

Linguistic analyses of far-right discourses have traditionally focused on nationalist rhetoric or racist and ethnoreligious-based invective. The explicit anti-feminist stance held by some far-right groups, specifically in relation to sexual offences against women, remains underexplored. This paper outlines initial findings from an ongoing corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of 100 blog posts on sites identifying as belonging to the Alternative Right (Alt-Right) or the right-wing men’s activist movement known as the Manosphere. While these factions can be distinguished by their primary concerns towards racial diversity (Alt-Right), and men’s rights (Manosphere), this study aims to highlight how their discourses converge in their portrayal of victims and perpetrators of sexual violence against women.

This paper outlines preliminary findings from the second and third year of my PhD research. Using corpus linguistics and a discourse analytical framework based largely on van Dijk’s (1984) and Koller’s (2012) sociocognitive approach to discourse studies and collective identity analysis, the paper discusses how inhabited and ascribed identities promote white male victimhood and portray the mainstream concept of rape culture as a ‘feminist-produced moral panic’ (Gotell & Dutton 2016, p. 65). The presentation includes details of the network analysis I undertook in order to locate the online websites and blogs from which I selected my data; corpora construction; and a comparative analysis of racist and misogynistic constructions of identity in narrative and non-narrative discourses. Finally, some of the ongoing challenges this research has presented will be discussed along with the importance of applying linguistic analyses to develop inoculation narratives (Braddock 2019) and other counter-extremism measures.

References
Braddock, K. (2019). Vaccinating Against Hate: Using Attitudinal Inoculation to Confer Resistance to Persuasion by Extremist Propaganda. Terrorism and Political Violence. DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2019.1693370
Gotell, L. & Dutton, E. (2016). Sexual Violence in the ‘Manosphere’: Antifeminist Men’s Rights Discourses on Rape. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. 5(2), 65-80.
Koller, V. (2012). How to Analyse Collective Identity in Discourse – Textual and Contextual Parameters. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines. 5(2), 19-38.
van Dijk, T.A. (1984). Prejudice and Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

The talk will be approximately 30-40 minutes in total, with around 10-20 minutes at the end for Q&A.

TIME & PLACE
1400-1500, Thu 13th Feb, County South D72.

All are welcome to attend.

Please note that due to upcoming strike action, Ryan Boyd’s talk has been rescheduled. You can see the updated date, time, and room here.

Please note that Danuta Kot’s talk has been cancelled. We will hopefully reschedule this within this academic year.