Forensic linguistics : a scientometric review

Abstract

Forensic linguistics is a distinct field of study in the science of language that places significant emphasis on the observation of language usage in our daily lives, including spoken and written language, listening, and reading. This focus on language usage provides a legal perspective for the analysis of language. Initially, forensic linguistics was confined to the identification of spoken and written documents in legal settings, police language, and prison language; however, the field has expanded to include speech detection, text detection, plagiarism detection, social media verbal violence detection, social security detection, and discrimination detection. In this study, we examined the development of forensic linguistics through the use of knowledge maps. We conducted a scientometric analysis of 6,490 triangulated documents from three major knowledge databases (Scopus, WOS, and Lens) that were published between 1936 and 2022. The development of forensic linguistics was measured using eight bibliometric indicators and eight scientometric indicators, and we used CiteSpace 5.8.R3 and VOSviewer 1.6.18 software packages to create knowledge maps and tabulations. Our major findings include the identification of commonly used keywords in forensic linguistics, such as human, linguistics, legal translation, language, speech recognition, legal language, authorship attribution, and natural language processing system. Additionally, the following terms were observed to be synonymous with forensic linguistics: linguistic law, language policy, language and law, official language, legal translation, linguistic rights, and legal linguistics. Our scientometric analysis allowed us to group the 6,460 documents in forensic linguistics into various clusters based on research patterns in the field, such as the role of forensic linguists in legal contexts, legal translation, legal composition, forensic voice comparison, authorship attribution, and human language technologies. Other clusters included the use of forensic linguistics in police interview settings, public service and courtroom settings, linguistic rights, as well as online debate. The study has implications for researchers, writers, public speakers, YouTubers, and all social media users, TV reporters, news reporters, and media professionals. In contemporary society, there is a rapid proliferation of ignorance concerning copyrights and the rights of others. Therefore, it is crucial to raise awareness among the general public about these rights.