Lois Fairclough, Linguistics, Lancaster University (2020 Cohort)

Earlier this year, I was copied into an email communication from a college looking for a member of the Linguistics and English Language department at Lancaster to give a talk on forensic linguistics. As my PhD topic is in forensic phonetics, this topic is also an interest of mine, which I did modules in during my undergraduate and master’s degree. When I looked at where the original email was sent from, I realised it was sent from my old college, where I attended between 2015-2017. Not only this, but the email was from my old A-Level English Language teacher! As soon as I realised, I emailed back to say I would love to do the talk. For me, college was where my passion for English Language and Linguistics started, so I was hoping I could give some inspiration to current students who are considering it as a university option, while enlightening them on how much of a broad and exciting area of study it is.

After catching up over email with my A-Level teacher, I planned a talk on forensic linguistics and phonetics for the students. When chatting to teachers, I was told that many students have been speculating about doing social sciences, citing worries about getting a job, and finances involved in going to university. Therefore, it was great to present on a topic within social sciences that has applied impact, as well as connects with many facets of other areas e.g., law, science and criminology.

The talk was an introduction to the field of forensic linguistics and phonetics. Firstly, we covered forensic linguistics, which is the analysis of language in criminal and legal investigations. I chose to focus specifically on the topic of authorship analysis. This refers to the art and science of discriminating between writing styles of authors, to identify the characteristics and patterns of an author. This can be in any form of text e.g., text messages, books, and essays.

I gave the students text messages to analyse from a real-life case, in the form of known and disputed text messages. The students had to analyse linguistic features to determine the author of the disputed text messages, after I had briefed them with some of the features we can look for and some examples of other cases. I also gave the students some background of the suspect, and a timeline of this case to help with their investigation. It was great to see the students engaged and excited by the potential to apply their linguistic skills to assist in solving crime cases. After lots of buzzing discussion and comparing analyses, I revealed the outcome of the case, which showed that the suspect had in fact written the disputed text messages.

I dedicated the last part of the talk to introduce forensic phonetics. This refers to the analysis of speech which can be applied to a forensic setting. This is now my core PhD topic, so it was great to enlighten students that this kind of analysis exists and is growing. Furthermore, I explained the job of a forensic speech analyst, and gave an example of a real case. I tasked the students with listening to voice recordings to see if they could decipher whether the speakers were the same or different, which was much harder than initially expected for many. Here, I briefly chatted about some of the perceptual aspects of speech and how we can measure speech, to discriminate speakers from one another. Finally, I introduced the students to some of the evolving topics in forensic speech science including the rise of computer-generated speech. Here, we listened to voice samples to try and decide whether they were human or synthesised voices – worryingly, this is quite hard these days!

I ended the talk by talking to the students about the progression from A-Level to university, as well as chatting about what doing a PhD entails. It was great to speak to students about how doing a PhD is an option, I myself would have never thought at that stage I would be doing a PhD, particularly as the first of my family to go to university!

After my visit, I was lucky enough to receive an email from the head of the English department at Winstanley stating how much they enjoyed the talk. They also said that since the visit, two of their students have openly said they have now switched to looking at English degrees. This feels extremely rewarding! I am now a contact of the college and hope to be back soon. Since this talk, I have given talks to more A-Level students from other colleges, in hope to inspire more college students to study arts and social sciences at university.