The Morbid Linguist

This blog is not your destination for learning how to perform forensic linguistic analyses. First of all, I'm paying a lot of money for my education and it wouldn't be fair to anyone if I just gave it away for free. That is because, most importantly, I am a neophyte forensic linguist myself. No one should rely on a newby for an education in a science as nuanced as forensic linguistics. I actually think of this blog as an extension of my class notes. That being said, I do my best to only publish what I know to be true and to represent the facts fairly. I must refer to my professors, mentors, and those expert forensic linguists with established careers, as well as their published research, as the most reliable sources of information regarding the field. This blog will just be a more available, casual, and personalized brand of study.

There is an old adage about snowflakes that is often extended to fingerprints to say that both are unique and never the same. Some people have tried to say the same about language use. I honestly don't know who says language use is unique, because every time I come across the phrase "linguistic fingerprint" in a paper, it's when the author is disparaging the concept. The idea of linguistic fingerprint, sometimes idiolect, supposes that the way a person uses language is unique to each individual, like their fingerprints. "Linguistic fingerprinting" is a metaphor, not a method. At the risk of looking stupid by talking about things I don't fully understand, it seems that the chances of a false fingerprint match are long odds to say the least. Some experts estimate that the odds of multiple minutiae points matching are in numbers that I think are in the negative-point-millions? (I'm really bad at math, I couldn't figure out the exponents.) E

The word "idiolect" is formed from combining a back-formation of the "-lect" part of "dialect" and the Greek prefix idio- (meaning "own, personal, distinct, peculiar"). So an idiolect is the distinctive and unique way a person uses language. It's also a debated topic within linguistics, especially about whether they exist and/or can be described. I've mentioned before, when describing linguistic profiling, that some of a person's demographic info (gender, age, education, etc.) can potentially be deduced from their language use. It's too easy to get philosophical about individuality and idiolects. Look into social statistics to get a sense of what I mean by that. Let's instead keep the focus on you. Let's talk about your idiolect. Like many aspects of your identity, the way you use language is shaped by the kind of human you are and the life you've lived. There are so many factors of your life that have shaped the w