A Brief Overview of Suspect Profiling
If you have watched a crime procedural program, you have likely heard fictional detectives discussing "profiles" about their fictional suspects. Like many aspects of entertainment based on real life, suspect profiles have a real-life counterpart. A suspect profile is, to use a metaphor, a running list of features that investigators believe an anonymous suspect likely possesses. Suspect profiles consist of features ascertained from evidence like witness statements and physical clues. Even psychological analysis can be used to build a profile. Likewise, when the evidence is available, suspect profiles may also be informed by linguistic data.
In the same way that a profile picture in not a complete picture of a person, a suspect profile is not a complete description. Even a well-informed suspect profile may still lack a name, but, like that profile picture, it may contain just enough information about a person that you could recognize them from someone else. The crook of their nose, the tilt of their chin, their occupation, their education level. Those last two can in fact be deduced from someone's writings and language.
Not only can occupation and education level be deduced from language, but gender, age, and other demographic information, too. There is a lot of research to explain that, but I won't be going into that here today. This is a brief overview, after all. I do want to explain that such linguistic assumptions will not always be correct. As linguistics is a science of the humanities, there are as many variables as there are human traits. For example, strangers often assume I am a man based on the way I text.
The way someone writes - the things they write about and how they write them - can be very telling of where a person is from and what kind of person they might be. Just like in the Devil Strip case, where Dr. Shuy deduced that the kidnapper was from Akron, Ohio; based on his word choice. The written word can have a kind of "accent" of its own. In this way, linguistics can be used to inform the demographic portion of a suspect profile with tentative accuracy.
Not only can occupation and education level be deduced from language, but gender, age, and other demographic information, too. There is a lot of research to explain that, but I won't be going into that here today. This is a brief overview, after all. I do want to explain that such linguistic assumptions will not always be correct. As linguistics is a science of the humanities, there are as many variables as there are human traits. For example, strangers often assume I am a man based on the way I text.
The way someone writes - the things they write about and how they write them - can be very telling of where a person is from and what kind of person they might be. Just like in the Devil Strip case, where Dr. Shuy deduced that the kidnapper was from Akron, Ohio; based on his word choice. The written word can have a kind of "accent" of its own. In this way, linguistics can be used to inform the demographic portion of a suspect profile with tentative accuracy.
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