The Morbid Linguist

I wrote and published a post on Linkedin that is almost identical to this one. As a recent graduate, I am looking for work. Currently, the most appropriate market for my skills is in legal work. Unfortunately, not a lot of recruiters or even lawyers are aware of forensic linguistics or what it can achieve in civil legal work. So, in this post, I explain one way in which forensic linguists can be an advantageous addition to a law firm: legal writing. Forensic linguistics is the scientific study of language wherever it intersects with the law. The term "forensic" may inspire the assumption that the field is strictly about criminal justice or investigation; however, the term "forensic" simply means "of the forum," such as the forum of a courtroom. While it is true that forensic linguists are trained in analyzing language evidence using techniques such as authorship analysis, demographic profiling, appraisal analysis, corpus analysis, and more, the investiga...

Yesterday, I put on some funny robes and participated in a mysterious ceremony signifying that I've finished my forensic linguistics studies at Hofstra University. I am a storm of emotions now. Of course I'm supremely happy to have achieved my dream of earning a master's degree in forensic linguistics, but I'm also sad that it's over. I also have a little panic and fear about my immediate future. I'm not done with my formal education just yet, and there's a lot I need to do to get myself in the position to continue. To qualify for my dream career as a professional forensic linguistic analyst, I need to earn a PhD. Most importantly, I intend to relocate to Chicago to be closer to my family. I've made some promises to some important, tiny people, and the relocation is quite non-negotiable at this point. Unfortunately for me, the US is lacking in forensic linguistics degree programs. Until earlier this year when the California University of Pennsylvan...

I am so happy to announce that I have finally gotten approval from HarperCollins to publish my paper on the idiolect of Gollum and Sméagol. I'm told that I don't even need a copyright agreement because it is light on actual quotation. Now I am in the process of editing my paper and finding a suitable journal to submit it to. The paper was originally an assignment from a corpus linguistics class I took last year. The assignment was to perform a corpus analysis, and I chose to analyze the language patterns of Gollum and Sméagol from J.R.R. Tolkien's books. Some of my results were fascinating! I have held off on sharing details of my results or copies of my paper because I've never published before, and I'm a little paranoid of my work being stolen. I am very proud of this paper, and I can't wait to share it. As soon as I have a link to a PDF or website, I will share it on this blog and all over the rest of my social media. Check back soon!