Linguistic forensic examination court cases
from and into Russian

Linguistic forensic examination took shape as an independent type of forensic examination recently owing to the growing number of disputes about particular information and, accordingly, the considerable public demand for these services. These are needed when facts have to be established by studying different types of text and “products of language activities”. These can be either printed or written statements: publications or speeches in the media, or oral or written entries on social media. Forensic linguistic examination may concern various names and trademarks at the centre of a conflict, regulatory acts, and terms and conditions of agreements subject to dispute.

A linguistic expert is often called in to establish circumstances relating to the protection of honour and dignity, or a violation of a copyright. In addition, a specialist’s help might be needed to determine the degree of similarity between trademarks, confirm concealed information in written or oral texts, and so on. Experts answer specific questions that help in establishing the facts on the basis of audio-recordings, or text fragments in hard copy or electronic format.

In such situations, the specialist’s opinion might do much to determine the court’s decision, be it to pass a sentence involving a criminal or administrative punishment, or a decision on recovering moral damages, etc.

In some particularly complex situations, the expertise of just a single linguist might not suffice. In these cases, specialists are involved from other fields: psychology, history, political science, and others.