Wordcrime: Solving Crime Through Forensic Linguistics

by John Olsson

Tell kids not to worry. sorting my life out. be in touch to get some things. Instead of being a simple sms message, this text turned out to be crucial and chilling evidence in convicting the deceptive killer of a mother of two. Sent from her phone, after her death, tell tale signs announce themselves to a forensic linguist. Rarely is a crime committed without there being some evidence in the form of language. Wordcrime features a series of chapters where gripping cases are described - involving murder, sexual assault, hate mail, suspicious death, code deciphering, arson and even genocide. Olsson describes the evidence he gave in each one. In approachable and clear prose, he details how forensic linguistics helps the law beat the criminals. This is fascinating reading for anyone interested in true crime, in modern, cutting-edge criminology and also where the study of language meets the law.

Genres: Linguistics, Nonfiction, True Crime, Language, Crime, Science, Psychology

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Dr. John Olsson was an internationally recognized forensic linguist whose work led him to give evidence in court rooms around the world, including in the USA, Australia, Canada and Singapore, in addition to courts in the UK. His main specialty was the authorship of anonymous documents, such as hoax letters, product contamination threats and kidnap and other ransom demands. In addition, he was an expert in linguistic aspects of code-breaking. He worked on every major type of crime from murder to terrorism, assault of all types, fraud and forgery, narcotics distribution, organized crime and kidnap and other forms of extortion.

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update, one I think is important. I've finished the book and towards the end the author gives an example of how Newspeak has crept into English and changed our way of thinking completely. The word "refugee" has been replaced by "asylum seeker".

'Refugee' implies someone is fleeing from danger, 'asylum seeker' implies they are not fleeing from danger but seeking to live in another country. So someone now fleeing from the greatest trauma of their lives, willing to give up country, culture, language, job, house, everything in order to be able to just live, to be safe has now become someone who thinks they could do better in their country of choice. It implies that their home country has become a place where they have no opportunity for the kind of life they want to live because they are being held back politically, perhaps persecuted or perhaps poverty. That's a huge paradigm shift.

So now we don't have to feel pity for the plight of those who want to gain entry to our countries, who are begging for our help in just keeping them alive. Now we can say to ourselves, they are economic migrants who want to take advantage of our riches and generosity and know they couldn't get in by applying for work visas so they have pretended (as some have, obviously) they are in desperate need of succour. So now we can send them back to a hell that might not even be described as 'living' with a good conscious. This is what 'asylum seeker' replacing 'refugee' has done to us, our governments and our immigration laws.
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A note for students and thieving writers: plagiarism can be defined in four ways. Three in the book and one from a quote I read. 'Plagiarism' is the act of using other people's original text without acknowledging the source and trying to pass it off as one's own.

1. Literal plagiarism, "the word for word adoption of another's text",
2. Mosaic plagiarism, 'the attempt to disguise the source of the text by changing grammatical structures, word order or some of the vocabulary." That's the usual sort.
3. Conceptual plagiarism, 'the theft of ideas and their mode of expression'. This is very difficult to prove.
4. If you take words or ideas from one or two sources and pass them off as your own, that's plagiarism. If you take words and ideas from a lot of sources, then that's 'research'!
_____

The book has chapters where the author burns with wanting to bring justice in a court case by his expertise (he doesn't necessarily succeed), and others which are extremely technical and terribly uninteresting. One chapter was just a total take-down of a Professor he calls, "Willerby" whom the author judges to have less the no expertise in the field of forensic linguistics and absolutely rubbishes him. This was a very enjoyable chapter. It's always fun in a sort of schadenfreude way to read experts going at each, going in, one might say, for the kill. Literary feuds of great entertainment.

Each chapter has a bibliography and the glossary at the end though a bit tedious to get through is actually full of information about words, spoken and written, I had no idea of.

This is a 3.5 to 4 star book, but because of the insight into 'refugee' being changed into 'asylum seeker', it's upped to a 10 star.
__________________________________________

Notes on reading the book.

The author makes an excellent case that Dan Brown plagiarized Lew Perdue's The Linz Testament, Daughter of God andThe Da Vinci Legacy for his mega-seller The Da Vinci Code. The judge did not agree, although from the passages quoted it was unmistakeable to me. Especially one thing. Perdue makes a factual historical error that is not made anywhere else the author of the book (who worked on the case) could find and that same error is repeated in Brown's book.

And that's what this book is about. Looking at words and how we use them, written, texted, spoken to give away who we are when looking at crime, and if you repeat an error you could have only heard in one place alone then you must have heard it in that one place, mustn't you? It's hard for people to disguise their speech patterns and tones of voice and harder still to disguise the typical way they write as we just aren't conscious of our use of grammar.

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting bits of analysis, including the controvercy of the Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code alleged plagiarism.

Q:
My name is John Olsson, and for the past 15 years I have been (and still am) the world’s only full-time forensic linguist...
In 1994 I founded the Forensic Linguistics Institute in the United Kingdom which has since become one of the leading linguistics laboratories in the world. Along with my colleagues I examine texts of all types for authorship, authenticity, interpretation of meaning, disputed language and other forensic processes. An early case involved the analysis of an alleged terrorist’s statement to police at Paddington Green Police Station in the mid-1980s. Since that time I have handled nearly 300 forensic linguistics investigations...
Every day brings a unique inquiry: the father who wants to know if the letter he has received from his daughter is really in her style, the mother who is concerned her teenager’s writing is becoming influenced by ‘gang speak’, the insurance company trying to identify a fraudster’s voice from among several possible clients, the police detective trying to interpret a coded letter from a prisoner to an accomplice, the prisoner who claims innocence, the solicitor working on an appeal for her client, the employee who feels his bosses are trying to frame him by saying he wrote an anonymous email – the list is seemingly endless. (c)

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Addendum added Wed 12th Dec 2017]

Chapter could have been longer. Terms could have been explained. Chapters could have flowed together and been linked such as the cases of the faked suicide notes.

Author only wrote about cases of direct professional involvement with police, courts or lawyers.

I'd love to see a forensic linguistic (FL) study done on the Patsy Ramsey rambling fake ransom 'note' (it's actually 2.5 pages!) about foreign faction and attache case as well as classic Hollywood (spy & thriller) movies. And the mysterious so called 'SBTC'.

Though due to John Ramsey's wealth & connections anyone criticising the case in the media is sued for all they have.

So it would be interesting to analyse other cases aided by FL or attempt to solve mysteries of the past. There was a brief mention of how the Shakespeare authorship attribution is not a criminal or legal issue and thus of no domain to FL.

Addendum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critici... see
Lewis Perdue and read up about claims of plagiarism. Olsson's data on not only the similarity of words, phrases, characters but the plot points and the coincidence of their usage and placement in the text is eye opening. Dan Brown is a fraud. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

https://www.LewisPerdue.com

If I had bilions or a law firm I'd come out and make his life hell. Plagiarists are scum. Cheating parasites profiting off others is so low, it disgusts me so much. There is a special dungeon somewhere in Mexico where they need to be renditioned alongside pedos and lobbyists like Jack Abramoff and Paul Manafort. Plus Dark Money billionaires, especially the Koch brothers.

[Phil Mc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oddly, for a book written by a linguist, this is in need of a good editor. The structure is systematic (great in academia) but a little repetitive for mass appeal. Also, some cases which warrant much greater attention are passed over perfunctorily leaving sections of this rather unsatisfactory. And, those sections seem rather arbitrary with related cases quite far apart for no discernible reason.

Having said that, this is a largely enjoyable and interesting insight into a little known branch of linguistics. The DVC plagiarism discussion is excellent as are several of the authorship cases.

[Marina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, Wordcrime: Solving Crime Through Forensic Linguistics, wasn’t as interesting as I’d hoped.
It seemed uncomfortably perched between popular ‘true crime’ and academic treatise and, perhaps, didn’t quite fulfil the criteria of either.
A lot of time was spent describing in detail how Olsson gave his expert opinion to confirm authorship of written texts that actually seemed quite obvious to the untrained eye. The longest chapter was devoted to denouncing the work of a professional rival. (This time, it’s personal!)
Of course, in our justice system, it is important to question the obvious and examine the evidence … but it’s just not very exciting for the lay person to read about.

[Netta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Сыроватый сборник кейсов, среди которых встречаются очень даже интересные.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because I am looking into forensic linguistics as a career option, but I think anyone with an interest in language and crime would enjoy it. The chapters are short and pretty easy to follow and cover a wide variety of cases. There is a glossary of terms in the back if you are not familiar with some of the terminology (I didn't even notice it until I got to the end).

My only real complaint (which I only noticed upon my rereading of the first two thirds of the book) is that the author can be a bit pretentious. For example, in the Da Vinci Code chapter he says he will "not give his own opinion" but "leave to to the reader" to decide if there was any plagiarism or not. Except that his opinion is pretty clear, especially as he talks about how the judge reaches his decision "despite the evidence" he had submitted. And in cases where his evidence does not end up helping a case (his stuff shows them innocent but they are found guilty) that fact is only mentioned right at the end of the chapter.

Still its an interesting look at the process of forensic linguistics and the various ways language is important in courts of law.

[Mar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Proof that being a linguist doesn't mean you're a good writer.

[Megan Dittrich-Reed · Rating 2 out of 5]

This tiny book took me over 3 weeks to read! I asked for this book for my birthday, because it sounded intriguing. I like linguistics. I like crime (...that came out wrong...). What could be better?

Well...while I certainly found the topic interesting, the writing was so dry and boring that I could barely slog through it. I know this was written by an academic, and I'm certainly not suggesting he should have dumbed it down, but there is a way to do analytical writing that isn't insufferably dull! He gave very few details of the crimes, the perpetrators and victims (apart from their speech patterns, of course), or the eventual outcome. It was just pages and pages of tables and statistics.

I wish he had teamed up with a creative non-fiction writer to punch it up a little bit. The tables and statistics could have stayed, but the addition of 50-100 extra pages of human interest would have drastically improved the book.

[Nick Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good. Bought on a whim because linguistics and forensics are a couple of subjects which have interested me in recent years, this delivered more than my ill-informed expectations that it'd be mainly about cases like the murder of Danielle Jones where an adult killer attempted to text 'in the manner of' a teenager and gave themselves away. Olsson here discusses a much wider range of applications of his expertise, and it makes for an insightful piece of non-fiction.

If I had any slight criticism, it was more technical and drier than perhaps anticipated, sometimes more like a textbook than a book for the interested layperson, but I understand the reasons why, and this didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book - just required a little more concentration from me at times.

[tasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

More like a 3.5 but I round it up. I picked this book up randomly at work because I thought it would be interesting to see how what I'm learning can be actually applied. The book was extremely thorough, which made it unfortunately quite a dry read. Each chapter was of a different case, and the first paragraph would outline why there was a need for linguistic analysis. Although this would be intriguing John Olsson would proceed to analyse and explain the text in extreme and lengthy detail, which frankly left me bored. If this is your thing I'm sure you'll enjoy it but man it was just dull and many cases didn't have a satisfying conclusion.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author’s writing style is... well, I don’t want to say ‘bad’, but - not good. It’s dry and clumsy and the pacing is off, like it hasn’t really been edited. And yet.

I raced through this book in an evening and found it really compelling, though I can’t explain why. Many of the cases aren’t interesting, or the author clearly wasn’t actually involved in them. But there’s just something about it. Then again I also really enjoyed a book about forensic entomology (insects) so maybe I’m just into dryly-written books about niche parts of forensic science.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

All in all, this book was fine. Olsson had some interesting things to say, but he could have used a good editor and sometimes just didn’t know what he was talking about. I think forensic linguistics is a very interesting field, but I’m sure there are better books about it than this one.



Full review (including a pretty long rant about one case in particular) on my blog.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting, especially the part about plagarism involving The Da Vinci Code. The parts of Forensic Linguistics regarding text messages/letters/suicide notes supposedly written by victims of a crime, later found to be the defendant is revealing.

[Morganta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Неплохая подборка разных случаев использования лингвистики в судебных процессах, действительно разных с точки зрения задач и подходов к решению. Также приятно, что автор старается описывать лишь сами технические задачи, избегая моральной оценки и вердикта.

[Sophia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading this book! I’m not one for true crime, it usually makes me miserable to hear about how humans abuse each other, but that spark that makes fictional murder so interesting (Sherlock Holmes style) is real here!

This book is a series of short chapters each one describing a case that demonstrates a particular application of forensic linguistics. There’s no overarching storyline or structure, but by reading it on my commute to work, this was great for me. Some other reviewers complained about the text being too dry and academic, but as an academic (from a different field) I thought it was fine >.<

All sorts of different crimes are described, and various tools of forensic linguistics to handle them. It’s clear that the author is mostly selecting the best examples, but that they exist at all is pretty impressive. Sometimes it seems as if the criminals involved are just dumb, but I suspect centuries of crime novels have gotten us used to higher quality crimes and coverups. I personally think reading about reality is worth more than a compelling fiction.

One case in particular stood out to me, about a murderer who had an IQ of 77 but supposedly gave a detailed and highly articulate confession. Yes, when you see the transcript of a text for sure written by the man vs the confession, it’s glaringly obvious that he didn’t write it, but that didn’t stop the courts from going ahead with the conviction and now he’s dead from the electric chair.

Another reviewer noted how the impact of forensic linguistics seems minimal in most of the stories presented. While it’s true that almost never were Olssen’s findings the decisive piece of evidence in a case, I’m pretty sure this is true of most investigations where there’s doubt about the culprit; not even DNA is enough to secure a conviction, and instead it’s all about converging evidence from multiple sources.

As a scientist, I really admired how much of an effort he puts into his craft trying to make it as objective as possible. While there were some slip-ups, and in the process of writing the book the author sometimes got carried away by his own opinion on the “truth” of the case, for the most part, he manages to create a fairly impartial approach. The biggest fallacy I could tell from the whole field is how it all seems to be predicated on him working alone. It’s way too easy to convince yourself you’re right if you never have a team to bounce ideas off of, to think critically with, and to call you out on BS. Yes he has to defend himself and his conclusions in court, but that’s not the same as sparring with a peer, who knows exactly as much as you do on a topic.

If I think long enough, I’m sure I could find faults with the book, but I got so much out of reading it, I really enjoyed it, so I’m going to leave it at 5 stars.

[Sookie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars, I really liked it.

There is a lot that one assumes in the world of forensics, in how the linguistics is somehow limited within a boundary of crime involving ransom notes, interview transcripts, hate mail etc., and in case of white collar crimes, cases involving plagiarism, insurance scams etc. Olsson provides fascinating anecdotes with the words that were involved in the described crime and how his team were able to trudge through what was available to them and provide a solid analysis.

But what makes this book stand out is how the author, Olsson, broadens his paradigm to linguistics in daily verbiage. Its fascinating to note the tonality of people with influence and power change words and their context as a whole and replace with something that lessens the overall value of the context which has a subconscious impact on the listener. He goes as far as noting how the tone and the type of voice has impact on listener, how the "experts" on TV can impact on an unassuming listener by few choice of words and a specific tone.

Indeed a fascinating read and delves deeper into the oratory experiences in the modern age.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Forensic Linguistics is a fascinating field. I enjoyed Atrapados por la Lengua earlier this year (and that's a book clearly inspired by this one), but I wanted it to be more in depth, to get into the specifics of each case a bit more. This book does that. It can be dry at times, too academic, maybe, but as a layperson I was able to get a lot from each case.

[Daniëlle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing cases that helped me form a clearer idea of what forensic linguistics consists of. Was the book edited at all though?

[Cressida McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite dense in places but completely fascinating.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd never even heard of forensic linguistics before I read this. Some of the stories of how the author managed to solve crimes by studying letters and text messages are amazing. The only thing wrong is that at times some of the writing does get a bit on the academic side and it can be difficult to follow.

[Colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting overview of the topic. I'd have preferred either an organization where he explained different methods and then gave examples, or where a little bit more narrative about each case was included. All in all though, entertaining and informative.

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a poorly written book on a fascinating subject. If you're curious about learning about Forensic Linguistics, I'd suggest perusing it, but there is no depth, not storytelling art, just a series of brief reports on cases the author has worked on.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating topic, but Olsson's relentless self-referentiality and meagre tone turns it into a dull tome.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This got pretty dry, but that said: I scarfed this dry sucker down like a box of saltine crackers.

Interesting stuff, with a saucy British author to boot.

[April Polubiec · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is excellent! My favorite linguistics book yet. Olsson does a great job of succinctly telling the story behind different cases while also educating on the underlying linguistic principles (and lots of references to research to back his claims!). I will note that I’m fairly familiar with a lot of the linguistic concepts discussed in here already, so for people who know nothing about linguistics, some of the academic material might be dry. The book is divvied up into small chapters for each case (which, by the way, there is an awesome variety of - such as piecing together text messages, identifying voices, detecting plagiarism and even an unsolved mystery :o). Each chapter covers the linguistic concepts that are relevant, even if they have been mentioned in previous chapters, so you can very easily pick and choose chapters to read whenever you’d like. If you are curious about forensic linguistics and/or true crime, this book is a must!

[Tsvetelina Stambolova-Vasileva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Джон Олсън е криминален лингвист с над 20 годишна практика и стотици случаи зад гърба си. Към него се обръщат криминалисти, организации и частни лица по най-различни случаи - доказване на достоверността на предсмъртни писма, дневници, свидетелски показания, смс-и на изчезнали лица, установяване на авторството на литературни произведения и т.н. Всяка глава е отделна история, в която авторът разказва за техниките на работа с определени образци от текст и за предизвикателствата и проблемите, с които се е сблъскал. Аз съм филолог по образование, затова книгата ми бе интересна. Вярно, развенча някои митове, в които вярвах, като например за т. нар. "лингвистичен отпечатък". Но и си обясних доста неща. Субективното ми отвращение към таблиците повлия на оценката. Разбирам какво налага употребата им, но просто не ги обичам.

[talia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll admit I bought this book/textbook because: (1) I am a linguist and am generally interested in this topic, and (2) I have been binge-watching Criminal Minds and other true crime shows on a repeated loop and this book would have been feeding into my current obsession.

I will give Olsson's book this - the variety in the cases he presents is astounding, and I learnt a great deal. But because of the dryness of the content I found it difficult to follow at times, especially because I felt he was going on the assumption that readers were all experts in the theory behind his arguments. So, I almost wish the book was longer and slightly dumbed down, but I appreciate how hard the author worked to get his message across.

[Chandrashekar Gangaraju · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unexpected gem. A text book, cv, fact based stories all rolled into one. A great variety of cases which the author was involved in, including those where his evidence was not accepted or used and also cases where he gave his opinion outside his expertise. A great book for anyone who is involved in obtaining narratives or obtaining evidence. He showed his human side and not just showcasing his work.
Some learning points to me as a psychiatrist. This book has made me think linguistics should be part of higher psychiatric training.
I did not expect to see the kind of cases he has included. Some chapters are a bit too technical but interesting nevertheless.

[ZAINAB · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I finished reading I felt an extreme urge to kiss the book ( which I did by the way! ) wonderfully written.
The last story broke my heart to a million pieces, and the way he encountered it shows how experienced he is!

Surely not all the stories were interesting but his comments were!

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