A new approach to identify crimes in Iranian society: Forensic Linguistics

Abstract

Forensic linguistics is a discipline coordinated with legal goals in the judicial system, focusing on all branches of linguistics including phonetics, semantics, discourse and etc. This science is not so known in Iran; where as, it can have a lot of applications in judicial system. The authors aim to show how linguistic tools can help the jury and judges especially when there are no clear and typical available proof and documents. Having observed more than 50 live cases in courts and police stations, the authors draw this conclusion that linguistic parameters like semantic tools (meaning of verb), syntactic tools (mood of verb), discoursal tools (power relation)… can be effective to identify and analyze crimes.