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Authorship Identification

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Language as Evidence

Abstract

This chapter outlines the task of Authorship Identification from a qualitative perspective. After defining central elements, major differences between identification and profiling are explained. The reader then is given a brief overview on methodological issues in the field as well as relevant theoretical concepts and the theoretical framework of evaluative reporting. Against this background, the most significant methodologies—that is error analysis and style analysis—are explained. The main part of the chapter forms an exemplary case study, in which the reader is guided through the steps that a thorough linguistic text analysis or text comparison usually involves.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A detailed description of the investigation that includes all seven e-mails and the extortion letter is provided in Heinz (2007a, 2007b).

  2. 2.

    Due to space restrictions, the case analysis only includes the questioned text and the first e-mail. To keep the comparison authentic, the statement about the similarity of the error distribution shows the small amount of data, although there are exact equivalents in the other e-mails.

  3. 3.

    https://www.juris.de/, https://cosmas2.ids-mannheim.de/cosmas2-web/faces/home.xhtml. Juris is a legal database, and Cosmas II an annotated corpus of German newspapers, including digital content such as Wikipedia. The phrase mentioned appears in contexts where participants debate who is liable for the respective damage. These discussions do not exclusively refer to law issues in the strict sense but also politics, economy, and people generally in charge who can be held responsible for damages.

  4. 4.

    The results of the Internet search were: scheis 217,000 vs scheiß 6,610,000; ich weis 2,180,000 vs ich weiß 34,700,000; pasiert 174,000 vs passiert 67,800,000, and hat zur folge das 47,200 vs hat zur folge dass 10,200,000.

  5. 5.

    The English version of the scale is partly based on the translation given by Köller et al. (2004) and partly on the ENFSI Guideline’s formulations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bundeskriminalamt/Federal Criminal Police Office, Wiesbaden, Germany

    Eilika Fobbe

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  1. Eilika Fobbe
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Correspondence to Eilika Fobbe .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Filología Inglesa, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain

    Victoria Guillén-Nieto

  2. Anglistik III Englische Sprachwissenschaft, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Dieter Stein

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Fobbe, E. (2022). Authorship Identification. In: Guillén-Nieto, V., Stein, D. (eds) Language as Evidence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84330-4_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84330-4_7

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-84329-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-84330-4

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