Forensic linguistic practice in Norway

A critical examination of the treatment of language material in the Bertheussen-case

Abstract

What is forensic linguistics, and how is this form of linguistic analysis practiced in Norwegian police work and in the Norwegian legal system? In this article, we take as our starting point how the language material in the Bertheussen case was treated, and discuss how knowledge-based practice in forensic linguistics could have given this treatment more weight. We investigate which analytic methods forensic linguistics offers, and focus on linguistic profiling and authorship analysis, and come up with concrete proposals to prepare ethical guidelines for a forensic linguistic practice in Norway.  Finally, we discuss the special position of language, at the intersection of cognitive science and the humanities, and how this inherent interdisciplinarity affects forensic linguistics as a police method.

Keywords: applied linguistics; authorship analysis; Bertheussen-case; forensic linguistic; idiolect; profiling; threats