Voice, Matthew, Harrison, Chloe, Grant, Tim and Giovanelli, Marcello (2025). Towards a cognitive forensic stylistics: An intercoder reliability test for replicable feature finding in the Operation Heron corpus. Language and Literature ,
Abstract
This paper reports an initial application of contemporary cognitive stylistics to forensic linguistic contexts. In both areas, a need has been identified for robust analyses. An intercoder reliability study was developed using data from a historic authorship analysis case involving single-authored hate mail. Exploring the applicability of Cognitive Grammar’s notion of construal as a reliable framework in describing salient features of the author’s style, this test examined the accuracy and consistency of descriptions of schematicity and specificity within the corpus, as applied by independent coders. Iterative coding and testing demonstrated that reliability was achievable, but depended upon a protocol developed through considerable definitional work, refining the concepts of specificity and elaboration as taken from Langacker (2008).Our findings support the idea that the identification of stylistic features can be rigorous, retrievable, and replicable, but also that a fuller system of coding will require a substantial research programme. Such an approach, bringing together contemporary stylistics and forensic authorship analysis, would be a productive collaboration between both disciplines and a valuable research method for verifiability in stylistics more generally. Content: Readers are advised that the letters analysed for this study contain offensive language, and that short quotes within this paper include racist and hateful language directed at particular group.
Publication DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470251337632 |
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Divisions: | College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > English Languages and Applied Linguistics College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities ?? 53981500Jl ?? College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Centre for Language Research at Aston (CLaRA) |
Funding Information: | The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project was partly supported by Research England E3 funding to the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics. |
Additional Information: | Copyright © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | Cognitive stylistics,forensic linguistics,Cognitive Grammar,intercoder reliability,authorship analysis,construal,qualitative coding |
Publication ISSN: | 1461-7293 |
Last Modified: | 01 May 2025 08:43 |
Date Deposited: | 08 Apr 2025 13:31 |
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PURE Output Type: | Article |
Published Date: | 2025-04-25 |
Published Online Date: | 2025-04-25 |
Accepted Date: | 2025-04-03 |
Authors: |
Voice, Matthew
Harrison, Chloe ( ![]() Grant, Tim ( ![]() Giovanelli, Marcello ( ![]() |
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