linguistics lecture by Malcolm Coulthard, Portsmouth, 20 May 2010

Hello all,
We have a very distinguished speaker giving the last of this year's Language Across Borders lectures.

Professor Malcolm Coulthard, Professor of Forensic Linguistics and Director of Research, Aston University, will speak on ‘The Linguist as Detective and Expert Witness’.

Professor Coulthard is the author of several seminal books including An introduction to discourse analysis. He is perhaps best known for pioneering the science of forensic linguistics, which is the science of distinguishing, on the basis of sometimes very small text samples, who the originator of the text was. He has acted as an expert witness in trials for two decades and has been commissioned to prepare reports for both the prosecution and the defence in over 200 civil and criminal cases. He has given evidence on author identification in courts in many countries. Among his high profile cases are the Birmingham Six Appeal, the Bridgwater Four Appeal and the Ronald Bolden trial, at the conclusion of which, in 1989, the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad was disbanded. He has also worked with the Metropolitan, the Scottish, the South Wales and the Military police on internal investigations. His latest court appearance was at the trial of David Hodgson for the murder of Jenny Nicholl in February 2008.

This should be a fascinating lecture for anyone interested in language and how it works.

The lecture will take place on Thursday 20th May in Park Building 1.23 at 5pm. The event is free and all are warmly invited.