Linguistic investigation into the authorship of text messages, which has provided evidence in several court cases, rests on the assumption that authors of any text can be identified through distinct linguistic features of their idiolect: the individual use of language which emerges from speakers‘ preference for particular lexical items (Halliday et al 1964: 75; Abercrombie 1969 in Coulthard 2004: 432). An example of a criminal case in which the author‘s co-selection of certain items allowed a written text to be attributed to him was that of the Unabomber (so-named because he sent postal bombs to universities and airlines), whose family recognised his idiolectal preference for certain words and phrases in the thesis he published in return for a cessation of attacks (Coulthard 2004; 2007). Text messages constitute particularly fertile ground for determining authorship because, according to Coulthard (2007), the fact that texting is subject to ‗fewer controls‘1 means that less data is needed to ascertain idiolect than in other forms of speech or writing.
The first case in which linguistic analysis of Txt was used as evidence (in the UK at least) involved the murder of Danielle Jones in 2002 (Coulthard 2007). Her uncle, eventually convicted for her murder, told police that Danielle had sent him two text messages, after the time she was in fact found to have died, and Coulthard‘s linguistic analysis revealed substantial differences between them and seventy other text messages written by Danielle to which Coulthard was given access. The first of the two ‗forged‘ text messages was as follows.
Figure 2.1 Message allegedly sent by Danielle Jones (Coulthard 2007)
HIYA STU WOT U UP 2.IM IN SO MUCH TRUBLE AT HOME AT MOMENT EVONE HATES ME EVEN U! WOT THE HELL AV I DONE NOW? Y WONT U JUST TELL ME TEXT BCK PLEASE
LUV DAN XXX
1
By which, Coulthard means that there is less pressure to follow prescriptive conventions in texting and so more room for individual variation in orthography (Coulthard pers comm; see also Shortis 2007)
24 The most striking difference between this text message and Danielle‘s preferred style, notes Coulthard (2007), is its case: sixty-six of the seventy text messages sent by Danielle were in sentence case rather than capitals. Nor did the abbreviations match those generally favoured by Danielle, who tended to use wat rather than wot; at da mo rather than at moment; 1 rather than one; hve rather than av; and who signed off using various spellings of text back
please but never the one above. As it turned out, other evidence proved vital in convicting
Danielle‘s uncle: the text messages between their phones were sent from his house, and he sent his second text message twice, presumably sending it for the second time because he could see the first had not arrived but, unfortunately for him, it did arrive much later. However, Coulthard‘s linguistic analysis shows that Danielle‘s text messages displayed a distinct orthographic idiolect which differed from the style her uncle used.
Interesting questions emerge from this case as to whether it can be said that texters in general have identifiable orthographic idiolects and whether these can be used to attribute authorship of any given text message. Although studies of Txt certainly point to a substantial amount of variation in spelling (see Chapter 5), and although these have been explained as resulting from active choices made by individual texters (Shortis 2007a,b), it is not yet certain whether the choices texters make are consistent enough, in the face of other variables, to constitute orthographic idiolects.
The University of Leicester‘s (2006) Forensic Linguistic study recognises these issues, in that it explains orthographic choices as texting strategies (defined below), adopted to suit particular circumstances, and explores other choices as well as spelling variation.1 However, there remains an apparent assumption that individuals are consistent in their orthographic choices. Participants in the study were asked to submit 10 of their own messages to a website (http://www.le.ac.uk/pc/aa/ked6/index.html) and the researchers hoped to recruit at least one hundred texters in order to analyse ‗linguistic consistency and variation in individuals‘ texting style‘ and, by means of a sampling technique known as snowballing in which participants are encouraged to urge friends to contribute, to also explore ‗the influence of peer groups upon writing style and texting language‘. This in itself acknowledges the fact that texters‘ style will vary and is dependent on external factors such as intended audience, which the researchers address by looking at what were introduced
1
The main researcher in this study is Dr Tim Grant, now head of the Forensic Linguistics Centre, Aston University, Birmingham. No publications have yet been produced from the study (Grant pers comm).
25 above as texting strategies: that is, texters‘ responses to technological constraints or other external factors resulting in, for example, structural ellipsis, which they suggest is encouraged by predictive texting; or vowel deletions and homophones which constitute part of ‗more abbreviated text language‘ (University of Leicester 2006). Although it seems reasonable to suggest that analysis of which strategies individuals prefer ‗may help to identify the writer of a text‘, the assumption that these ‗texting strategies are likely to remain relatively constant within individuals‘ is not yet proven. Nonetheless, this innovative field highlights individual choice and style, and the distinctive nature of Txt, as well as a practical need for greater understanding of it.