History Of Forensic Linguistics

The term ʻforensic linguisticsʼ was first used by Swedish professor Jan Svartvik in 1968. (Ariani et al., 2014, p. 223). Svartvik (1968) analysed the case of Timothy Evans, a Welsh miner with intellectual disabilities who had been convicted, sentenced to death and executed (in 1950) on the basis of statements he had given to police confessing to the murder of his wife and daughter. His guilt was called into question shortly thereafter, when the bones of many additional murder victims who could not have been killed by Evans were discovered in the house in which Evans had lived.