The International Summer School in Forensic Linguistic Analayis was created by Malcolm Coulthard in 2000. Its first edition took place at Anglia Polytechnic University in Cambridge and was followed by three more events in Birmingham. This year, the School is moving to mainland Europe; the fifth edition will be held in Lodz, Poland, from 7th until 11th September 2005.

The School addresses subjects within the broadly defined discipline of forensic linguistics, including the structure of legal language, forensic authorship attribution, copyright issues, plagiarism and its detection, and forensic phonetics. Among the tutors are invariably world-renowned scholars in the field of language and the law and forensic linguistics. This year, we are very fortunate to have two distinguished American academics, Professors Larry Solan of Brooklyn Law School and Ron Butters of Duke University. Professor Solan will guide the participants through the intricacies of the language of judges, the interpretation of statutes and contracts and the legal understanding of everyday expressions, and Professor Butters will speak about linguistic issues in American trademark law and linguistic evidence in a death penalty case.

PROGRAMME

The programme this year is a varied and intensive one. Details are available in .doc format here.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE

Please fill in the registration form and send it to the address indicated. There are no entry requirements though a basic knowledge of linguistics is expected.

EXTRACURRICULAR EXCITEMENT

As the sessions will end at 4 or 4:30 pm, the participants will have the opportunity to explore Lodz in their spare time. There are two bus routes with stops in close proximity to the study centre and a taxi to the city centre will cost no more than PLN20. For information about Lodz click here. As dinners will not be served in the study centre, the participants will be encouraged to sample the delights of Lodz’s many excellent restaurants. A good meal in town will cost 20-40 PLN.

When it comes to social events, we have aimed at striking a healthy balance between those and the participants’ own ideas for spending their free time. And so on Thursday evening there will be a screening of Krzysztof Kieslowski's disturbing masterpiece “Short film about killing”, followed by a discussion. (Note that Kieslowski is a graduate of the world-famous Lodz film school.) For Friday afternoon we have planned a guided walk in the Lagiewniki forest (don’t forget your binoculars, bird-watchers!). We have secured access to the 18th-century franciscan monastery and will be drinking nutrient-rich water from a spring said to have miraculous healing powers. Finally, Saturday evening will be party time – there will be a barbecue dinner with wine and beer, and a session of vodka tasting.

STUDY CENTRE

All accommodation is in the Lodz University Study Centre where the Summer School is taking place. Situated 6 kilometres from the city centre, the Study Centre consists of two almost identical buildings facing each other across a quiet street. It has a mixture of single and twin rooms all of which are en suite with toilet and shower. All rooms are equipped with a TV set and telephone; the twin rooms have desks. To the back of the main building there is a wooded area with two small ponds. The centre’s location on the outskirts of the Lagiewniki forest makes it an ideal base for walking trips. The largest municipal park in Poland, Lagiewniki is home to a variety of wildlife and boasts two wooden chapels and a baroque monastery.

CONFERENCE

The Summer School will immediately precede “Language and the Law 2005: East meets West”, a conference meant to facilitate integration between scholars from the former Eastern Bloc countries and elsewhere in Europe and the world. The conference will be held over 3 days, from 12th to 14th September 2005 at the Lodz University Conference Centre, which is situated about 4 kilometres from the study centre. Please don't forget that the conference registration fee is waived for participants of the Summer School.

TUTORS

Malcolm Coulthard is best known for his work on the analysis of Spoken and Written Discourse and his "An Introduction to Discourse Analysis" (1977/1985) is still widely used. He is the founding editor of The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law and was the Founding President of the International Association of Forensic Linguists. Professor Coulthard is the author of 20 authored and edited books, and 50 articles and chapters in books. He has been commissioned to write reports in over 150 cases including The Birmingham Six, The Derek Bentley Appeal (where, in 1998, the verdict of guilty was overturned after 46 years) and The Bridgewater Four Appeal, and has given expert evidence in courts in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Germany and Hong Kong.

Sue Blackwell has an MPhil in English from the University of Cambridge and is currently writing up her PhD on the acquisition and use of personal pronouns. She teaches on the Language Foundation module and the modules on Development and Variation in English, and Bilingualism at the University of Birmingham. Sue's current research interests include Language and Gender, Child Language, Corpus Linguistics and Forensic Linguistics. She maintains the Forensic Linguistics website at the University of Birmingham and maintains numerous personal web pages including one for Forensic Linguistics. She is the List Owner for forensic-linguistics, an lnternet mailing lists hosted by JISC. Sue is the author of a dozen full expert reports, mainly commissioned by solicitors preparing an appeal against conviction.

Ron Butters, Professor of English and Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, is the author of hundreds of publications in the field of linguistics. He is past editor of "American Speech," a quarterly publication of the American Dialect Society, and Chief Editor of American Dialect Society publications. Ron Butters has chaired the Linguistics Program at Duke for many years, and is currently chair of the Department of English. He has prepared expert witness reports in numerous cases both criminal and civil, but his chief interests lie in the areas of the interpretation of statutes and contracts and especially in intellectual property litigation. Apart from forensic linguistics, his academic interests include the structure of modern English and present-day usage, sociolinguistics, languages in contact, discourse analysis, and pragmatics.

Stanislaw Gozdz-Roszkowski received his MA and PhD in English Studies from the University of Lodz, where he is Adjunct Professor at present. His research interests are primarily in corpus-based analysis of legal texts. His other academic interests include: genre analysis, LSP studies, translation studies and terminology. His main current project is a corpus-based analysis of recurrent multi-word combinations in various legal genres. Stanislaw is Director of Studies for COBAL (Computer-based English Language Studies), an MA programme run jointly by the University of Lodz and Lancaster University. For the past few years, he has been teaching legal English to law students and legal professionals in Poland. He is now involved in introducing the new TOLES examination (Test of Legal English Skills) in Poland as well as trialling new examination materials for the International Legal English Certificate (ILEC) for the Cambridge ESOL. He is an expert witness with the Circuit Court in Lodz.

Philip Harrison works at J P French Associates, forensic audio consultants preparing reports in civil and criminal cases where the use of language is submitted as evidence. Over recent years, the company has been involved in some of the most important and high-profile cases in jurisdictions around the world. Philip has assisted in over 100 such cases. He holds a first class honours degree (B.Eng) in Acoustic Engineering from the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton. He has contributed to research in the forensic audio area and has made a prize-winning presentation of his findings to an international conference.

Krzysztof Kredens received his MA in English Studies and PhD in English Linguistics from the University of Lodz, where he is now Adjunct Professor in English Language and Linguistics. His academic interests include oral discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and social applications of linguistics as well as translation and interpreting. He has worked as a translator and interpreter in various settings both in Poland and the UK. Krzysztof’s main research interest lies with language and the law, as evidenced by his numerous publications and conference papers in the area. In 2002 he received the prestigious Marie Curie Fellowship to carry out research at the University of Birmingham on the role of idiolectal variation in forensic authorship attribution. He is currently working on a book with the working title of "Introducing Idiolect".

Lawrence M. Solan is the Don Forchelli Professor of Law, and Director of the Center for the Study of Law, Language and Cognition at Brooklyn Law School. Dr. Solan holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Massachusetts, and a law degree from Harvard. His writing is chiefly devoted to exploring interdisciplinary issues related to language and law. He is the author of The Language of Judges published by University of Chicago Press in 1993. Speaking of Crime: The Language of Criminal Justice, coauthored with Peter Tiersma, was published by the University of Chicago Press in early 2005. Dr. Solan has been a Visiting Professor in the Linguistics Program, and a Visiting Fellow in the Psychology Department, at Princeton University.

LINGUIST LIST

5th International Summer School, Forensic Linguistics
Date: 18-Feb-2005
From: Krysztof Kredens <kkreduni.lodz.pl>
Subject: 5th International Summer School, Forensic Linguistics

The Fifth International Summer School in Forensic Linguistic Analysis will take place at the University of Lodz from 7th to 11th September 2005. This five-day event will address subjects within the broadly defined discipline of forensic linguistics, including the structure of legal language, forensic authorship attribution, copyright issues, plagiarism and its detection, and forensic phonetics. Among the tutors will be world-renowned scholars in the field of language and the law and forensic linguistics, with Professor Malcolm Coulthard assuming the role of Director of Studies.

The Forensic Linguistics Summer School will immediately precede the conference ''Language and the Law 2005: East meets West'' - see for details:

http://ia.uni.lodz.pl/linglex

You may like to know that FLSS students will be entitled to participate in the conference free of charge.

If you or any of your colleagues and/or students are interested in attending the Summer School, please register your interest by emailing Dr Krzysztof Kredens (kkreduni.lodz.pl). Further details will be publicised as they are available.

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
Forensic Linguistics
http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-497.html