Matthew Voice, Chloe Harrison, Tim Grant, Marcello Giovanelli
{"title":"Towards a cognitive forensic stylistics: An intercoder reliability test for replicable feature finding in the Operation Heron corpus","authors":"Matthew Voice, Chloe Harrison, Tim Grant, Marcello Giovanelli","doi":"10.1177/09639470251337632","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"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 for 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 Cognitive Grammar. 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 groups.","PeriodicalId":45849,"journal":{"name":"Language and Literature","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language and Literature","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470251337632","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
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 for 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 Cognitive Grammar. 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 groups.
期刊介绍:
Language and Literature is an invaluable international peer-reviewed journal that covers the latest research in stylistics, defined as the study of style in literary and non-literary language. We publish theoretical, empirical and experimental research that aims to make a contribution to our understanding of style and its effects on readers. Topics covered by the journal include (but are not limited to) the following: the stylistic analysis of literary and non-literary texts, cognitive approaches to text comprehension, corpus and computational stylistics, the stylistic investigation of multimodal texts, pedagogical stylistics, the reading process, software development for stylistics, and real-world applications for stylistic analysis. We welcome articles that investigate the relationship between stylistics and other areas of linguistics, such as text linguistics, sociolinguistics and translation studies. We also encourage interdisciplinary submissions that explore the connections between stylistics and such cognate subjects and disciplines as psychology, literary studies, narratology, computer science and neuroscience. Language and Literature is essential reading for academics, teachers and students working in stylistics and related areas of language and literary studies.