Introduction

For the very first time, the term ‘forensic linguistics’ was used by the linguistics professor Jan Svartvik in his book “The Evans Statements: A Case for Forensic Linguistics.” In the 1980s, Australian linguists discussed the application of linguistics to legal issues. They discovered that a phrase such as ‘the same language’ is open to interpretation. The Federal Criminal Police Office Germany, organizes a two-day conference in forensic linguistics in 1988. The First British Seminar on Forensic Linguistics was held at the University of Birmingham in 1992 (Gao, 2010).

In recent times, the application of linguistics to legal issues is labeled as “forensic linguistics”—has become increasingly common, varied and consequential. The word deals with legal and professional analysis of recorded and inscribed language by forensic linguists to provide a correct interpretation of the evidence. It is particularly used in legal matters, especially in the court and criminal justice systems. In the court system, forensic linguistics is broadly applied for the examination of the language evidence – either recorded or handwritten in crimes and civil matters. The analysis or examination is carried out for two reasons. First, the analysis is employed when the relevant investigation is carried out with focus to identifying witnesses or suspects in specific cases or scenes, or the determination of the significance of writing or utterance to a case. Secondly, forensic linguistics plays a significant role when written or spoken language samples are cross examine in the court as an evidence (Ariani et al., 2014).

The scientific study of language is called linguistics. Linguistics refers to the systematic study of language development in general. Linguistics is divided into two field; micro and macro linguistics. Micro linguistics is a branch of linguistic that concerns with the study of language in concise way, without any concern for meaning or national content of linguistic expressions. In micro-linguistics, language is reduced to the intellectual mental elements of syntax and phonology. Meanwhile, macro linguistics deals with the external factor of language. Sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, antropolinguistics, etholinguistics, and applied linguistics comes under the study of macro linguistics (McMenamin, 2002). The prime concern of many forensic linguists is particularly courtroom proceedings. In this setting, the professional players use some kind of legal language to communicate with each other. Even when members of the lay public are involved as parties, experts, or jurors, they will inevitably be confronted with legal language, which in many cases will create a need for some kind of explanation or translation. Even bigger problems arise when a layman who does not speak the official language of the courtroom become intertwined with the court procedure.