Classification of Interrogating Defendants' Spoken and Written Discourse Markers in Courts based on the McMenamin's Forensic Linguistics Framework

This study is conducted through a descriptive classification of interrogating defendants' spoken and written discourse in courts' conversations which has been designed based on ex post facto research. Research sample included 20 cases of criminal files gathered through available sampling method from the Archived Journals of Justice. McMenamin's (2002) Hierarchy Framework of Recognition Authenticity was used to examine stylistic and syntactic markers of defendants' spoken and written discourse. Stylistic and linguistic markers make a hierarchical model that is ranging from 1 to 9 levels. This model analyzed phonological, morphological, semantic, and syntactic clues that are unique among the defendants in the court files. The patterns concerned with that hierarchical model are resemblance, consistency, and population which are recruited to discover the criminals' spoken and written documents. The implications of this study showed that the use of this framework was successful in uncovering the criminals' identification for resemblance (50 percent), consistency (30 percent), and population (20 percent). Implications of the study suggest this framework may help the interrogators, judges, and attorneys to boost the efficacy of their profession.