CRJ 7340 - Author Profiling & Threat Assessment

Credit Hours: 3

The first half of the course will cover author profiling, i.e., the analytical determination of the demographic features of an anonymous author by the linguistic features uncovered within the communication(s). The sociolinguistic concepts used to develop an author profile include language variation by region, age, gender, race, ethnicity, nativeness, etc. Ancillary issues relating to motivation, truthfulness, actual victimization status and commitment can also be determined through careful author profiling assessment. This course will help students construct potential author profiles of potential evidentiary and investigative value based on the science of linguistics and assist them in presenting profiles in report style. The second half of this course will cover threat assessment from a forensic linguistic perspective. It will be demonstrated that threat assessment can be effectively undertaken to recognize and assess the level of language usage within a communication as it relates to potentially injurious actions to an individual or organization. In particular, topics such as written/verbal versus non-written/non-verbal threats and conditional threats/extortions will be explored. Issues to be examined include the separate categories of threats, the seven primary factors to consider when undertaking a threat assessment, issues relating to escalation, and mental health considerations in anonymous writings. Illustrations will be provided through class exercises and case examples.