Introduction to the special issue Forensic Linguistics in the Digital Era: Where Do We Go from Here?

1 Leveraging computational linguistics for enhanced forensic analysis: a point of departure

Computational Linguistics (CL) has emerged as a transformative force within forensic contexts, fundamentally reshaping how linguistic data is analyzed, interpreted, and applied in investigative and legal domains. Leveraging advances in NLP and machine learning, recent research demonstrates the capacity of computational approaches to scale forensic investigations, particularly in areas such as authorship attribution, deception detection, linguistic profiling, and hate speech analysis. The ability to model vast textual corpora and extract meaningful linguistic patterns provides investigators with unprecedented analytical power. Sophisticated algorithms now enable fine-grained stylistic and syntactic analyses, facilitating the identification of linguistic fingerprints across diverse authors and genres. Similarly, machine learning models have proven effective at detecting deceptive linguistic cues in both spoken and written texts, often uncovering patterns imperceptible to human analysts.

The convergence of CL and FL marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of language-based inquiries, offering transformative potential for both linguistic theory and applied forensic practice. While traditionally distinct yet complementary, these subfields are increasingly intersecting due to the growing complexity and volume of linguistic data encountered in legal and investigative contexts. Rooted at the interdisciplinary nexus of linguistics, computer science, and AI, CL seeks to model and simulate NLP through algorithms capable of parsing, generating, and analyzing vast corpora of human language. Recent advances in machine learning, neural networks, and NLP have given rise to robust computational systems capable of performing tasks such as authorship attribution, text augmentation (Zaiton and Al-Ansary 2025), text summarization (Zaiton et al. 2024), and speech recognition with unprecedented accuracy. FL, on the other hand, applies linguistic expertise to legal and criminal matters, scrutinizing language use in evidence ranging from statutes and testimonies to police interviews and digital communications. It plays a vital role in authorship analysis, deception detection, legal interpretation, and identifying bias or ambiguity within legal discourse. As digital communication becomes the dominant medium of interaction, linguistic traces embedded in emails, social media posts, and messaging platforms have gained evidentiary significance in judicial proceedings. However, manual analysis of such voluminous data remains labor-intensive, subjective, and limited in scale. Herein lies the synergistic promise of integrating CL with FL: computational tools can augment, automate, and refine FL methods, rendering them more scalable, systematic, and data-driven. For example, machine learning algorithms can uncover latent linguistic patterns, detect deceptive markers, and streamline analysis of complex legal corpora. Yet, this integration raises critical ethical and societal questions concerning the fair and just use of language in legal contexts, particularly around issues of bias, discrimination, and transparency.

A prominent trend in the literature is the growing reliance on deep learning techniques. Transformer-based models have driven a shift toward more nuanced language representations, enhancing analysis of meaning, tone, and context with greater precision. These models extend beyond core forensic applications to broader domains, including the detection of radicalizing discourse (Elyamany et al. 2025b) and the examination of linguistic evidence in judicial rulings (Elyamany et al. 2025d). However, several critical tensions and unresolved debates persist. Foremost among these is the ethical and epistemological challenge of applying computational forensics in high-stakes legal settings. Scholars caution against the uncritical adoption of algorithms where human judgment, interpretability, and due process remain paramount. Concerns regarding bias, overreach, and potential misuse of linguistic profiling have prompted calls. Another significant issue is the linguistic narrowness characterizing much current scholarship. The overwhelming majority of computational forensic studies focus on English or other high-resource languages, leaving minority and lesser-resourced languages underrepresented despite their critical importance in multilingual legal and security contexts. This linguistic asymmetry limits the generalizability of models and reinforces epistemic inequalities in forensic research. Moreover, while authorship attribution and deception detection receive sustained attention, other forensic applications – such as threat detection, legal discourse mining, and multimodal analysis – remain comparatively underexplored. Broadening the field’s functional scope and fostering an interdisciplinary orientation that bridges computational precision with sociolinguistic insight would significantly advance the discipline. In addition to thematic and methodological gaps, the literature tends to undertheorize the ethical dimensions of computational evidence. Although some studies acknowledge the legal and moral risks associated with algorithmic decision-making, deeper engagement is needed with issues of explainability, consent, accountability, and the implications of deploying automated tools within surveillance and judicial processes. As computational linguistics becomes increasingly embedded in institutional settings, these concerns acquire heightened urgency.

Against this backdrop, Forensic Linguistics in the Digital Era: Where Do We Go from Here? responds to these challenges, offering a comprehensive and integrative synthesis of existing research. It brings together disparate strands to present a coherent picture of the current state of the field and its future directions. The value of the inherent contributions extends beyond empirical and methodological insights. The scholarly works seek to consolidate an increasingly fragmented literature into a coherent field of inquiry. While numerous studies offer important technical or domain-specific findings, few integrate diverse perspectives necessary to appreciate the broader social, legal, and ethical implications of computational linguistics in forensic practice. The present synthesis addresses this gap by virtue of situating technological advancements within their complex legal and societal contexts. It functions both as a roadmap and a provocation, inviting scholars, practitioners, and technologists alike to rethink foundational assumptions and to envision new modes of collaboration and critique.

2 Contributions and methodological innovations

This special issue opens with a bold reimagining of FL as a tool to interrogate the hidden architectures of power in algorithmically mediated spaces. The lead article by Elyamany and El Shamy challenges traditional boundaries, applying an extended Discourse Analysis and Digital Surveillance (DADS) framework to the fourth generation science museum as a site of bio-political governance. Through a forensic lens, the authors dissect CORPOREA, Europe’s first large-scale human body museum, revealing how its immersive technologies and gamified diagnostics transform participatory learning into a post-digital surveillance dispositif. The study’s methodological innovation lies in its triadic integration of inter-semiosis, enactive signs, and cognitive artifacts, exposing how interactive exhibits entrain visitors’ bodily rhythms into closed semiotic loops. Far from neutral pedagogical tools, these interfaces function as affective scaffolds, converting engagement into predictive profiling and infrastructural capture. The authors’ bio-semiotic approach uncovers the subtle mechanisms by which CORPOREA’s design (ostensibly empowering) masks algorithmic control beneath rhetoric of personalization and democratized science. This analysis marks a pivotal shift for FL. By extending its purview beyond textual and legal discourse to multimodal, embodied, and algorithmically modulated interactions, the article demonstrates how forensic tools can critique the soft surveillance embedded in civic spaces. The museum emerges not as a benign educational arena but as a hybrid assemblage where biometric data extraction, rhythmic synchronization, and epistemic closure are aestheticized through playful interfaces. Such insights compel the field to confront its role in deciphering the semiotic and material infrastructures of control in postdigital societies. The implications are profound. As the authors argue, CORPOREA’s exhibits exemplify a broader trend in which participatory design scripts consent through enactive signs (e.g., touchscreen quizzes and VR gaze-tracking) and cognitive artifacts (e.g., leaderboards and health dashboards). These mechanisms deterritorialize lived experiences into commodifiable capta, reinforcing neoliberal subjectivities under the guise of civic engagement. The article’s forensic rigor, combining critical discourse analysis with biosemiotics, reveals how spaces of “empowerment” reproduce the logics of surveillance capitalism.

The issue continues with a compelling examination of cancel culture as a dynamic interplay of identity, morality, and digital infrastructure. Elyamany and Abdelwahab reframe the phenomenon not as a simple matter of public shaming but as a complex sociotechnical process where reputations are constructed, contested, and recalibrated through the interplay of platform affordances and strategic narrative scaling. By integrating Self-Categorization Theory, Social Comparison Theory, and Kramer’s concept of strategic scaling, the authors introduce a groundbreaking framework (the SCT/SCoT-Platformized Scaling Model) that reveals how digital spaces mediate moral legitimacy. Through a forensic analysis of eight high-profile cases, from J.K. Rowling’s gender-critical views to Andrew Tate’s deplatforming, the study uncovers the mechanisms by which cancellations escalate or dissolve, demonstrating that reputational outcomes are as much a product of algorithmic amplification as they are of individual transgressions or apologies. The study’s forensic lens exposes how platforms function as active participants in these moral battles, rather than neutral arenas. Algorithmic logics prioritize engagement, transforming isolated incidents into full-blown controversies, while echo chambers reinforce polarized interpretations of accountability. Figures like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson leverage platform affordances to reframe criticism as ideological persecution, whereas others, such as Kevin Hart and Morgan Wallen, navigate cancellations through mortification and corrective action. The analysis reveals a paradox. Even as deplatforming attempts to curb harmful speech, it can also fuel martyr narratives, as seen in Tate’s migration to alternative platforms. This tension underscores the uneven power dynamics at play, where corporate governance and user agency collide in the curation of public discourse. What emerges is a nuanced portrait of cancel culture as a platformized moral economy, where reputational damage and repair are mediated by infrastructural and ideological forces. The article challenges FL to expand beyond textual analysis and grapple with the sociotechnical systems that shape digital accountability. By tracing how narratives are scaled, up to existential crises or down to isolated mistakes, the authors illuminate the strategic dimensions of cancel culture, offering a model for future research at the intersection of discourse, identity, and platform governance. In doing so, they not only advance our understanding of one of the most contentious phenomena of the digital age but also redefine the boundaries of FL inquiry itself.

The third paper by ElMansy and Zaiton presents a pioneering analysis of the interplay between language, power, and ideology in international legal discourse. By integrating qualitative analytical frameworks with advanced NLP techniques, the authors systematically uncover the linguistic mechanisms through which states legitimize their positions and delegitimize opponents during the International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearings on South Africa’s complaint against Israel. The study’s dual-method approach, combining human-driven discourse analysis with machine-based information retrieval, sets a new standard in FL, particularly in its empirical demonstration of how strategies like moral evaluation, hypothetical future projection, and authorization dominate high-stakes legal arguments. One of the paper’s most significant contributions is its illumination of the intercultural dimensions of legal persuasion. By examining speeches from 52 states, the authors reveal how cultural norms and values subtly shape delegitimization tactics, such as the use of emotionally charged narratives or appeals to international law. The study’s computational findings quantify tendencies that qualitative research had previously theorized, bridging a critical gap between linguistic theory and data-driven practice. However, the paper also prompts critical reflections. While the pursued NLP framework offers scalability, it raises questions about the limits of automation in capturing rhetorical nuance, especially in contexts where implicit cultural knowledge or moral reasoning is pivotal.

The fourth paper offers a groundbreaking exploration of how gendered linguistic patterns in suicidal discourse reflect sociocultural pressures and psychological distress in Egypt. By applying the Appraisal Model to a corpus of 130 anonymized Facebook posts, Youssef and Abdelrazik reveal stark contrasts in how Egyptian men and women articulate suicidality: women dominate expressions of self-hatred (kill myself, hurt myself) and assertive declarations of despair, while men more frequently voice vulnerability (I can’t) and material insecurities. This study not only bridges a critical gap in non-Western suicide research but also challenges prevailing assumptions about emotional expressivity, showing that Egyptian women write briefer posts with fewer positive appraisals, underscoring the urgency of culturally tailored mental health interventions. The paper’s mixed-methods design, combining qualitative close-reading of affective markers with corpus-driven frequency analyses, sets a new standard for rigor in digital discourse studies. Key findings, such as the prevalence of negative Affect and the gendered divergence in Judgment, are compellingly visualized through bar charts and concordance tables. The study is a clarion call to expand FL beyond Western contexts. Its revelations, such as young Arab men defying traditional masculinity norms by admitting vulnerability, demand interdisciplinary collaboration. It opens up venues for future scholarship to explore how these findings intersect with variables like socioeconomic status or sexual identity, while developing NLP models attuned to dialectal Arabic and cultural metaphors. By centering marginalized voices and leveraging mixed methodologies, this paper not only advances academic discourse but also equips clinicians and policymakers to combat suicide’s silent epidemic with linguistic precision and cultural empathy.

The fifth paper presents a groundbreaking examination of the interplay between verbal and nonverbal strategies in courtroom persuasion. By merging Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) with Aristotle’s rhetorical triad, Zaiton delivers a nuanced analysis of closing arguments from the Jodi Arias trial, revealing how multimodal resources are strategically deployed to construct compelling legal narratives. The innovative use of ELAN software to synchronize gestures, gaze, posture, and material exhibits with speech underscores the sophistication of persuasion in legal settings, where every semiotic choice carries weight. This research makes a significant contribution to discourse analysis by demonstrating that persuasion in courtrooms is not merely a linguistic endeavor but a multimodal performance. The study’s focus on materiality – such as crime scene photos or text messages – further highlights how physical artifacts are semiotically charged to evoke emotional responses (Pathos), bolster credibility (Ethos), or substantiate claims (Logos). However, the paper’s reliance on a single, highly publicized case invites questions about the generalizability of its findings. Would similar strategies dominate in lower-stakes trials or across different legal cultures? Future research could address this by applying the same framework to diverse cases or jurisdictions, including the growing realm of virtual courtrooms, where digital interfaces may reshape multimodal dynamics. Additionally, while the study adeptly analyzes the how of persuasion, it leaves room to explore the ethical implications of these techniques. Overall, the paper challenges the primacy of verbal rhetoric in legal discourse, advocating for a holistic view of persuasion that embraces the full spectrum of communicative modes. It calls on legal practitioners to refine their multimodal literacy and on scholars to further investigate the intersection of semiotics, technology, and justice. By illuminating the hidden choreography of courtroom persuasion, the study not only advances academic discourse but also prompts a reevaluation of how truth and credibility are performed, and perceived, in the pursuit of justice.

The special issue’s sixth paper introduces a pioneering exploration of the intersection between linguistic analysis, legal discourse, and digital mediation. By synthesizing Appraisal Theory with sentiment analysis, El Attar and Abdo dissect the attitudinal dynamics of courtroom interactions, focusing on allocutions and sentencing phases while capturing the raw, unfiltered reactions of YouTube audiences. Their findings reveal a striking dominance of moral evaluations (Judgment) in judicial and defendant discourse, with judges deploying negative Propriety to underscore ethical breaches, and defendants oscillating between expressions of remorse and strategic appeals for leniency. Public commentary, meanwhile, amplifies emotional polarization, reflecting societal stakes in justice and exposing a pervasive distrust in legal institutions. This study’s methodological innovation lies in its interdisciplinary approach, bridging qualitative rigor with computational sentiment analysis to decode the interplay of power, emotion, and ideology. The authors employ customized NLP tools to analyze 12 trial transcripts and 6,000 YouTube comments, revealing how digital platforms serve dual roles: as archives of formal legal discourse and as volatile arenas for public adjudication. The paper’s contributions extend beyond FL, raising critical questions about digital visibility’s impact on legal accountability. By juxtaposing institutional discourse with public sentiment, the authors illuminate how digital mediation transforms trials into spectacles, where emotion and ideology compete with legal rationality. Ethical and methodological challenges emerge, particularly in balancing AI-driven scalability with the contextual depth of humanistic analysis. By situating YouTube as a contested space for public deliberation, the study invites further reflection on how digital platforms reshape perceptions of guilt, punishment, and redemption, ultimately challenging scholars to navigate the tensions between computational efficiency and ethical accountability in forensic linguistics.

The seventh paper showcases a critical examination of Neural Machine Translation (NMT) systems within the high-stakes domain of international law. By analyzing the Google Neural Machine Translation (GNMT) system’s rendering of Egypt’s oral arguments before the ICJ, the study employs the DQF-MQM Harmonized Error Typology to dissect errors in terminology, accuracy, and fluency, revealing both the promise and limitations of MT in legal contexts. The findings underscore a compelling paradox. The study’s granular error taxonomy – categorizing mistakes as critical, major, or minor – provides a blueprint for diagnosing MT’s weaknesses and prioritizing areas for improvement. Beyond diagnostics, the paper advocates for a hybrid model of legal translation, where MT serves as a first draft to be refined by human posteditors trained in legal linguistics. This approach balances efficiency with accountability, leveraging MT’s speed, which is critical for real-time applications like live subtitling, while mitigating risks through human oversight. The study also calls for domain-specific adaptations, such as curating legal corpora to train NMT systems on UN resolutions, ICJ rulings, and Arabic-English legal glossaries, thereby enhancing contextual awareness and terminological consistency. The broader implications of this research extend to the ethical and procedural challenges of integrating AI into legal systems. Looking ahead, the paper identifies key directions for future research, such as developing domain-specific NMT models trained on bilingual legal corpora to improve jargon handling, enhancing context-aware architectures to track extended discourse, addressing gaps in legal translation for underrepresented languages, and optimizing real-time speech translation for courtroom interpreting, where disfluencies and interruptions pose unique challenges. By bridging empirical analysis with pragmatic recommendations, this study not only advances forensic linguistics but also charts a path for responsible AI adoption in justice systems. It reaffirms that while machines can augment legal workflows, the gavel of judgment, and the language that wields it, must remain firmly in human hands.

The issue closes with a paper that offers a profound and nuanced examination of how incarcerated women navigate identity, stigma, and self-worth through language. By integrating Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with Feminist Criminology, Zaiton transcends traditional criminological frameworks to reveal the dual marginalization faced by women who violate both legal norms and gendered societal expectations. The research employs van Dijk’s Ideological Square and Braithwaite’s Reintegrative Shaming Theory (RST) to dissect the linguistic strategies incarcerated women use to construct positive and negative self-images, providing a rare glimpse into their psychological and social struggles within the carceral system. This study stands out for its methodological rigor and theoretical depth. By analyzing a corpus of interviews from the documentary Women Behind Bars: Life and Death in Indiana, the author uncovers how lexical choices and discursive strategies reflect broader ideological tensions. The visualization tools employed further enrich the analysis, mapping how language oscillates between self-empowerment and self-stigmatization. A key contribution of this work is its challenge to monolithic portrayals of female offenders. The study reveals that incarcerated women are not passive victims of systemic oppression but active agents who employ language to negotiate their identities. Some adopt reintegrative shaming, framing their past actions as mistakes while affirming their capacity for growth. Others succumb to stigmatizing shame, internalizing societal condemnation. This duality highlights the prison environment’s role as both a site of punishment and a space for identity renegotiation. At its core, the paper is a call to action for scholars to deepen interdisciplinary dialogue between linguistics and criminology, and for policymakers to recognize language as a tool of both oppression and empowerment. By centering the voices of incarcerated women, the study not only advances academic discourse but also humanizes a marginalized population, urging society to confront the biases embedded in labels like “criminal” and to reimagine justice through a lens of empathy and transformation.

3 Conclusions

This special issue marks a pivotal juncture for FL, advancing a bold, interdisciplinary vision for the field in an era increasingly shaped by algorithmic mediation and digital discourse. From biometric surveillance in public learning environments to the algorithmic infrastructures that scaffold cancel culture, international law, courtroom persuasion, and carceral self-representation, the issue’s studies collectively reimagine the scope, scale, and sociopolitical stakes of FL inquiry. They illuminate how computational tools, when applied critically and ethically, can enhance analytic precision while also exposing the latent structures of power that shape language in legal and extra-legal domains. The contributions foreground a shared imperative: to navigate the promises and perils of computational integration not as a purely technical challenge, but as a complex ethical, cultural, and epistemological undertaking as well. This requires forensic linguists to develop methodological hybrids that reconcile data-driven automation with humanistic interpretation, to advocate for linguistic inclusivity across underrepresented languages and contexts, and to remain vigilant against the risks of algorithmic bias, reductionism, and epistemic harm. In charting new terrains, from digital affect to embodied multimodality, this issue catalyzes a disciplinary shift toward an FL that is technologically sophisticated, ethically reflexive, and socially grounded. In asking “Where do we go from here?”, this issue offers not a single destination, but a constellation of emergent pathways – ones that demand continued collaboration across linguistics, law, computer science, media studies, and critical theory. It invites researchers to rethink forensic evidence as both linguistic artifact and sociotechnical construct, and to approach the interface of language, technology, and justice not only with innovation but with responsibility, empathy, and care. The future of FL lies not merely in what machines can detect, but in how scholars choose to interpret, contextualize, and act upon the traces that language leaves behind.