Part 3. You will hear two students called Jen and Rob discussing a project they are about to start working on. First you have some time to look at questions 21 to 24. Now listen carefully and answer questions 21 to 24.
Hi Jen. Hi Rob. We need to look at this project we're doing together in Forensic Linguistics.
Sure. The first thing we have to do is define Forensic Linguistics. I thought we could say something like, linguistics involves the analysis of language, and forensic refers to using scientific techniques to solve crimes.
So Forensic Linguistics involves analysing people's use of language to find out whether they've committed a crime. What do you think of that as a definition? Sounds OK. I looked it up in my dictionary and I got something similar.
Then we can add something about what forensic linguists actually do to back it up. You know, like analysing documents to find out who wrote them. Good point.
Let's do that. What about the actual project? I'm glad we chose voice identification as the topic. Yeah.
We've been given a voice recording of a possible suspect. Not a real suspect of course. So we've got to listen to the recording and analyse their voice.
Should be OK? Well, I've already listened to the recording and I can't even tell if it's a man or a woman. But I guess that doesn't matter. The accent's a local one, though I'm not sure how that will affect anything.
Where we're really going to get in trouble is that the recording is very unclear. I'm sure they've done that to test us. Well, they weren't going to make it easy.
We have to analyse the voice sample with that spectrograph instrument, don't we? Learning what to do with it is the only thing that really concerns me about this project. It'll be fine. I guess so.
And then we have to interview the suspect and make our own recording face to face and decide if it's the same person as on the original recording, right? Yes. It's not an exact science but it's usually pretty accurate. You can often tell even when they've got a cold it's the same person but they might do something like speaking with another accent because the tutor suggests they do that just to test us.
So let's get on with it then. Oh, and don't start your usual self-doubt about whether you can do the work or not. You usually do OK in the end.
I reckon that as long as we focus on the main points of the assignment we can think about the finer details later. My problem is creating things to worry about before I've even started. Before you hear the rest of the discussion you have some time to look at questions 25 to 30.
Now listen and answer questions 25 to 30. We'll have to do some background reading first. I'll go to the library later and get what we need.
OK. I've already looked at forensics today and it didn't say much about voice identification so we needn't bother with that one. Language and crime looks a bit more promising, doesn't it? I've got that out of the library already so we don't need to worry about borrowing that.
Research methods in forensic linguistics. I guess we ought to borrow that. And voice identification will be a useful one.
I'll borrow that from our classmate George. He won't need it for his project. But we should get out modern forensic techniques.
We need all the help we can get on that subject. OK. That's that sorted out.
Now on to the practical stuff. I'm not sure about how we're going to record the voices. I'm not too good on the technical side of things.
Me neither. We'd better work out what we're doing. At least we get more than one opportunity to speak to the person playing the suspect.
I just hope whoever it is won't make the task too tricky. I'm sure they won't be too hard on us. And as long as we do our research properly it shouldn't be too hard to do the rest of it.
I'm more worried about fitting in the writing up. I know. We've got loads of other assignments to finish as well.
Now, Rob, let's decide how we're going to split the writing between us. Are you any good at introductions? They always seem to let me down. OK.
Leave that to me. Are you OK to do the literature review then? Maybe we should split that part. I don't mind writing the methodology section if you feel comfortable doing the discussion and conclusions.
OK. And we can do the analysis between us as well. Great.
Let's get started. That is the end of Part 3. You now have 30 seconds to check your answers to Part 3.