The Extremist Internet Discourse: Legal, Scientific and Practical Aspects of Forensic Linguistic Analysis

Abstract

The paper presents a discussion of legal, scientific, and practical aspects of forensic linguistic analysis of the Internet extremist discourse as practiced at present and might be improved in the future. The author states that present experts’ practice in Russian legislation is based on limited knowledge of Internet linguistics properties and is conducted mostly as an empirical art in which the forensic linguist examiner acquires skill through extensive linguistic training and forensic experience. Courtroom cases in which forensic linguists have offered their written reports and testimony on extremist materials distributed on the Internet have got negative critical assessment in mass-media and scientific linguistic society. The judicial responses have varied with rulings, both admitting and rejecting extremist linguistic evidence. To some extent, the various legal viewpoints have reflected various linguistic methodical perspectives regarding the extremist diagnostic criteria to be expected in the examined Internet discourse represented under various forensic and communicative conditions. The necessity to use the unified linguistic criteria of resolving Internet text ambiguity is substantiated in the paper. The author concludes that methodological uncertainties concerning the contemporary expert practice of detecting linguistic signs of extremist statements are so significant as requiting that the forensic applications be approached with great caution.