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3.0 Forensic Linguistics Forensic linguistics is sometimes presented only in terms of stylistic analysis (Crystal 1987:69), but the field is rapidly expanding and actually encompasses various other types of specialized linguistic analyses, which become the basis for expert opinion testimony in civil and criminal litigation. Collections such as those edited by Rieber and Stewart (1990), and Levi and Walker (1990) present varied examples of contemporary forensic linguistic analysis, including (with representative sources cited) voice identification (phonetics) (Koenig 1992, Winitz, Wyrsch and Riddle 1990), questions related to copyright and trademark infringement (Chambers 1990, Gallagher 1983), the definition of obscenity (Chambers 1990), group or individual identification by dialect variety, sometimes called ear-witness reports (Chambers 1990, Schwartz 1985), the analysis of spoken language in discourse and conversation (e.g., analysis of topic-comment, question-response, reference, and information) (Breckenridge 1981, Gallagher 1983, Green 1990, Prince 1990, Shuy 1990), the difference between the spoken and written language in defendants alleged confessions as transcribed by note-taking observers (Canale, Mougeon and Klokeid 1982, Chambers 1990, Svartvik 1968), plain language laws (Bowen, Duffy and Steinberg 1986, Brackenridge 1981, Shuy and Larkin 1978), bilingualism and bidialectalism in education law and policy (Brackenridge 1981, Wolfson 1989), and courtroom speech styles and language behavior and their effects on trial participants (e.g., forms of questioning, the comprehensibility of jury instructions, the language of cross-examination, court-reporting conventions, cautious responses, deferential language, powerful vs. powerless speech, jury instructions, the use of hedges and intensifiers, the speech style of lawyers, and hesitancy in witness responses) (Andrews 1984, Bradac, Hemphill and Tardy 1981, Carpenter 1981, Charrow and Charrow 1979, Drew 1990, Ericson, Lind, Johnson and O Barr 1978, Graffam Walker 1990, Levi 1982 and 1990, Liska, Walker Mechling and Stathas 1981, O Barr 1982, Shuy and Shnukall980, Wright and Hosman 1983). 3.1 Forensic Stylistics Stylistics is the study of individual or group characteristics in written language. In forensic stylistics, writing style is examined for the express purpose of resolving litigated questions related to disputed authorship or meaning, as in the cases outlined in Chapters 1 and 2. Underlying American forensic stylistics as applied to issues of questioned authorship are two unpublished graduate theses. Blake MA Thesis (UC s Berkeley, 1978), Disputed Authorship: Quantitative Stylistics as Evidence and its Application to Foren.sic Science, is significant as an overview of the history and progress of forensic stylist&, and Wachal PhD Dissertation (University of s Wisconsin, 1966), Linguistic Evio!.ence, Statistical Inference, and Disputed Authorship, although not specifically focused on forensic applications, provided a comprehensive methodological basis for the later work of Blake and others.

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Forensic stylistic analysis for authorship attribution was suggested early on by Arens and Meadow (1956:25), who indicated that [stylistic] variables may I... provide some evidence of idiosyncratic characteristics of writers. In addition, Pickett (1991) has proposed linguistic examination or word usage, grammar, and style in documents as an aid in investigations, and Menicucci (1978) examines the nature of forensic stylistics and suggests that in a small class of cases stylistics could provide significant evidentiary value. Of equal importance is the work in forensic stylistics in Australia (Eagleson 1989, see Section 5.30) and England (Kenny 1983, Smith 1989, and Totty, Hardcastle and Pearson 1987). All of the above-cited English work is based on the theory and methods of stylometry as developed by Andrew Q. Morton (Morton 1971, 1978, 1984, 1986; Michaelson, Morton, and Hamilton-Smith 1979; and Morton, Michaelson, and Hamilton-Smith 1976). Stylometry is the scientific comparison of written or spoken utterance habits in questioned and authentic samples. Morton is careful to distinguish stylometry from stylistic studies based on scholar-specific judgements. Stylometric tests are statistical and are applied only when already validated on other cases. The basic principle of stylometry is that writers have so much in common that, ... what is most characteristic of a writer ... is not the few idiosyncratic habits which claim attention, but the rate at which he performs operations common to all, (Morton 1984:l). Forensic stylistics for author identification encompasses a broad spectrum of theoretical and applied approaches to the analysis of writing style which are already in use in non-forensic contexts. The various definitions of style and models for its analysis are examined in Chapters 8 and 9. The interpretation of meaning, especially in cases of lexical and syntactic ambiguity, is also accomplished by forensic stylistic analysis. Chapter 2, for example, reviews a case related to the lexical interpretation of the word accident. Writing can be described (and evaluated) for its simplicity, clarity, and explicitness (Shuy 1981b:128), and document analysis is characterized by Gardin (1973:137) as the extraction of meaning from written documents. Questions of meaning are frequent matter of litigation, as evidenced by precedent and by case-based discussions in sources such as Words and Phrases (1940- 1992). Another significant contribution to the forensic interpretation of lexical meaning is Bryant (1930) English in the Law Courts, a linguistically sound and s precedent-filled book on the part function words (articles, prepositions, and conjunctions) play in legal decisions. 3.2 Forgery Studies Some of the most well known authorship questions have arisen in non-forensic contexts from disputes over the writers of certain classical, historical, literary, political, and ecclesiastical works. Such questions are addressed in collections like Erdman and Fogel (1966) Evidence for Authorship: Essays on Problem of s Attribution, in works on various types of forgery (such as Farrer 1907, Garraghan 1946, Grafton 1990, Stewart 1991, Taylor 1991, and Whitehead 1973), and in journals such as Style and Literary and Linguistic Computing. One of the

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most long-standing literary authorship debates, of course, has been that of the Shakespearean poems and plays. Those who question the works of Shakespeare have proposed various methods for discerning their origin and over fifty alternative writers, with the three leading candidates being Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere. Most intriguing are some of the many instances of forgery throughout history. Forgery has flourished since the beginnings of Western civilization. As Grafton (19905) comments:
For 2500 years and more, forgery has amused its uninvolved observers, enraged its humiliated victims, flourished as a literary genre and, most oddly of all, stimulated vital innovations in the technical methods of scholars.

The early technical methods of discovery are of interest. First, Grafton (1990:24) makes an important distinction between forgery and pseudepigrapha, which labels works wrongly ascribed but not intentionally deceptive. Although mainly external standards were used to establish the credibility of forged and pseudepigraphic documents through the 15th century (Grafton 1990:97), a technical philology of text comparison was then developed. The basic method involved systematic comparison, and the techniques used included systematic juxtaposition of the language, substance, and stated and unstated assumptions of the document, as well as the weight of the data in the determination of authorship (Grafton 1990:93). Markers of style used in forgery-discovery included general, often undefined features such as (from Farrer and Grafton) the linguistic appearance of a text, tone and style, divergent style and diction, grammatical and syntactical errors , errors of fact and phrasing, weird spelling, astounding words and phrases, dissimilar vocabulary and phraseology, juxtaposition of different dates and characters, unusual length of the lines of writing, idiosyncratic metaphors (nautical, military, metallurgical, medical, horticultural, geometrical, igneous, and lupine metaphors). In the historical use of language to date documents, the absence of archaic language and presence of contemporary language were telltale signs of falsity. Some of the bases for discovery were (from Farrer and Grafton) disfiguring neologisms, bold style and phraseology, recent technical terms, reconstructed language: use of archaic words and spelling noted for its heavy use of extra consonants, anachronisms - words not in use at the time of the purported writing, obsolete words, or not knowing the ancient style. An example from Farrer (190 7:6) is that of a forger who, in attempting an imitation of Cicero used osor for qui odit and used a word beginning with n after the word cum, neither of which were features of Cicero style. s A final but very frequent linguistic means of detecting forgery was the presence of words and phrases borrowed from another same-language author, or from a forger whose first language was different from that being forged. Bases for detection included (from Farrer and Grafton) phrases borrowed from other writers, use of words foreign to his style, Italianisms of style, bor-

rowings from Hebrew in Greek, peculiar spelling (interference from another language), barbarous idioms and solecisms, puns that worked in Greek but not in the supposedly original Hebrew of the Book of Daniel, and the presence of many Gallic and barbarous words in classical Latin prose. 3.3 The Problem of Proof Scientific testimony based on linguistic stylistics has determined the judicial outcome of many civil and criminal cases involving questions of authorship or interpretation. Questions concerning the admissibility of expert testimony in such cases usually relate to whether stylistics meets scientific and judicial standards of evidence. The following 14 questions represent specific issues actually raised in particular cases, or discussed in treatises on science and the admissibility of scientific evidence, such as those of Giannelli (1980), Klemke, Hollinger, and Kline (1988), and Neufeld and Colman (1990).
1. Is stylisties a science?

Linguistics is a well established scientific discipline with a long history of inquiry, and linguistic stylistics is the field within this discipline that studies variation in written language. Human language is part of the world of nature and culture and thereby falls within the domains of both the law-finding and fact-finding sciences. Linguistic facts are based on observed language behavior and inferences about observations; they are, therefore, subject to test and rejection. Linguists construct theories of language (its structure, change, acquisition, and use) which are developed around the facts and related hypotheses (research questions) that organize and explain linguistic phenomena. While linguistic theories guide current investigation, they are constantly tested by such research and always subject to rejection or change. Stylistics is an applied science in two senses. It first requires an application of formal linguistic theory to empirical (fact-finding) linguistics, and second involves application of factual linguistics to the applied field of stylistics, thus fulfilling human purposes related to text description and interpretation or author identification.
2. Is the underlying theory of style and stylistics well established?

The study and theory of style is not experimental or novel (see Chapter 8), although methods for analyzing variation in written language include longestablished practices as well as more recently developed innovative approaches (see Chapter 9).
8. Is stylistic analysis valid (accurate)?

Side-by-side comparison of questioned and known writings renders a set of style markers which are the same or different for each respective set of writings. Although the ease with which style characteristics are observed may differ depending on the data, therefore requiring a variety of methods for observation,

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description, and measurement, the results of such a comparison can be precise, coherent, and relatively complete.
4. Is

stylistic analysis reliable (consistent)?

Objective stylistic analysis that is restricted to demonstrable or measurable facts (see Chapter 9) will produce reliable results. Evaluative stylistics (intuitive reaction to writing) will not achieve the intersubjective testability needed for reliability.
5. Is stylistic analysis reliable when applied in forensic contexts?

Forensic stylistics, as an applied science, utilizes the natural occurrence of linguistic patterns in human writing for the practical purposes of author identification and meaning disambiguation. The underlying principles and analytical techniques are the same for literary and forensic studies of author attribution or text interpretation. If anything, stylistic analysis is more reliable in forensic contexts, wherein the written language data often contains markers of style (such as errors) that may be more easily identified than style indicators of literary writers.
6.

Is there one generally accepted technique of stylistic analysis?

A single research methodology is not a requirement for the language sciences. As Upshur (1983) observes, Multiple paradigms offer a different set of advantages to a discipline. They offer a wider scope of inquiry ... than is possible in a single paradigm discipline. It is, however, generally accepted that objective description and measurement of style are necessary for stylistic analysis. The qualitative and quantitative models of analysis overlap and utilize an array of specific analytical techniques (see Chapter 9 and Appendices 1 and 2). Choice of analytical model and specific technique depends largely on the data presented, but subjective methods related to intuitive reaction to language and to prescription for good and correct language are not acceptable approaches because they are too evaluative to be suitable for the analysis of style.
7. Can intersubjective agreement (a degree of uniformity of decision) be expected in stylistic analysis?

Intersubjective agreement is to be expected for results of stylistic analysis, although as for any area of science it does not always occur (e.g., Finegan 1990). Such agreement is achieved by peer review of given stylistic determinations, replication of research, presentation of findings in professional meetings and journals, etc.
8.Are particular techniques for the analysis of style reliable if properly applied?

Within accepted models of style analysis, many specific techniques are presented in the scientific research on stylistics. The reliability of many techniques is mixed, due to the variable quality of such studies and the extent to which their methods and results have become less experimental and more demonstrable. Stylometry (see Section 3.1), for example, demonstrates high

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reliability even amid discussions of its validity. Proper application of a particular analytical technique, of course, is evaluated on a case by case basis and depends on the model of analysis chosen, procedures followed, and qualifications of the person(s) doing the study and interpreting the results.
9. What scientific field

does stylistics fit into? Stylistics is a part of the discipline of linguistics, as explained in Question 1 above. To the extent that variation in written language can be measured, stylistics incorporates statistics. The relationship of these two disciplines in stylistics is such that the ideal stylistician is a linguist with a working knowledge of statistics, not a statitistician with a minimal knowledge of language structure and function.

10. Is stylistic analysis generally accepted by the scientific community of linguists? The scientific community overwhelmingly accepts that style is present in all written texts and that it can be observed, described, and analyzed (see Chapters 8 and 9). As in any science, however, there are exceptions, such as Gray (1969) who views the concept of style as so problematic as to defy analysis, and Gallagher (1983:14), who suspects studies that purport to establish authorship by linguistic means. The Frye criterion of general acceptance is burdened with useful but difficultto-answer questions, such as, who and how many must accept the theory and practice of stylistic analysis, what degree of scientific divergence can be expected, what must be accepted (underlying theory, or techniques, or both), and how is general acceptance established (Giannelli 1980:1208)? Giannelli (idem) points out that acceptance is established in three ways: through expert testimony, scientific and legal writings, and judicial opinions. Linguists have provided expert testimony on writing style in many cases; scientific and legal writings on stylistics abound (see Chapters 4, 6, 8, and 9); and judicial opinions dating back to the 18th century document the admissibility and use of stylistics evidence in the resolution of numerous cases (see Chapter 5). 11. Is there a minimal reserve of linguists who can do forensic stylistic analyses or evaluate the validity of a stylistic &termination in a given case? There are hundreds of linguists who are able to apply the principles and methods of linguistic analysis in describing language variation. Many of these in various countries specialize in the description of written language and in the analysis of style as it relates to questions of attribution and interpretation. 12. Do linguistic jargon and an expert professional credentials give stylistics s an undue scientific aura ? An expert witness establishes credibility through careful review of his or her academic preparation and professional experience. Good linguists, however, are able to describe their scientific field and explain their findings without resorting to the use of incomprehensible jargon (McElhaney 1990:85) that might communicate to a jury a false sense of mystic infallibility (Starrs 1986:250).

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18. What kind of evioknce results from stylistic analysis? Evidence from stylistics is indirect (circumstantial). Inferences about authorship, for example, are drawn from known stylistic facts, leading to results and conclusions which logically follow from the association of such facts. Evidence from stylistics is demonstrative (real) in two ways. Written language can speak for itself (Reeder 1980:3) in the physical objects of documents themselves; and intervening investigation and analysis of those documents can be represented in summaries, charts, and diagrams (Givens 1989:7). Since judges and juries are also speakers and writers of the language in question, stylistics in either demonstrative form may be good evidence to admit and leave to the jury for the determination of its weight. Although some writing (such as standard, error-free, or edited composition) may lend itself more to quantitative intervention than to descriptive demonstration of variation, there is strong consensus (NY Jurisprudence 2d 1986:393 and Osborn [no date]) that expert testimony with reasons [demonstrated] surpasses mere opinion testimony without. Evidence of writing style is seen as substantial (see Chapters 4 and 5), ... which is of legal significance, having probative force, which is credible and of solid value, which a reasonable person might accept as adequate and sufficient to support a conclusion (Reeder 1980:4). Stylistics evidence can have strong substantive (but never absolute) probative value. Additionally, depending on the nature of a particular case, writing style may provide evidence of rebuttal, impeachment, or corroborative value. Stylistics evidence may be positive or negative if, for example, in authorship attribution a candidate author is either identified or excluded as the writer by the stylistic determination. Stylisties evidence may also be cumulative since it often corroborates other direct evidence, such as a witness who saw the suspectauthor writing in a particular notebook, or other indirect evidence, such as the results of document examination (ink, typewriter, paper, etc.). 1-G.What kind of conclusion and opinion can be supported by stylistic analysis? Types of conclusions and manners of presenting them is an unsettled issue in the forensic sciences. Much has been written about conclusion and opinion statements, especially when results are inconclusive (e.g., Kelley and Hanna 1981, Mitchell 1931, Schmitz 1968, Scott 1988). Since conclusions based on indirect evidence can never be absolute, one possibility is to separate conclusion and opinion, basing the former directly on factual results and the latter on one s judgement and interpretation of those results. Conclusions about linguistic meaning and authorship attribution can be positive or negative, depending on the question posed and its related research and null hypotheses, e.g, that someone did or did not author a questioned writing. Whatever the kind of conclusion, the nature of indirect evidence and the design of stylisties research lead to deductive conclusions stated in terms of probability, and the judicial notion of probability, however expressed, is polycriterial and not solely restricted to the single criterion of mathematical (Pascallian) probability. Thus, unquantified descriptive (as well as measurable) facts form the basis for probability statements in forensic conclusions and opi-

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nions. This is especially important for linguistic evidence because not all significant variation is quantifiable. A strong case for such an approach to the forensic notion of probability is made by Cohen (1977), who observes that laypersons (judges and juries) ... must be presumed capable of operating with a different concept of probability than the mathematical one, (Cohen 1977:116). 3.4 Group vs. Individual Characteristics of Style A given text is written by a particular individual, and its stylistic features reflect both the individual as well as group identities of the writer. The question is often raised, therefore, as to which of the observed markers of style in a given case are really individual and which are merely class features, acquired and used by an individual. For example, in Rex v Law 19 Manitoba 259 (see Section 5.61), one justice observed that the peculiarities of [the language or expression used in documents] may be common to a whole family, or even community, or person . ... To reconcile the nature of language as a property of a group with writing style as characteristic of the individual requires recognition of the relationship between group and individual. While language is a collective phoneomenon, writing itself is not collective behavior. We can only observe the writing behavior of individuals, and from that we infer group characteristics (Hackett 1958:322). Le Page (1968:192) observes that, The individual creates his systems of verbal behavior so as to resemble those common to the group or groups with which he wishes ... to be identified. The individual, therefore, is seen as the locus of language, and to the extent that the language behavior of individuals becomes more alike, the group and language become more focussed, (Le Page 1980:334 and 1985:116). And whether individual linguistic choices actually determine the language of the group (Blom and Gumperz 1972), or vice-versa (Fishman 1972), it is still clear that the overlap is fragmentary enough that group influence does not come close to eliminating features that give individual identity to speakers and writers. Linguistic variation is described on a continuum which starts with the language of the individual (idiolect), then extends to subgroups (dialect), and ends with that of the larger speech community (Zangucqe). The notion of the idiolect is traced to Bloch (1948:7) definition: s
The totality of the possible utterances of one speaker at one time in using a language to interact with one other speaker is an idiokct (Bloch 19483).

Since Bloch definition, specific description and analysis of idiolectal variation s has played an important role, especially in understanding individual versus group variation in dialect studies (e.g., Akmajiian 1984:287, Arena 1975:3, Atkinson 1982:346, Hall 1986:5, Hackett 1958:321, Laffal 1965:9, Leech 1966:138, Ullmann 1962:22, Winter 1969:3, and Zwicky and Zwicky 1982:213). For example, Hall (idem) says:

53 IDIOLINGUISTICS [is the] study of language based on the regognition that the fundamental unit of a speech-community, the only one with a real-life existence .. . is the individual speaker, and that ,.. the only linguistic systems with real existence are those of the individual speakers, i.e., their idiolects.

Writing styles have been described in terms of groups (Brainerd 1972, Hendricks 19 76:Chap. 5, Kittredge and Lehrberger 1982, Rankin 1979), individuals (Fillmore, Kempler and Yang 1979, and Upshur 1983), and the relationship between the two (Morton and Levison 1966:143 and Nelson 1975). The relationship of individual to group styles is based on that of idiolect to dialect and language. Akmajiian (idem), for example, describes dialects partially in terms of the existence and role of idiolectal influences:

... no two speakers of a language, even if they are speakers of the same dialect, produce and use their language in exactly the same way. We are able to recognize different individuals by their distinct speech and language patterns; indeed, a person language is one of the most fundamens tal features of self-identity. The forms of a language spoken by a single individual is referred to as an idiolect, and every speaker of a language has a distinct idiolect.

The comparison of stylistics to a better known science, such as ballistics, may help describe the relationship between individual and class features in writing style. The complementary function of individual and class markers in style and language is similar to their association in the ballistic analysis of bullet and firearm. Class features related to the language of the writer are analogous to marks identifying the type and make of a bullet. Languages have universal characteristics much like bullet type and caliber, and specific languages also have their own phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, etc., in the same way that bullets from various companies are traced to their respective manufacturers by slight variations in length, diameter, face shape, position of the encircling grease grooves, knurling marks on the grooves, and small ridges machine-cut into the grooves and identified by number, size, type and location. A writer as member of a sub-group defined by geography, social class, occupation, etc., uses a particular dialect of a language. The identification of dialect features as class characteristics is comparable to identifying the type of firearm used to fire the bullet. Different companies will use distinct barrel designs and cuts, causing variation in the number of rifling grooves, as well as their direction, width, slant, and rate of pitch. Finally, the individual style of writings produced by a particular author parallels the unique and similar markings on successive bullets fired from the same firearm. Such markings, considered as a set and combined with class characteristics of bullet and firearm (Richardson 1974) make ballistic comparison and identification possible in much the same way individual and class markers of style are identified and combined to effect stylistic identification.

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3.5 Psycholinguistics Linguists and psychologists often have different meanings for the term psycholinguistics. Linguistics is the study of the acquisition, structure, function, and diachronic development of human language. From the linguist s perspective, psycholinguistics is a blend of the theoretical and analytical tools of linguistics and psychology for the purpose of discovering how language users acquire their underlying knowledge of a language and how they engage that internal grammar in order to speak, understand, write, and read. Psycholinguistics, therefore, studies the mental processes underlying the acquisition and use of language (e.g., see Garman 1990 and Slobin 1971). Psychology studies what the human mind is and how it works. While the mind and mental processes are subjective and therefore not directly observable, overt human activity (such as language) is observable behavior which provides evidence for subjective events. From this perspective of the psychologist, One s feelings and thoughts may unintentionally be revealed in what one says or the way one says it, without and even in spite of the set purpose of the speaker, (Robbins 1989:408). Psycholinguistics, as part of the study of human personality, may also focus on how mental state or personality are related to (reflected by) conscious or unconscious language behaviors. Studies specifically relating mental state to written language behavior include such areas as the measurement of tension in written documents (Dollard and Mowrer 1947), the verbal content of suicide notes (Gottschalk and Gleser 1960), and the relationship of apprehension in writing to message intensity (Daly and Miller 1973). Research on the connection between personality and language behavior is synthesized by Mahl and Schulze (1964), and specific correlation of writing style to personality is represented in the research. Osgood (1960:294), for example, characterized the credo of psycholinguists to be that message events produced by speakers and writers are presumably correlated with persistent variation in their make-ups as individuals. Milic defines style as the unscious expression of the writer personality in his writing, (1967:76) and says that s stylistics is used ... to obtain a deeper understanding of the writer, his mind, his work, his personality, (1966:82). Moerk (1970, 1972), specifically proposes that the ... style of a text is a specific expression of the personality of the writer, and that, ... in principle, style samples should be usable for psychodiagnostic purposes, (Moerk 1970:223). For example, Ullmann (1962:22) observes a definite connexion between language and personality in the correlation of the verb/adjective ratio to a person emotional stability (Ullmann s 1955), and Rosenberg and Jones (1971) focus on terms and phrases related to stable psychological traits. In forensic contexts, the psycholinguistics that is practiced is that of psychology, not linguistics. Its only connection to linguistics is the means used (analysis of style) for associating language behavior to personality. Thus, psycholinguistics is used to establish a psychological profile of a person based on the stylistic characteristics of the individual written language. For example, s Casey-Owens (1984:816) reports on a psychiatrist and psychologist doing content

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analyses of anonymous writings to produce psychological profiles of the writers. Additionally, Miron and Douglas (1979:6) say, ... the psycholinguistic technique microscopically examines the [written or spoken] message for clues as to the origins, background, and psychology of the originator, and examples of this method abound in Miron (1981 and 1990). General caveats to such approaches are expressed by Casey-Owens (1984), who warns against outrageous psychological profiles, and by Crystal and Davy (196&g), who caution that style can be confused and identified with an individual personality; style is mistakenly said to be a man, or be his thought. Without s arguing the relative merits of psycholinguistic analysis, it must be said that, given the two distinct approaches to the definition of psycholinguistics from linguistics and psychology, styli&s has no necessary connection to psycholinguistics, in either discipline. Analysis of writing style may be used as a descriptive means to psycholinguistic ends, such as in the description of stages in children writing development, or as a manner of observing an individual coms s municative behavior, but in such cases stylist& retains the role of a useful tool borrowed from general linguistics. In forensic contexts it is, therefore, important to maintain a sharp distinction between psycholinguistics as used for personality assessment, and stylisties as used for authorship attribution or interpretation of linguistic meaning. Unfortunately, however, lack of clear separation of these two approaches continues in judicial opinons and legal treatises. Although Arens and Meadow (1956) do distinguish personality differences in verbal expression from idiosyncratic characteristics of verbalization without specifying personality referents, their study is often cited in later work that maintains the confusion. For example, Menicucci (1977:391) refers to stylist& as a division of psycholinguistics, and Weissenberger (1992:28), after saying that a writing may be authenticated by internal linguistic patterns that connect a particular person to the writing in question comments:
The formalized science dealing with this area is known as psycholinguistics, that is, the study of the relationship between messages and characteristics of the person sending messages,

While Weissenberger accurately characterizes the nature of psycholinguistics, he seems to include within that field the authentication of a writing by internal linguistic patterns connected to a particular person. When used for authorship attribution, linguistic patterns are observed as internal to the writing, not the writer. Linguistics is the science used to identify such linguistic patterns, and stylistics is the specific discipline applied to find and analyze those patterns in written language. If stylistics and psycholinguistics are not clearly distinguished, questions about the nature, history, and admissibility of psycholinguistics testimony will continue to come up in contexts in which only the long and strong legal and scientific basis for stylistics testimony should be at issue. Menicucci (1977) merging of s stylistics with psycholinguistics, for example, leads him to a discussion of the admissibility of sytlistics, but based on a misplaced consideration of evidence from psycholinguistics.