A preliminary investigation into the use of fixed formulaic sequences as a marker of authorship

This research unites the theory of formulaic language—prefabricated sequences of words believed to be stored as holistic units—and the practice of forensic authorship attribution with a view to developing a new marker of authorship. It stands to reason that since formulaic sequences are holistically processed as single lexical items, they are likely to elude a writer’s attempts to disguise their style. Furthermore, evidence suggests that individuals have different stores of formulaic sequences. Therefore, research into differences in formulaic language usage may assist in the development of new tools for authorship attribution. In order to test this assertion, a reference list containing 13,412 formulaic sequences was compiled from multiple online sources. This was then used to identify formulaic sequences in a 20 author corpus containing 100 personal narratives. After exploring the types of formulaic sequences used by authors, statistical tests were used to determine whether the count of formulaic words was sufficient to establish variation between authors and to attribute a Questioned Text to its autho

Facilitating Children’s Informal Disclosures of Sexual Abuse: The Role of Online Counsellors at a National Children’s Helpline

The literature on disclosures of child sexual abuse makes clear that in the absence of physical indicators of abuse, children need to articulate their abuse in order to prevent further harm. However, many struggle to verbalize their abuse. Previous research has recognized the interactional nature of disclosures but has focussed only on what the children say, rather than considering the role of the other interlocutor. To provide a novel perspective on disclosures, this research addresses the question ‘To what extent do counselors facilitate children’s disclosures of sexual abuse?’ Online text-based conversations in which sexual abuse was disclosed (n = 40) between children (aged 10–18 years old) and Childline counselors were analyzed. Whilst some children do use explicit terms to describe sexual abuse, these are predominantly used to seek definitions and clarification. Furthermore, counselors play an instrumental role in recognizing that a disclosure is being made, and then eliciting and reframing the disclosure as sexual abuse. The findings offer an explanation for why some victims of sexual abuse report having attempted to disclose but feeling like their voices were not heard

How can you punish a child for something that happened over a year ago?’ The impacts of COVID-19 on child defendants and implication for youth courts

The project on which this paper is grounded is the first in-depth empirical study of the impacts of COVID-19 on each stage of the English and Welsh Youth Justice System. We take the notion of a child's right to a fair trial as the lens by which we detail the findings from our research. The paper documents the experiences of professionals working in the courts and children who had contact with the courts during the pandemic. While we concentrate on processes in England and Wales as an exemplar of the impact of COVID-19, recognising that globally, courts were experiencing similar challenges, initiates a discourse about how to re-envision their role in wider criminal justice systems in a COVID-19 world. Our research demonstrates an urgent need for renewed consideration of what support children need to effectively participate in court, and where and how children's cases should be heard. The pandemic demonstrated that creativity is possible and creates a timely opportunity to review the evidence and think more radically about a welfare-based, trauma-informed court process for children

The Youth Justice System's Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic: research paper

This research paper presents the initial findings from 74 interviews with professionals from eight of the nine Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) across the Greater Manchester (GM) region. The interviews took place between January 2021 and May 2021. The paper focuses on adaptations to practice and service delivery. It is the first in a series of papers that will be produced over the life of the project

The Youth Justice System's response to the Covid-19 pandemic - YOTs' adaptations and challenges to service delivery : a national picture

During and after the Covid-19 pandemic, there will be societal implications for all children. However, for those in the youth justice system the impacts are likely to be particularly detrimental. There is an urgent need to develop a clear understanding of the impact of the pandemic on these children and those who work with them

Using a core word to identify different forms of semantically related formulaic sequences and their potential as a marker of authorship

Formulaic sequences should make an excellent marker of style because if authors treat them as one lexical choice, they are unlikely to be aware of the individual words contained within. However, there is no clear-cut way to robustly identify all, and only, formulaic sequences in text. If one particular word can be isolated which occurs frequently in formulaic sequences—a core word—then a reasonable sub-set of word sequences will be identified, the majority of which can be expected to be formulaic. Using the core word 'way' which occurs in many formulaic sequences (e.g., in a way, by the way, by way of), the aim of this research is to establish whether individual authors use different way-phrases from each other and, for comparative purposes, whether authors use alternative non-formulaic realisations of the same semantic content. If inter-authorial differences can be found, way-phrases may hold potential as a marker of authorship. The results indicate that for one author, the phrase 'in a way' appeared to be used distinctively. Therefore, there is potential for formulaic sequences to be used as a marker of authorship, albeit for only one author out of twenty, which limits the usefulness of such a marker in a forensic context