week 10: reflection on computational stylistics and forensic linguistics

assalamualaikum w.b.t

On 11^th April 2013, Dr. Rozina has taught us about computational stylistics and forensic linguistics. Again, computer does give us numbers of advantages and for this topic, we know that computers are used to study the systematic characteristics of particular texts, authors, genres and etc. 

To make it clear, computational stylistics is the sub discipline of computational linguistics and in the area of “stylometry,” the computer is used to generate data on the types, number and length of words and sentences. However there are some challenges on this particular thing. To add it up, computational stylistics is the study of patterns formed in particular texts, author, genres and etc via computational method.

Here are some of the fields of computational stylistics:

·         Machine translation, social sciences and humanity and also literary works.

Not only for that, we also had learnt about the scope of computational stylistics and from that point, we know that the scope of computational stylistics is wider. It can count the frequency of words, detect of idiosyncratic which means to distinguish one writer to another writer, analyze variation in rhetorical style, and determine the sentiment and so on so forth. As we concern, some might say that certain concepts are to abroad and we don’t have any measurement to measure it. But did you know that we can operationalize it?

After finishing the topic computational stylistic, Dr. Rozina continued her lecture for the topic: forensic language. The question is did you know what forensic language is?Forensic language is a branch of applied linguistics and it can be defined as taking linguistic knowledge and methods and applying these to the forensic context of law, investigation, trial, and punishment. There scope of forensic language is involved in areas that relate to crime, both solving crime and assisting wrongly accused people. To conclude of this topic, we can summarize that forensic linguistics deals with understanding language of the written law, language use in forensic and legal processes and the condition of linguistic evidence. It is a very interesting course to study.

For the reflection of this topic, as I mentioned earlier, computers are invented to ease people and help in some ways. So, we as human being should be thankful for this invention because it is really useful to us and we have to benefit it. It aids us in working and makes our life become easier.

thanks for reading :)