The Linguist as an Expert Witness in German Courts. A View from the 1970s

Abstract

This is, in part, a translation of some sections of my 1981 paper “Der Linguist als Gutachter bei Gericht” (Kniffka 1981) (‘The Linguist as an Expert Witness in Court’), which is the first attempt nationally and internationally, as far as I know, to give a systematic account of FL expert testimony in and for German courts. It appeared in a German Festschrift, and has mostly been overlooked, in particular by the English-speaking world. I have added data from some of the cases in which I gave expert testimony in the 1970s, other than those characterized briefly in the Introduction and in the third section of this chapter. The main concern is to document what was done in Germany in the early stages of forensic linguistics. This period of FL activity, roughly from 1972 to 1990, is, at times, not paid proper attention.