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within smaller or larger groups. It seems obvious that some
pairs of authors will produce writings wherein the authors are
easily distinguished, whereas other authors may generally
produce texts that are stylistically similar. In the former case, a
comparative authorship analysis will be easier, whereas in the
latter case, it may be impossible to distinguish between the
authors’ writings. Therefore, it may not be necessary to show a
writer’s distinctiveness against all possible authors; it may only
be only necessary to compare one author with other relevant
authors in the case. A linguistic fingerprint or stylome may be a
holy grail for some stylometric researchers; but, should this
grail prove as elusive as the Arthurian Holy Grail, comparative
authorship analysis can still proceed and provide useful forensic
evidence. Generally, investigators or the circumstances of a case
will provide the definition of the relevant set of authors, and, as
will be demonstrated in the Birks case, in some circumstances it
can be sufficient to provide evidence of distinctive style between
authors without hazarding to provide evidence of author
identification.
C. Linguistic Analysis of SMS Text Messaging in
Previous CasesIncreasingly, linguists—interested in describing the nature of
text messaging as textual, functional, and social phenomena—are
studying the language variety used to communicate with mobile
telephones and similar devices.^23 Text messaging is shown to
cross age, gender, and cultural boundaries. Stylistically, text
messages generally are not full of “texting language”—
abbreviations and initialisms. In fact, these tend to comprise less
than twenty percent of vocabulary choices in text messages.^24
What is characteristic is that there is little or no censure for
nontraditional spelling variants or for syntactic ellipses (such as
omission of articles, auxiliaries, and other parts of speech), and
(^23) See DAVID CRYSTAL, TXTNG: THE GR 8 DB 8 37–62 (2008) (identifying
six principal distinctive features of text messages); see also David Bamman et
al., Gender in Twitter: Styles, Stances, and Social Networks, 2–6, 30–31
(2012), http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~jeisenst/papers/GenderInTwitter923.pdf.
(^24) CRYSTAL, supra note 23, at 22, 156.