Language of text messages can give you away, says boffin
THIS YEAR'S British Association Science Festival has revealed some interesting studies – not least the fact that text message language can be used to solve murder cases.
The Festival which is taking place from the 6-11th of this month includes the results of Deputy Director of the Centre for forensic Linguistics at Aston University, Dr Tim Grant’s study which describes how advances in forensic linguistic research show the potential to identify exactly who has sent certain text messages.
Dr Grant cites the case of David Hodgson, who was convicted of murdering Jenny Nicholl earlier this year – although her body has never been found, the fact that text messages he sent on her phone after her alleged death spelled words differently to how she normally would, points towards him as her killer.
Grant’s team have developed a successful method, based around one used in marine ecology, which determines the similarity and resemblance of one text message from another.
In the case of Hodgson and Nicholl the team would analyse messages from Nicholl before her disappearance, doing the same with those sent by Hodgson. A third set would then be analysed – those sent from Nicholl’s phone after her disappearance.
This type of analysis flags up similarities and differences which point straight towards the author of each message – meaning it was clear that Hodgson had sent messages from Nicholl’s phone after she was gone.
Dr Grant explains: "This encourages a move from expert opinion-based evidence to more methodologically rigorous and empirically tested techniques."
This method of text analysis is not yet in use for court cases, but Grant predicts it will be in the next three to four years.
Grant believes this type of analysis will be far more effective in comparison to current methods, as he says he can distinguish the sex of the sender as well as how well the recipients know each other. µ
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Unless they also test it against everyone else in the world, the best they can "prove" is that whoever sent the message wrote in a style more similar to the suspect than to the victim. And it probably won't be hard for an attorney to find another 10 or 20 people who are an even better "match" for the messages.
"Grant believes this type of analysis will be far more effective in comparison to current methods, as he says he can distinguish the sex of the sender as well as how well the recipients know each other."

What if you're a homosexual, or a very aggressive woman who likes to pretend she has a penis on irc? And I'm certain that there are plenty of people who behave differently, depending on what they think the people they're talking to know, or think, about them.

This is going to be more trouble than it's worth, I think.
It's nonsensical crap which lawyers will use when it benefits them and judges can't throw out because there's nothing legally wrong with and which probably leads to a good number of people getting in jail for no reason, and the company becoming rich, and several bystanders getting so depressed about humanity and its idiocy that they jump off bridges.. 
So it's another great addition to society.
Once upon a time we had graphologists. Since people don't know how to hold a pen any more, or even write anything worth a damn (not that it keeps them from blabbering anyway, unfortunately), it follows that we are now in the process of acquiring Graphology 2.0 - to analyse just how badly you text.
I predict - sadly without any merit - that the validity of the process will be even more hotly debated than version 1.0 used to be before falling into obscurity.
On the other hand, this "innovation" almost makes me regret Graphology 1.0, where you could listen to endless debates on the angle of the characters, the thickness of the lines, the depth of the impression left.
Makes it almost sound scientific now.