I find myself in need of distraction after binge-listening the ‘Stalked’ podcast series on BBC Sounds before realising that the last four episodes are still to be released. I feel on edge. I am selfishly in need of closure on this investigation; goodness knows how the victim and her loved ones must feel after all these years of intrusion and waiting.
In brief, the podcast is gradually unravelling how a stalker used technology to infiltrate a young woman’s life over a long period of time. Would thoroughly recommend. Just listening to the podcast will make you rush to be more inventive with your passwords and more diligent about your privacy settings for fear of identity leakage on line i.e. the exposure of personal data like usernames, date of birth or inside leg measurement which can then allow impersonation and ongoing cyber/hate crime.
My particular fascination has honed in on the episodes featuring forensic linguistic specialist Robert A. Leonard and his team of researchers – I am an English teacher and a crime fiction fanatic so make no apology for my current obsession while I taper for my marathon (did I mention I am running a marathon?)
Leonard’s team deep dive into the textual evidence that the alleged stalker has ‘gifted’ his target and their specialist expertise would have even my most disinterested A Level English Language students finally curious about lexis, semantics and idiolect. My new fandom of Leonard (verging on stalking admittedly) reveals that he has been referred to as ‘The Sam Spade of Semantics’ (Sam Spade being the fictional detective in ‘The Maltese Falcon’), and the Prof Henry Higgins or Sherlock Holmes of linguistic forensics. I feel like all my key interests are converging into the perfect storm. My further research reveals that before Leonard started appearing as an expert witness in major American criminal prosecutions, he even sang the lead when his band opened for their friend Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. This man really is a linguistic rock god. I wonder if he runs marathons?
My younger self always loved crime fiction when they brought in a handwriting expert – a graphologist if you must have the nomenclature – to prove the identity of a murderer by noting an inconsistency in their cursive display, or when ransom notes were proved to be written by different people through noting the dissimilar weight of a left or right hand pen upon a page. Even better if a blackmailer was outed when a sit up and beg typewriter was discovered hiding in the perpetrator’s wardrobe and a faulty vowel key would match to a faint rendering of the letter ‘a’ in each and every ransom note inflicted on the victim. I miss you Agatha.
Lately I have been lamenting the fact that handwriting will soon evolve out of existence – as the illegibility of my own un-copperplate (neologism) scrawl evidences. The days of Miss Marple’s magnifying glass and expert graphologist will no longer be required. As someone who watched her teenage sister teach herself calligraphy in order to upscale external perceptions of her sophistication and then eventually ditch her original handwriting in favour of this new hand, I will miss the study and application of artisan handwriting. If anyone can actually read my handwriting I will also miss psychologists observing that I may have a tendency towards negativity on account of my left-leaning scribble.
With a forward slant of my pen, I will dig deep and take heart from the clear power of forensic linguistics. Up until now my own observations around identity leakage have been limited to my interpretation of how people act and speak around me. I now realise that I have a totally different reading of ‘identity leakage’ to that of our cyber specialists, but I still believe my version of this identity reveal has potential.
Because I do not want to blow my pension in one swoop I am unlikely to invest in the potential of this linguistic super power and enrol back at university to become a linguistic criminologist – I will plug this career pathway to my students though. However I will now feel less judgemental and more investigative when I berate poor grammar in the deluge of daily emails I receive. For friends on dating sites I believe my advice will now be to skip over the heavily filtered photos and likes/matches and get straight to the profile text; the writing may well hold the score – idiolect, sociolect and dialectical nuances could out a narcissist without having to meet the date face to face. Wait. Apparently I am too late with this advice for I hear that would-be daters are now letting AI provide the text to create the best first impression. How am I to keep up with this changing landscape? We have established, I do not run fast and already I find I am chasing the pack with my archaic linguistic expertise. I could write myself some notes to record my learning so far but I am unlikely to decipher them when I look back and I fear that my words left on paper could be used against me at a later date.
Perhaps my would-be linguistic superpowers could also make me increasingly cynical and judgemental about people. I am already an over-thinker, if I add ‘over reading’ into the mix, my cortisol levels may explode. I could even become accumulatively exhausted at a time when I should be tapering and indulging in some self-care (help yourself to the the justgiving link below if you would like to sooth my furrowed trainers).
From the luxury of my sofa (I am tapering, do not judge) I will wait for the last few episodes of ‘Stalker’ to download. During this period of active rest I will return to basics. I am going to trust that identity leakage is best revealed through the way a person acts and speaks and I do not need to stalk anyone on line to make judgements about their photos or writing – I will leave this to the experts. If his Wikipedia profile has not been hacked, I am led to believe that Leonard once quipped, ‘I’m one of the very few people in the world who have worked with the FBI and the Grateful Dead’, so I believe this makes Leonard THE expert should we ever need one.
Himself always likes to say, ‘if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck’; this is the definition of identity leakage that I will abide by and I will also trust that my intuition will stand the test of time. While I am still able to hold a pen I will intentionally slant my writing to the right and look for the positive ways in which people leak their identity – giving encouragement, warming my running gloves on the Rayburn, coming to spectate at a marathon, for example. Drilling down on positivity from the luxury of the sofa will be an excellent distraction while I wait for the last episodes of ‘Stalked’ to drop and hope that my Justgiving profile receives some interest.
The Dragonfly Jar 