Linguistic Analysis of Online Criminal Communications

The linguistic analysis of online criminal communications is an emerging area of interest in forensic linguistics. In this article, we examine the use of methods and approaches from corpus and sociolinguistics in research on the most prominent subdomains of online criminality, including online child sexual exploitation and abuse, extremism and terrorism, and the manosphere, among other emerging topics such as drugs markets and online sex fora. We highlight the distinction between perpetrator–victim communications and perpetrator in-group communications and identify internet-based criminal and harmful communities of practice as prime loci for the production of online criminal communications through online fora. Such online fora discussions, when harvested for linguistic research, become key sites of linguistic practice and behavior providing insights into the mechanics of internet-facilitated criminal activity. Findings from this body of work address important academic questions around the nature of criminal and harmful online behavior, as well as providing empirically grounded observations that can assist law enforcement in both investigative and evidentiary matters.