David Wright | Forensic and Legal Linguist
David Wright is a forensic and legal linguist and Associate Professor at Nottingham Trent University. His research applies methods of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis in forensic and legal contexts and aims to help improve the delivery of justice using language analysis. His research spans across a range of intersections between language and the law, language of the legal process and language and crime and evidence.
He is co-author of An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics (2017, Routledge) with Malcolm Coulthard and Alison Johnson (now May), and Corpus Approaches to Discourse in Forensic and Legal Contexts (2025, Routledge). He is series editor of Bloomsbury Advances in Forensic and Legal Linguistics.
His recent projects include research focusing on: the cross-examination of vulnerable witnesses, the language of sentencing remarks, the language of AI-generated phishing and voice judgements in forensic contexts.
Books • Articles • Chapters • Special issues • Encyclopedia entries
Books
Jackson, J., Doak, J., Saunders, C. and Wright, D. (2025) Cross-Examination on Trial: Advocacy and Vulnerability in Criminal Trials. Bristol: Bristol University Press.
Wright, D. (2025) Corpus Approaches to Discourse in Forensic and Legal Contexts. London: Routledge.
Coulthard, M., Johnson, A. and Wright, D. (2017) An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics: Language in Evidence (2nd edn). London: Routledge.
Articles
Paver, A., Wright, D., Braber, N. and Pautz, N. (2025) Stereotyped accent judgements in forensic contexts: listener perceptions of social traits and types of behaviour. Frontiers in Communication, 9:1462013. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1462013
Cooper, D., Doak, J., Jackson, J., Saunders, C. and Wright, D. (2024) Cross-examination compared: the asymmetric treatment of vulnerable defendant and non-defendant witnesses. Criminal Law Review, 2024(9), 609–626.
Bird, J. J., Wright, D., Sumich, A. and Lotf, A. (2024) Generative AI in psychological therapy: perspectives on computational linguistics and large language models in written behaviour monitoring. Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (PETRA ’24). Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), New York, NY: USA. 322–328. https://doi.org/10.1145/3652037.3663893
Wright, D. and Picornell, I. (2024) Semiotic perspectives on forensic and legal linguistics: unifying approaches in the language of the legal process and language in evidence. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 37(2), 293–304. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-023-10094-z
Coltman-Patel, T. and Wright, D. (2023) Sexualising public health in British tabloids: celebrities ‘flaunting’ weight loss during a pandemic. Journal of Language and Discrimination,7(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1558/jld.22670
Smith, H. M. J., Roeser, J., Pautz, N., Davis, J. P, Robson, J., Wright, D., Braber, N. and Stacey, P.C. (2023) Evaluating earwitness identification procedures: adapting pre-parade instructions and parade procedure.Memory, 31(1), 147–161. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2022.2129065
Williams, J. and Wright, D. (2022) Ambiguity, responsibility, and political action in the UK daily COVID-19 briefings. Critical Discourse Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2022.2110132
Braber, N., Smith, H. M. J, Wright, D., Hardy, A., and Robson, J. (2022) Assessing the specificity and accuracy of accent judgements by lay listeners. Language and Speech, 66(2), 267–290. https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309221101560
Wright, D., Robson, J., Murray-Edwards, H. and Braber, N. (2022) The pragmatic functions of ‘respect’ in lawyers’ courtroom discourse: a case study of Brexit hearings. Journal of Pragmatics, 187, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.10.028
Love, R. and Wright D. (2021) Specifying challenges in transcribing covert recordings: implications for forensic transcription. Frontiers in Communication – Psychology of Language,6, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.797448
Wright, D. (2020) The discursive construction of resistance to sex in an online community. Discourse, Context & Media, 36, 1–9, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2020.100402
Smith, H.M.J, Bird, K., Roeser, J., Robson, J., Braber, N., Wright, D., and Stacey, P. (2020) Voice parade procedures: investigating methods of optimising witness performance. Memory, 28(1), 2–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2019.1673427
Wright, D. and Brookes, G. (2019) ‘This is England, speak English!’: a corpus-assisted critical study of language ideologies in the right-leaning British press. Critical Discourse Studies, 16(1), 56–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2018.1511439
Betts, L. Harding, R. Peart, S., Sjolin, C., Wright, D. and Newbold, K. (2019) Adolescents’ experiences of street harassment: creating a typology and assessing the emotional impact. Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, 11(1), 38–46. https://doi.org/10.1108/JACPR-12-2017-0336
Wright, D. (2017) Using word n-grams to identify authors and idiolects: a corpus approach to a forensic linguistic problem. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 22(2), 212–241. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.22.2.03wri
Johnson, A. and Wright, D. (2014) Identifying idiolect in forensic authorship attribution: an n-gram textbite approach. Language and Law/Linguagem e Direito, 1(1), 37–69. https://ojs.letras.up.pt/index.php/LLLD/article/view/2443
Wright,D. (2013) Stylistic variation within genre conventions in the Enron email corpus: developing a text-sensitive methodology for authorship research. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, 20(1), 45–75. https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.v20i1.45
Wright, D. (2012) Scrunch, grouse, or chobble?: Investigating regional variation in sound symbolism in the Survey of English Dialects. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics, 17, 1–21.
Wright, D. (2011) The accuracy and motivations of semi-phonetic respellings in ‘Summer Bulletin’ dialect literature. Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society, 111(22): 36–44.
Book chapters
Brookes, G. and Wright, D. (2026) Discourses of assisted dying in British parliamentary debates. In D. Galasinski and J. Ziółkowska (eds.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Language and Death. London: Bloomsbury.
Wright, D. (2025) The importance of context in analysing the incitement of violence: a case study of an online community. In S. Rüdiger and D. Dayter (eds.) Manipulation, Influence and Deception: The Changing Landscape of Persuasive Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 157–176.
Kennedy, C. and Wright, D. (2025) Discourses of force and failure: the construction of crisis in the policing of UK climate change protests. In T. Parnell, T. Van Hout and D. Del Fante (eds.),Critical Approaches to Polycrisis: Discourses of Conflict, Migration, Risk and Finance. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 99–123.
Brookes, G. and Wright, D. (2024) Critical discourse studies and migration. In W. Allen and C. Vargas-Silva (eds.), Handbook of Research Methods in Migration (2nd edn). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 136–152.
Harding, R., Betts, L., Wright, D., Sjolin, C., Peart, S. (2021) Adolescent girls’ experiences of street harassment: emotions, comments, impact, actions and the law. In: I. Zempi and J. Smith (eds.), Misogyny as Hate Crime. London: Routledge, pp. 121–139.
Wright, D. (2021) Corpus approaches to forensic linguistics. In M. Coulthard, A. May and R. Sousa-Silva (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics (2nd edn). London: Routledge, pp. 611–627.
Brookes, G. and Wright, D. (2020) The shifting discourse of integration in the ‘Speak English’ debate: a corpus-assisted study of the UK press. In P. Rautionaho, A. Nurmi and J. Klemola (eds.) Corpora and the Changing Society: Studies in the Evolution of English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, pp. 113–140.
MacLeod, N. and Wright, D. (2020) Forensic linguistics. In S. Adolphs and D. Knight (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of English Language and Digital Humanities. London: Routledge, pp. 360–377.
Special issues
Special issue: ‘Forensic and Legal Lingusitics‘ for the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law (2024), co-edited with Isabel Picornell
Encyclopedia entries
Wright, D. (2018) Idiolect. In: M. Aronoff (ed.) Oxford Bibliographies in Linguistics. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
David Wright - Forensic and Legal Linguist 