David Wright

Publications


Books


Journal articles

In addition to the below, most of my articles and chapters can be downloaded from my Google Scholar, ResearchGate or NTU repository.

  • Paver, A., Wright, D., and Braber, 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(1). 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. Online first, 1-22. doi:10.1177/00238309221101560. 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 – Language Sciences 6:797448. 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., 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 Knight, 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. [pdf]
  • 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, growze, or chobble?: investigating regional variation in sound symbolism in the Survey of English Dialects. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 17, 2012. [pdf]
  • 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

  • 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. R. 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. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, pp. 99–123. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-76966-5_
  • 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., , Peart, S. and Sjolin, C. (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. [pdf]
  • 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. [pdf]
  • MacLeod, N, and Wright, D. (2020). Forensic Linguistics. In S. Adolphs and D. Knight (eds). Routledge Handbook of English Language and Digital Humanities. London: Routledge, pp. 360-377. [pdf]
  • Brookes, G. and Wright, D. (2020). From burden to threat: A diachronic study of language ideology and migrant representation in the British 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. [pdf]
  • Wright, D. (2018). “Idiolect.” In: M. Aronoff (ed.) Oxford Bibliographies in Linguistics.  New York: Oxford University Press. [pdf]

Reports

  • Jackson, J., Doak, J., Saunders, C., Wright, D. and Cooper, D. (2024) Mapping the Changing Face of Cross-Examination in Criminal Trials. Report for the Nuffield Foundation. https://doi.org/10.17631/rd-2024-0001-drep
  • Doak, J., Jackson, J., Saunders, C., Wright, D., Gómez Fariñas, B. and Durdiyeva, S. (2021). Cross-examination in criminal trials towards a revolution in best practice? A Report for the Nuffield Foundation. Nottingham: Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University. [pdf]

Special issues

  • Picornell, I. and Wright, D. (eds.) (2024) Special Issue on Forensic Linguistics in the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law.
  • Wright, D., Di Bari, M., Norton, C., Abdullah, A. and Khamam, R. (eds.) (2013). Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics, vol. 18.

PhD

  • Wright, D. (2014) Stylistics versus Statistics: A corpus linguistic approach to combining techniques in forensic authorship analysis using Enron emails. Doctoral thesis. University of Leeds, United Kingdom. [pdf]