Linguistic Profiling and the Zodiac
"Linguists look at the language of a document, not the handwriting"
- Gerald McMenamin (Forensic Linguistic Expert)
Linguistic Profiling is an analysis of a persons speech or writing, which can assist in identifying or characterizing an individual or particular subgroup. To better understand this form of analysis, let's look at the two parts, profiling and linguistics.
Linguistics is the study of all aspects of human language. This includes:
Syntax - rules governing the structure of sentences
Semantics - meaning
Morphology - the structure of words
Phonetics - speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages
Phonology - the abstract sound system of a particular language
Pragmatics - how social context contributes to meaning
Profiling is defined as "the act or process of extrapolating information about a person based on known traits or tendencies."
So, in a nutshell, Linguistic Profiling is an attempt to gain useful information about a person or subgroup based upon the study of their language usage and patterns. Linguistic Profiling offers a number of beneficial tools to the criminal Investigator. It can often assist in providing detailed psychological information about suspected offenders and or the groups they may belong to.
In order to compile a comprehensive analysis, the profiler will want to take in to account certain specific aspects of the speaker or writer's patterns, such as words and phrases used, accents, idioms they may employ or ways they may try to hide their true meaning using certain type of language misdirection strategies.
The Linguistic Profile of the Zodiac
The case of the serial murderer known as the Zodiac offers a unique opportunity to utilize the science of Linguistic Profiling, due mainly to the fact that the Zodiac was, for a brief time, a prolific writer. His letters, postcards and greeting cards, the vast majority of which were handwritten, offer an invaluable window into just who he was, through witnessing his patterns and usage of the English language.
So, what do we actually know about the linguistics of the Zodiac? Quite a bit, as it turns out. Gerald McMenamin, Fresno State Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and a Forensic Linguistic Expert, outlines a number of observations he was able to make about the writings of the Zodiac in an interview he completed for the producers of the 2007 movie, Zodiac. In this interview, McMenamin, who was given the opportunity to review all the known correspondence samples from the Zodiac, states that, in his opinion, the killer made a clear attempt to disguise the language of the letters he wrote. Specifically, McMenamin points to the issue of misspelling and word separation.
It is a well known fact that the Zodiac had a habit of alternating between spelling certain words correctly and incorrectly. As an example, McMenamin points to what are known as "sight words", words which people use so often that they virtually never misspell them. In his known writings, Zodiac misspells a total of five of the sight words - do (doo), about (abut), some (som), those (thoes) and out (oute). These misspellings are hard to explain, Mcmenamin points out, given Zodiac's level of overall literacy. McMenamin then goes on to show that the Zodiac alternates between incorrect and correct spellings of other common words, such as button (buton) and waiting (wateing), which he believes makes an even stronger case that the Zodiac was intentionally attempting to hide his true level of intelligence.
Along with the frequent misspellings, the Zodiac also demonstrated a propensity to write many words with very perceptible/obvious blank spaces in between specific parts of the word . For example, the Zodiac would often separate the suffix or prefix of a word from the root of that word - "teen ager", "wipe ing", "walk ing", a habit he engaged in throughout the entirety of his comminications with the press and the police. Once again, McMenamin believes this shows a desire on the part of the Zodiac to try to obfuscate the truth of who he really was
Sherwood Morril, who worked as a questioned documents examiner for the state of California during the time of the Zodiac, was asked what he thought regarding the intelligence level of the Zodiac, based on the Zodiac writings he had examined. In one interview he gave he opined, "He's (the Zodiac) not an unintelligent man, not by a long shot. His paragraphing, his phrasing, his punctuation is very good. I'm sure he has deliberately misspelled words in an attempt to lead us to believe he is illiterate, but in so doing, he's led us to the point we believe just the opposite."
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