Hostage Speeches Written by Iran
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James Joyner | Tuesday, April 3, 2007 |
This won’t exactly come as shocking news. But it’s interesting, nonetheless: The latest British hostage letter wasn’t actually written by a native English speaker. Its combination of "out-of-tune" phrases and awkward syntax leads to University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman to believe that Leading Seaman Faye Turney’s "confession" was "largely dictated by [the] Iranian captors."
No, not shocking at all. Still, it’s interesting that there are techniques for quickly “proving” that which we overwhelmingly suspect to be true.
Much more analysis and linkage at Noah’s and at the dozen or so links to original sources.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia.
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If they have enough written material known to have been written by Faye Turney, there have been computer programs around for decades that could analyze the likelihood of authoricity.
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