Research

My main research investigates the linguistic behavior of individuals who groom minors online, and my overall research question is: what linguistic strategies do groomers employ when exposing minors to sexual content during online grooming? Grooming is a manipulative and illegal communicative practice which poses an escalating societal threat. Although online grooming is a communicative practice, there is to date very little linguistic research into the phenomenon. Through digital conversation analysis my project aims to qualitatively study online grooming interactions from a linguistic perspective, with the overall aim of contributing to the development of research-based prevention programs and resources for minors, parents, and educators to recognize grooming language.

An additional research interest of mine concerns pseudo-science in the context of linguistic deception detection methods and tools offered to law enforcement. Currently I am investigating 911-Call Analysis, an investigative tool that purportedly allows law enforcement to find out whether the caller is guilty or innocent of the crime they are reporting. Drawing on linguistic theory from pragmatics, interactional sociolinguistics, and conversation analysis, I address the fundamental flaws in 911-Call Analysis and argue that the tool is based on pseudoscientific assumptions about language.

Fields of study: forensic linguistics, conversation analysis, digital conversation analysis, online sexual grooming discourse, pseudolinguistics.