Psychological Profiling and Event Forecasting Using Computational Language Analysis

Psychologists have long believed that we can discern what makes a person tick by analysing their language. The modern study of language has become a highly sophisticated area of research that leverages computational modelling, objective measures of language, and extensive empirical rigor. The links between a person’s mental processes and the words that they say or write have been extensivelystudied, validated, and applied to fields as diverse as computer science, medicine, sociology, and anthropology, to name just a few. The ability to ‘get inside a person’s head’ by analysing their language patterns from a distance has tremendous appeal and several practical applications, ranging from the patently obvious to the surprisingly nuanced.

Schematic incongruity, conversational power play and criminal mind style in Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs

This article considers the construction of the profilers and criminals in Thomas Harris’ (2013) [1988] novel Silence of the Lambs through the analysis of selected indicative criminal mind-related extracts. The aim is to consider such characters’ construction through analysis of schematic incongruity, conversational power play, language depicting the actual fictional criminal viewpoint and, lastly, psychological profiling language, the style of which has criminal mind style ‘potential’. Schematic incongruity has a role to play in generating impressions of both the normality and abnormality of psychological profilers and the killers they pursue. Serial killers are constructed as not only physically/psychologically ‘abnormal’ but also as ‘abnormals’ amongst other ‘abnormals’ in terms of their conversational patterns, too. Where some criminals’ apparent reluctance, or inability, to accord to conversational norms marks them as uncivilised, killer/profiler Lecter’s mostly conventional conversational politeness marks him out as indirectly mocking the social norms he sometimes chooses to accord to. Where killer Gumb is concerned, profiling language and language depicting his criminal viewpoint draws on metaphors and references to killing being likened to hunting, work and art, suggesting that killing is necessary, commendable and ceremonial, the victims’ mere things to be utilised in a venture that can only be described as worthy. Though Lecter is shown to be ‘born’ into deviant behaviour, and Gumb is suggested to have been ‘made’ into a criminal, the novel undoubtedly suggests connections, similarities even, between both such character types’ extreme criminal behaviour and those wanting to understand ‘criminal minds’ through the profiling practice.

The hearing-aid our society needs: CogEpiCrim can help us hear the muffled screams

The current state of research in fields of criminology, psychology, sociology, law, etc. focuses primarily on the act of understanding crime from the aspect of the criminal. As a result, an excessive volume of literature is filled with theories defining the action, the reasons behind it, and the possible circumstances that led to it. Ironically, the act of the person is given more attention than the thought of the act that plagued the person. It becomes painfully eminent in stating the need to shift the narrative from – punishing the crime to treating the criminal thought. As a result, it becomes blatantly obvious without an iota of doubt, that such a systemic ignorance for the psychological profiling of sexual offenders becomes a vector for increasing rates of rape and other sexual crimes in India.