Frances Stead Seller's Essay

In “Should Texts, E-Mail, Tweets and Facebook Posts Be the New Fingerprints in Court?,” Frances Stead Seller’s main goal for the essay is to break down both sides of the argument of whether our language style should be used to determine the authorship of the text. The side that is against the use of findings from this field as a form of evidence emphasize that the findings do not include credible statistics and uses too much computer (which can be prone to error) for determining their research. Sellers asserts this when saying, “Unless you have statistical proof matching evidence to individuals, Solan says, ‘How do you know you are right?’” Another issue is that depending on the circumstances of the writing, individuals have different writing styles (e.g., a person’s essay style compared to their text message style). Other issues in …show more content…
The first way would be as an argument source, where I will use the argument that previous forms of finding evidence (e.g., forensic sciences) were once seen as premature and unfit to be used in the courtroom. The second way I would use this source would be to present the opposing side of the controversy of whether the field of studying language should be allowed in the courtroom setting. In order to present the side against this field, I would include some of the reasonings Sellers presents (e.g., no statistical evidence, outside factors) as “they say” and attempt to disprove them or at least justify them. I would also use this source as background to the controversy as well as what led Jurors to expect the presentation of forensic science in every case and expect it to be conclusive. Could there be similarities between this field of study and forensic linguistics? This source will open the door for me to be able to make a connection between this developing field known as forensic linguistics and the fields, such as forensic sciences, that are normally accepted in most, if not all,