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.
