Idiolectal feature
Definition
A linguistic habit characteristic of one specific person rather than a group. In the Unabomber case, phrase patterns such as 'feelings of inferiority' were idiolectal: they appeared consistently in both the Manifesto and in Kaczynski's private writings, and were not typical of the general population.
Related terms
- Authorial profiling
- The production of demographic and psychological inferences from a text's language, as opposed to attribution, which names a specific author. The UNABOM...
- Confirmatory evidence
- Evidence that increases the probability of a hypothesis already suggested by other means. In UNABOM, the linguistic analysis served this role: it...
- FBI Linguistic Analysis Unit (LAU)
- The FBI division responsible for linguistic profiling, author identification, and threat assessment. The LAU produced the authorial profile used in the UNABOM...
- UNABOM
- The FBI case designation for the Unabomber investigation (Universities and Airlines BOMbing). The case ran from 1978 to 1996 and is one...
Explained in
- The Unabomber Case: Stylometric Attribution at ScaleA linguistic habit characteristic of one specific person rather than a group. In the Unabomber case, phrase patterns such as 'feelings of inferiority' were idi...