Language as evidence
2 September 2025
University of Kaunas, Lithuania
Organisers: Victoria Guillén-Nieto and Dieter Stein
CALL FOR PAPERS
We are excited to announce the 5th ILLA Focus Conference on Forensic Linguistics. This conference will occur in Kaunas on 2 September, before the 7th ILLA General Conference starts. Similar to previous editions, this focus conference encourages language scientists and legal practitioners to submit abstract proposals on various fields of inquiry within Forensic Linguistics (language as evidence), such as authorship identification, speaker identification, plagiarism detection, language crimes, cybercrimes, and deception and lie detection.
We welcome paper submissions related to the role of language experts in criminal investigations, the linguist as an expert witness in court, communication and interaction between lawyers and language experts, courtroom interaction, admissibility criteria, and ethics.
As a new feature, we are accepting panel proposals for this focus conference. Each panel proposal should include an introduction by the panel organiser justifying the relevance of the topic and a minimum of four abstracts. The abstracts should focus on specific investigative problems, such as the impact of AI on identification tasks and copyright infringement.
Finally, we also encourage submissions for training workshops and posters.
Submission guidelines
Make sure your abstract includes the following information:
1 Purpose statement
2 Research problem
3 State of the art
4 Hypotheses or research questions
5 Description of the methods, instruments and tools
6 Summary of the main conclusions or statement about the relevance and potential impact of the research
7 References (up to five)
Please ensure that the abstract is anonymised.
Title (14pt Times New Roman, bold type)
Text (12pt Times New Roman)
Length: 300 words
Keywords: up to five keywords separated by a semicolon
Language: English
Please follow APA style
Note: Failure to follow the submission guidelines may be a reason for abstract rejection.
Important dates
• 15 September 2024 – Call for papers
• 15 November 2024 – 2nd Call for papers
• 1 February 2025 – Deadline for submission of abstracts
• 1 March 2025 – Notification of acceptance/rejection
• 15 August 2025 – End of registration
• Early bird registration deadline: 15 May 2025
• Regular registration deadline: 15 August 2025
All abstract submissions should be made through:
https://easyabs.linguistlist.org/conference/ILLAFocus-FL/
Submissions open: Sept. 15, 2024 - Feb. 1, 2025
Abstracts will go through a blind peer-review process.
Webpage: https://conferences.vdu.lt/etn/general-illa-conference/
