The Role Of Forensic Linguistics In Interpreting Verbal Threats Within International Human Rights Law: A Focus On Algeria
Auteurs : Boulaares Djemai . Boulaares Mokhtar .
Résumé
This article examines how forensic linguistic analysis can assist courts in distinguishing legally punishable threatening speech from protected, offensive, or ambiguous expression. It adopts a structured comparative legal-linguistic design across three analytically distinct contexts: direct and public incitement to genocide in the Rwanda Media Case, repeated digital communications examined in Counterman v. Colorado, and the statutory treatment of threats, hate speech, and incitement under Algerian law. The study uses a transparent coding framework covering addressee structure, target, represented agent of harm, speech-act orientation, directness, conditionality, modality, repetition, uptake, and evidential status. Original close analyses of judicially reproduced extracts show that audience-directed incitement and recipient-directed threats require different legal and linguistic tests. In Rwanda, coded or context-dependent language may be legally direct when its intended audience immediately grasps a call to genocidal action, although persisting ambiguity cannot satisfy the criminal threshold. In Counterman, threatening force emerges cumulatively through repeated unwanted contact, surveillance references, target specificity, and death-oriented formulations, while the speaker’s culpable awareness remains a separate legal inquiry. The Algerian analysis demonstrates that Articles 284–287 of the Penal Code distinguish offences by the gravity of harm, medium, and presence of an order or condition, while Law No. 20-05 separately regulates discriminatory hate speech and calls to violence. The article defines a restrained evidential role for forensic linguists without displacing the court’s ultimate legal judgment.
Mots clés
forensic Linguistics; Threatening speech; Verbal threats; Incitement; Digital communication; Algerian law
