Dr Emily Chiang

Postdoctoral Research Associate Aston University

  • Birmingham

Dr Chiang's research focuses on linguistic expressions of identity in online criminal contexts.

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Aston University

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Biography

Dr Emily Chiang's research focuses on linguistic expressions of identity in online criminal contexts combining corpus tools with qualitative pragmatic methods like rhetorical move analysis and speech act theory. She has explored linguistic identity in online child sexual abuse interactions and how linguistic analysis and understanding can inform undercover police practice in this area. Her current research interests include the language of self-styled 'paedophile-hunters' and dark web fraud communities.

Areas of Expertise

Forensic Linguistics
Linguistic Identity
Online Child Abuse
Dark Web
Fraud
Move Analysis
Discourse Analysis
Corpus Linguistics

Education

Aston University

PhD

Rhetorical moves and identity performance in online child sexual abuse interactions

2018

Aston University

MA

Forensic Linguistics

2015

Oxford Brookes University

BA

English Language and Linguistics & Education and Human Development

2009

Media Appearances

Body of evidence: meet the experts working in crime scene forensics

The Guardian  online

2021-12-12

‘There was an offender on the dark web who was partially identified because he regularly used the unusual greeting “hiyas”’: Emily Chiang, forensic linguistics.

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Researcher helps police track paedophiles on the dark web

Jersey Evening Post  online

2020-03-05

Ex-Les Quennevais and Hautlieu pupil Emily Chiang spent three years on her PHD research that looked into three aspects of language used within paedophile groups on the dark web.

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The Linguist Who Helps Police Catch Child Predators

The Atlantic  online

2018-07-10

In one 2017 paper, co-written with his colleague Emily Chiang, Grant identifies 14 “rhetorical moves used in chatroom grooming” and unpacks “the broad structures that grooming conversations take,” based on transcripts of real child grooming collated by Perverted Justice. The most common approach groomers take, he finds, is that they build a connection before introducing any sort of sexual component. And they try hard to keep the conversation going, sexual or not. One of the biggest tells is what Grant calls the “mitigating lol”—a way of downplaying a serious sexual request, such as “u should make a nude vid and send it to me,” by adding the word “lol” at the end. “[Its] use here implies something vaguely playful or unserious about these contributions,” Grant and Chiang write. Most offenders introduce sexual overtones early in a conversation, they find.

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Research Grants

Lead researcher on LEADS-Engine: Linguistically Enabled Analytic Dark Search Engine

Innovate UK

September 2022 – August 2023

With Krzysztof Kredens (PI) at Aston University and Forensic Pathways Ltd.

Lead researcher on LASO: Linguistic Analysis of Sex Offender Interactions on Dark Web Forums

Alan Turing Institute Defence and Security Program

October 2018 – June 2019

With Jack Grieve (PI) at the University of Birmingham and Dong Ngyen at Alan Turing Institute.

Articles

Linguistic analysis of suspected child sexual offenders’ interactions in a dark web image exchange chatroom

The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law

2021

Child sexual offenders convene in dark web spaces to exchange indecent imagery, advice and support. In response, law enforcement agencies deploy undercover agents to pose as offenders online to gather intelligence on these offending communities. Currently, however, little is known about how offenders interact online, which raises significant questions around how undercover officers should ‘authentically’ portray the persona of a child sexual offender. This article presents the first linguistic description of authentic offender–offender interactions taking place on a dark web image exchange chatroom. Using move analysis, we analyse chatroom users’ rhetorical strategies. We then model the move sequences of different users and user types using Markov chains, to make comparisons between their linguistic behaviours. We find the predominant moves characterising this chatroom are Offering Indecent Images, Greetings, Image Appreciation, General Rapport and Image Discussion, and that rhetorical strategies differ between users of different levels of offending and dark web image-sharing experience.

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‘Send Me Some Pics’: Performing the Offender Identity in Online Undercover Child Abuse Investigations Get access Arrow

Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice

2020

This article presents a case study examining the performance of the offender identity in online child sexual abuse interactions between genuine suspected offenders and an undercover officer posing as an offender. Using a linguistic framework known as move analysis, the study describes and compares interactants' use of rhetorical moves, as well as move frequencies and structures. Similarities and differences in the performance of offenderness between suspected offenders and the undercover police officer are discussed. Interactions are characterised by a high level of rapport-building, sharing stories, and exchanging support. While the undercover officer largely emulates the moves of suspected offenders, key discrepancies include his comparative reluctance to engage in abuse-related story-telling and an increased tendency to inquire about abusive images. This work highlights possible target areas for police training in the task of online identity assumption in online child abuse cases.

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Attributing the Bixby Letter using n-gram tracing

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities

2018

There is a long-standing debate about the authorship of the Bixby Letter, one of the most famous pieces of correspondence in American history. Despite being signed by President Abraham Lincoln, some historians have claimed that its true author was John Hay, Lincoln’s personal secretary. Analyses of the letter have been inconclusive in part because the text totals only 139 words and is thus far too short to be attributed using standard methods. To test whether Lincoln or Hay wrote this letter, we therefore introduce and apply a new technique for attributing short texts called ‘n-gram tracing’. After demonstrating that our method can distinguish between the known writings of Lincoln and Hay with a very high degree of accuracy, we use it to attribute the Bixby Letter. We conclude that the text was authored by John Hay—rewriting this one episode in the history of the USA, while offering a solution to one of the most persistent problems in authorship attribution.

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