Do You Listen or Do You Just Hear? A Prank (Inspired by Forensic Linguistics) for Arabic Dialectologists

Mion G.

2025-01-01

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Abstract

Some short recordings with very simple Standard Arabic and Standard Italian sentences have been artificially modified by adding disturbing sounds. As it exactly happens in forensic linguistics, some trained linguists have been asked to listen to the modified audio files and provide their transcriptions. These linguists, unaware that the recordings were artificial, were Arabic dialectologists. Did our heroes realise they were being tricked?