Analyzing Contracts Through the Lens of Forensic Linguistics: A Comprehensive Literature Review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25139/lex.v10i2.12214Keywords:
Forensic Linguistics, Contract Law, Legal Translation, Authorship Attribution, Artificial IntelligenceAbstract
This study examines the role of forensic linguistics in analyzing contractual documents and safeguarding contract enforceability in modern legal systems. The research aims to identify the major linguistic issues in contracts and to explore the application of forensic linguistic tools to resolve contractual disputes. This study employs a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method, analyzing scholarly publications from 2020 to 2024 across databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. The findings reveal that semantic ambiguity, translation shifts, authorship contestation, and deceptive contractual language are the dominant linguistic problems affecting contractual integrity. The study also demonstrates that forensic linguistic approaches, including discourse analysis, legal semiotics, computational stylometry, and syntactic complexity analysis, play a significant role in detecting linguistic manipulation and verifying document authenticity. Furthermore, the integration of artificial intelligence and digital technologies has transformed both the opportunities and challenges of contract authentication. This research concludes that forensic linguistics has become an essential interdisciplinary framework for ensuring fairness, transparency, and legal certainty in contractual agreements, particularly in digital and cross-border transactions.
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