Dakota Wing is a forensic linguist and PhD Candidate in linguistics and applied linguistics at York University (Canada). He regularly consults on criminal, civil, and investigative matters involving language evidence with Robert Leonard Associates. His research and case experience include the linguistic analysis of threatening communications, targeted violence, extremism, and linguistic discrimination, with experience analyzing school-shooter writings, targeted-violence manifestos, extremist propaganda, and language associated with online radicalization. His broader research and forensic linguistic casework examine language in legal and investigative contexts, including discursive practices in investigative interviews, the communication of legal rights, linguistic ideologies concerning the treatment of language evidence, authorship analysis, disputes of meaning, trademark and copyright disputes, the language of police reports, political discourse, and the language of wanted person lists.
He is a co-author of Decoding Terrorism: An Interdisciplinary Approach to a Lone-Actor Case (Cambridge University Press), and his work has been published in Perspectives on Terrorism, Criminal Justice Review, the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, the Journal of Language and Discrimination, the Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law – Revue internationale de Sémiotique, the Routledge Handbook of Ethics in Forensic Linguistics (Routledge), and the International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication: From Text to Semiotics (Springer). Wing is a member of an international, interdisciplinary threat assessment think tank, has presented at workshops and training seminars to law enforcement, and has worked with the Forensic Linguistics Justice Project (formerly the Forensic Linguistics Capital Case Innocence Project) and the Institute for Forensic Linguistics, Threat Assessment, and Strategic Analysis. He holds an MA in forensic linguistics from Hofstra University and co-maintains ForensicLing.com, a website dedicated to making forensic linguistic data available to researchers and furthering the scientific inquiry, transparency, and replicability of forensic linguistic research.
The inaugural Eradicate Hate Summit was a truly impressive gathering of leaders dedicated to finding lasting and effective solutions to violent extremism. I was particularly moved by the prominence given to survivors and family members of victims of hate and violence throughout the event. Their stories and those of so many others must be at the center of what we do and why we do it.
