Manchester Linguist Professor Dawn Archer has been making media waves after she appeared in a documentary analysing lying criminals and their crocodile tears.
The two-part documentary, Faking It: Tears of a Crime, looked at some of the most notorious cases of murderers and criminals who claim innocence, often boldly using the national press to portray themselves as grieving victims.

The show aired on Investigation Discovery whose team spent a day at the University last year talking to Prof Archer as she analysed fake public appeals to spot the tell-tale lying signs.

The documentary attracted a lot of nationwide attention and Prof Archer has appeared in The Daily Mirror, Liverpool Echo, BBC radio and Daily Record, among others.

Prof Archer, Research and Knowledge Exchange Coordinator for the Department of Languages, Information and Communications at MMU is a specialist forensic linguist who works to decipher the true meaning behind our communication and behaviour. She also specialises in corpus linguistics and pragmatics.

She said: “It was great to welcome the film crew and showcase the expertise here at the University. Each of the cases are distinct but share the unusual aspect of appeals coming from apparent innocent victims, often high-profile appeals in the media, but who it was later established were the actual perpetrators of the crime.

“This holds particular fascination for people due to the high-stakes lying that takes place. We were able to explain to the documentary the tell-tale signs that can be used from their appeals to spot that they were lying.”

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