Dr Patricia Canning

Assistant Professor

School: Humanities and Social Sciences

I am an applied linguist specialising in forensic texts and contexts. My work includes identifying and analysing victim-blaming language across the UK justice system, specifically in relation to investigations of violence against women and girls (VAWG). I work with UK police forces to improve routes to justice through more trauma-informed language choices in police investigations.

My research projects also include the forensic stylistic analyses of witness statements following the Hillsborough Football Stadium Disaster (1989) and the attribution of blame following the Champions League Final in Paris in 2022.

I also develop wellbeing literary projects that centre on reading for wellbeing and have established a series of reading and discussion projects in prisons and other restricted environments.

I am one of ten experts that comprise the Truth Recovery Independent Panel investigating the pathways and practices of 'Mother and Baby' Institutions, Magdalene Laundries, and Workhouses in the north of Ireland (1922-1995).

I am a registered expert with the European Anti-Fraud Commission and provide consultancy and training to national domestic abuse charities.

Email Patricia

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Forensic Linguistics
Stylistics (incl. discourse analysis)
Pragmatics
Reader-response
Social justice

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Police gaslighting in UK domestic abuse cases, Blewitt, K., Canning Pask, P. 24 Oct 2025, In: Discourse and Society
Discourse Analysis: A Practical Introduction, Canning, P., Walker, B. 31 Jan 2024
Forensic Stylistics, Canning, P. 29 May 2023, The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics. Second Edition, London, Taylor & Francis
Functionalist Stylistics, Canning, P. 27 Mar 2023, The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics. , Taylor & Francis
“Treated With Contempt”: An Independent Panel Report into Fans’ Experiences Before, During and After the 2022 Champions League Final in Paris, Canning, P., Scraton, P., Haydon, D., Easthope, L., Marshall, P. Oct 2022
Writing up or writing off crimes of domestic violence? A transitivity analysis of police reports, Canning, P. 3 Jan 2022, In: Language and Law = Linguagem e Direito
Additions, Omissions, and Transformations in Institutional ‘Retellings’ of Domestic Violence, Lynn, N., Canning, P. 4 Nov 2021, In: Language and Law = Linguagem e Direito
Hillsborough disaster: a revealing analysis of the language in witness statements, Canning, P. 2 Jun 2021
Police reporting can undermine domestic violence victims, language analysis shows, Canning, P. 23 Nov 2021
Worlds of evidence: Visualising patterns in witness statements in the aftermath of the Hillsborough football stadium disaster, Canning, P., Ho, Y., Bartl, S. 15 Sep 2021, In: English Text Construction