| Languages and societies are two integral aspects, language develops constantly with the development of society. On the contrary, the development of both language and society complements each other. Language, being a crucial characteristic distinguishing mankind from the other animals, plays an important role in the human society. With the constant progress and development of the human society, the study on language is being deepened constantly, the classification of linguistics is more subtle. A man in a society can be subordinated to a specific social stratification from different angles according to one's age, sex, native place, job, hobby, faith, etc. and his/her speech is adapted and belongs to these different social groups, thus producing different variations. The speech of speakers varies from each other's according to one's social attribute, social experiences, social status, occupation, cultural background, religious belief , taste. Besides, differences in age, sex, custom, and region may also count. It is said that once in ancient Greece a person was brought to the great philosopher Socrates, who was asked about his view on this person. Socrates said once this person opened his mouth, he would be able to express his opinion about the person. Because everybody's speech can reveal one's personality, temper, occupation, age, etc.. History has exhibited to us that language is indispensable from the development of every branch of science with sufficient evidence. The development of the society, economic prosperity, human progress are all closely correlated to this media of communication. Linguists have put more emphasis on the research of pure linguistics, or the research of internal linguistics after F. de Saussure hoping to draw a unified language theory. Its unconcern about or unawareness of contexts, appropriateness and the structuredness of la parole has always been under heated dispute. Up till now, not a theory of pure linguistics has achieved unanimous conclusion. F. de Saussure has mentioned to those who attended the third course of his lectures that,'linguistics of speech'is more serious and it would doubtless have occupied a prominent place in the research of linguistics (F. de Saussure 2003: F51). The study on external linguistics, or the study on sociolinguistics in other words, has made very great popularity. More and more linguists begin to realize that besides the study on language teaching, the study of language shall be combined with every discipline of the society.Forensic linguistics is a branch of sociolinguistics, and a linguistic study combined with the law, which is very meaningful and of great social significance. The study range in legal linguistics, as Levis (1994) points out, involves every aspect of the law, such as voice identification, authorship of written documents, unclear jury instructions, asymmetry of power in courtroom exchanges, lawyer-client communication breakdown, nature of perjury, problems in written legal discourse, defamation, trademark infringement, courtroom interpretation and translation difficulties, adequacy of warning labels, and nature of tape recorded conversation used as evidence etc.. The research in recent years, especially the forensic linguistic research in foreign countries, has made extensive achievements, and been applied to the actual social life.In the combined study of linguistics and law, especially on the aspect of the research of speech and criminal identification there has been considerable progress during the past decades. Since a speaker's speech can always expose to us the clues of the speaker with an array of information, this has provided a suggestion for us, that is, through the study of the speech clues that the criminal leaves , we can discern the criminal's social background, personal characteristic, geographical attribute, the characteristic of the speech, etc., which enables us to narrow down the range of investigation, save the time of solving a case and the economic expenditure, so as to speed up the case solving and help to safeguard the long-term stability of society.In the course of this research, we found the study on speech clues which the criminal leaves often focused mainly on voiceprint while the other aspects of speech in speaker identification remained fully utilized for the goal of criminal investigation and interrogation. In addition to the voiceprint, speaker's lexical choice, syntax, intonation, and the dialect adopted and others could also reveal before us the background information such as both the speaker's personal and social attribute, social stratum, trades engaged in, etc..Besides giving a brief introduction to the present major research of forensic linguistics, this thesis focuses more on the analysis and synthesis of speech characteristics in the present linguistic researches, which can expose the speaker's origin, social background, age, sex, ethnic background and etc.. The first part of this paper discusses the aspects that can reveal a speaker's identifications, such as pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, languages, linguistic atlases, and also a person's linguistic specifics and regional characteristics as presented in works of literature. The second part focuses on the study of the relationship between a speaker's speech and region, speech and gender, speech and age, speech and social stratum. The third part briefly describes voiceprint often used in criminal investigation, a most common practice at the present stage, and presents actual cases of the application of linguistic research in criminal investigation and in social life.It is hoped that, through this research various kinds of linguistic research achievements can be fully utilized in criminal identification to help solve legal cases. Further achievements in linguistic researches will be made, and undoubtedly be applied in our legal system in order to help safeguard people's property, national defense, and contribute to anti-terrorism etc.. Just as F. de Saussure says, external researches takes a prominent position in linguistic studies, it is'none the less concerned with important matters, and these demand attention when one approaches the study of language';'in our opinion, the study of external linguistic phenomena can teach linguists a great deal'(F. de Saussure 2003: P21-2). All these indicate that studies of linguistic speech have a great expectance and actual social value. In the meanwhile, it is also hoped that the relevant governmental departments shall make full use of the valuable information from the speech research in criminal investigation and interrogation.
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