Identification of speakers' voices in open trials of
corruption cases: acoustic phonetic analysis
Tengku Silvana Sinar
1
, Nurlela
2
, T. Thyrhaya Zein
3
{tengkusilvana@usu.ac.id
1
, nurlelamajrul@usu.ac.id
2
, t.thyrhaya@usu.ac.id
3
}
Universitas Sumatera Utara, Medan, Indonesia
Abstract. This study is about the identification of speakers' voices on a recording of
forensic corruption open trials case for defendants held at the Medan District Court. The
purpose of the study is to find out the functional features of duration, intensity, pitch, and
frequency of the speakers' voices. The use of qualitative research methods was applied
and Praat software was used for collecting and processing the data of speech sounds. The
results of the study showed that the level of differentiation in voices delivered by judges,
prosecutor, and witnesses, and the functional features of duration, intensity, pitch, and
frequency of the speakers' voices in oral language used in trial corruption cases vary to
one the other.
Keywords: Acoustic phonetics, corruption case, forensic linguistic, praat
1 Introduction
Circular Number: 04 of 2012 from the Supreme Court, with Number: 08 / BUA.6 / HS /
SP / VIII / 2012 is concerned with recording of proceedings stating that the trial at the court of
first instance must be accompanied by audiovisual [1].
Following the relevant statement of Circular Number from the Supreme Court and as
stated in CHAPTER II item 6 through 15 presented previously, (furthermore read Law
Number 30 of 2002 [2]) about a large duty, authority and obligation of KPK (Corruption
Eradication Commission) to the state, its role in combating corruption never stops from time
to time especially as big and wide country like Indonesia (coverage from the island of Sabang
to Merauke) they commit that Indonesia must be free from corruptors.
Therefore, the participation of the whole society and academicians in state and private
universities is needed to solve the problem of the trial of corruption cases both in the forms of
teaching and research in accordance with the dedication to the nation. This research was
conducted to explore the lingual data used by people suspected of gratification at the trial,
specifically, the objective of this research is to identify the indication and symptoms in the use
of corrupt languages in terms of frequency, duration and intensity of voices.
Since the aspects in question are functionally interrelated with the approach used in this
study, therefore forensic linguistics in a trial of a corruption case was combined with the
experimental approach to measure the prosodic characteristic of sounds. The experimental
approach was applied to detect and identify the acoustic of the voice symptoms with Praat
software program. Experimental approach is a phonetic study using an accurate measuring
device ([3], [4]) either in tracing the pitch movement or measuring the acoustic characteristics.
ICO-ASCNITY 2019, November 01-03, Padang, Indonesia
Copyright © 2020 EAI
DOI 10.4108/eai.1-11-2019.2293992