<![CDATA[How does a court decide whether an utterance is merely an emotional outburst or a criminal act of defamation? This paper argues that answering this question is, at its core, a linguistic task, and examines how forensic linguistic analysis helps courts draw that line through two contrasting Indonesian defamation cases. The first, the Florence Sihombing case (2014–2015), involved an explicit, literal insult posted on the social media platform Path. The second, the "Bau Ikan Asin" ("Salted Fish Smell") case involving Galih Ginanjar, Rey Utami, and Pablo Benua (2019–2020), involved a metaphorical utterance whose insulting reference to the victim could only be established through an analysis of conversational implicature, since no name was ever stated outright. Drawing on lexical-connotative semantics and speech act theory, this study shows that the evidentiary value of forensic linguistics is not constant: it is comparatively limited when an utterance is already explicit, but becomes decisive when the offending reference is hidden behind metaphor or euphemism, as is increasingly common in social-media-based defamation cases. The paper also considers how the standing of expert testimony has shifted since Indonesia's new Criminal Code (Law No. 1 of 2023) and new Criminal Procedure Code (Law No. 20 of 2025) took effect on 2 January 2026, both of which impose stricter scrutiny on the methodology behind expert evidence. As a descriptive-qualitative study built on secondary documentation rather than direct access to court records, several procedural details that could not be independently verified are flagged explicitly as limitations.]]>
Copyrights © 2026
