ABSTRACT
Will there still be something called profiling? That is, will most people continue to believe in it even as they differ in how to best do it? An alternative might be that profiling is more of a myth supported at best by underwhelming theory and data. And, thus, it should be jettisoned as human nature changes into something less based on magical thinking. I believe belief in it will remain and that controversy over the how will continue. And controversy will remain over what I’ll now term the meaningful versus nonmeaningful approaches to profiling. The former refers to the essence of this book-psychological meaning of why something will be, has been, or is. The latter is a purely empirical relationship between variables with meaning coming after, and afterthought, or irrelevant. A contemporary example is profiling through forensic linguistics (Shuy, 2006). Here comparative quantitative analyses of spelling, grammar, and word and phrase choices related to speech and writing help profilers identify or believe that they’ve identified bad actors engaged in social devianceeven as the forensic linguistician may claim to be only comparing samples between and among known and unknown sources. The meaning of the linguistic indicators as opposed to their differentiating powers is either absent or beside the point.
