Linguistic Analysis of American Airlines Flight 11 Transmissions Purported to be Made by Mohamed Atta on 11 September 2001

Summary

This report presents a forensic linguistic analysis of the radio transmissions attributed to alleged 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta from American Airlines Flight 11, along with selected audio associated with United Airlines Flight 93. Using principles of sociolinguistics, phonetics, and forensic linguistics, the analysis evaluates whether the accent characteristics heard in the AA11 transmissions are consistent with what would normally be expected of a native Arabic speaker speaking English.

The analysis identifies several linguistic features inconsistent with Arabic English, including the absence of the trilled “r” characteristic of second-language speakers of English whose native language is Arabic and the presence of r-dropping and “sing-song” intonation patterns more commonly associated with certain Caribbean English dialects and, to a lesser extent, West African English varieties such as Ghanaian or Nigerian English. The report concludes that the accent heard in the AA11 transmissions shares more features with Caribbean English varieties than with Arabic English and raises doubt that the speaker’s native language was Arabic. It further concludes that Mohamed Atta’s reported linguistic background does not plausibly account for these accent features and notes the absence of any known recording of Atta’s voice for comparison.

The report also raises questions about the emotionality and structure of a “Mayday” transmission associated with United Airlines Flight 93 and concludes that a whispered statement at the end of flight attendant CeeCee Lyles’ voicemail is acoustically more consistent with the phrase “it’s a frame” than the commonly suggested alternative “you did great,” while emphasizing the limitations imposed by degraded audio.

About the Author

Natalie Schiling, Ph.D., is a Professor Emerita of Linguistics at Georgetown University, where she was a member of the faculty for 23 years and was tenured for 18 years.

As a Professor of Linguistics, she designed and taught a number of graduate and undergraduate courses focused on many areas of linguistic study, including General Linguistics (which includes phonetics and phonology, the study of language sounds), Sociolinguistics, Sociolinguistic Variation, American Dialects, Style and Stylistic Variation (variation within individuals), Sociolinguistic Research Methods, and Forensic Linguistics.

Throughout her scholarly and academic career, she has specialized in Sociolinguistics, the study of the interrelation between language and society. Within this, she has focused on the history, structure, meaning, and use of American English, with a particular interest in language variation and change across speaker groups (e.g. regional, ethnic, gender, and other social groups) and situations of use (stylistic variation), including pronunciation variation. She has also focused on forensic linguistics, the application of linguistic principles and analysis to legal matters.

She has authored, co-authored, or co-edited ten books, 47 journal articles and book chapters, nine articles in conference proceedings, and a number of book reviews and outreach publications and presentations, all on various issues in linguistics. She has designed and delivered 150 conference presentations and invited lectures in academic settings, including 10 keynote presentations at national and international conferences. She also authored and delivered an audio/video course for The Great Courses lecture series.

She was inducted as a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America in 2022. LSA Fellows are “Members of the Society who have made distinguished contributions to the discipline.”