Multilingualism and the Law

Organizer Natalie Schilling

Presenters

Aneta Pavlenko
Scott Jarvis
Elizabeth Hepford
Jan Svennevig
Pawel Urbanik
Philipp Angermeyer

In this panel, we explore issues in comprehension and production in cross-linguistic legal encounters, specifically the comprehension of L2 speakers’ rights in arrest encounters in the U.S. and Norway and the communication of narrative testimony in courtroom interaction by witnesses of minority language background. Cross-linguistic misunderstandings can occur on all linguistic levels from lexical to pragmatic and impact civilians, law enforcement and legal professionals, lay jurors,and others affected by or making assessments of guilt and innocence(e.g. suspects’ families, the media). The consequences can be grave when suspects ‘voluntarily’ waive rights they do not fully understand they are entitled to and when minority witnesses unwittingly produce narratives judged to be non-credible when under questioning by experts in the majority language and its manipulations in legal settings.The panel will open with brief remarks by the convener, followed by three presentations by four invited speakers.A panel discussion with audience participation will conclude the colloquium. Issues to be considered range from the problem of coerced and false confessions in police interviews in situations of unequal power and inequitable linguistic relations,the (purposeful) undercutting of witness credibility in multilingual courtroom settings, and resultant concerns with false conviction, wrongful imprisonment, and failure to convict or even seek genuine perpetrators at the expense of ‘convenient’ suspects who lack facility in a majority language. The invited speakers and topics are as follows:

Aneta Pavlenko (Center for Multilingualism in Society Across the Lifespan, University of Oslo, Norway); Scott Jarvis (University of Utah) and Elizabeth Hepford (Wesleyan University)

The comprehension of Miranda rights by non-native speakers of English Jan Svennevig and Pawel Urbanik (MultiLing, University of Oslo, Norway)

Comprehension strategies in the communication of rights to L2 suspects in Norwegian investigative interviews Philipp Angermeyer (Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics; York University, Toronto, Canada)The pragmatic consequences of linguistic difference in courtroom interaction