Communication with Aboriginal Speakers of English in the Legal Process

Eades, Diana

doi:10.1080/07268602.2012.744268

Cited by 51 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…A variety of English is spoken in all families to some extent, and for some people is the main language spoken. Speakers' English recorded in this project has features of General Australian English (Eades, 2012) as well as features of varieties known as Aboriginal English(es), that show some systematic differences from General Australian English varieties (Eades, 2014;Harkins, 1994;Malcolm, 2018;Malcolm & Kaldor, 1991).…”

Section: Background First Nations Languages Use In Central Australiamentioning

confidence: 96%

Developing the Little Kids’ Word List app, a fair assessment tool of communicative development for young Aboriginal children in multilingual families in Central Australia

O’Shannessy,

Davis,

Bartlett

et al. 2023

SiLA

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Assessment of the language development of Aboriginal children in Central Australia is a major challenge, because little is known about the children’s language repertoires and paths of development. The Central Australian language context presents a specific challenge for describing what young children are learning and for developing an appropriate vocabulary assessment tool. National Indigenous policies now have a focus on young children’s development, and existing monolingual English language assessment tools are bound to be inaccurate and unfair, either under-reporting knowledge that is present, or under-reporting difficulties children may have. In response, a multilingual ‘spoken’ MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) app, the Little Kids' Word List, has been developed for four of the languages spoken by young children in Central Australia: Eastern & Central Arrernte, Western Arrarnta, Warlpiri and English, and another two languages are being added. The Little Kids’ Word List app has been intentionally designed for fairer language assessments of the speech production and comprehension of young Indigenous children in Central Australia. The development processes explored the complex linguistic contexts, multilingual repertoires and cultural practices of the children’s families. This is reflected in the content and design of the app, making it appropriate for these young Aboriginal children developing their languages knowledge. In contrast to a monolingual English-based tool developed in different cultural settings, the Little Kids’ Word List app can make visible the Central Australian cohort's languages strengths and knowledge base.

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Section: Background First Nations Languages Use In Central Australiamentioning

confidence: 96%

Developing the Little Kids’ Word List app, a fair assessment tool of communicative development for young Aboriginal children in multilingual families in Central Australia

O’Shannessy,

Davis,

Bartlett

et al. 2023

SiLA

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“…However, Australian Aboriginal speakers of English use lengthy pauses as communication practices, indicating that they are thinking of what is said, or enjoying the other person's company (Eades 2012b:478). According to Eades (2012b), police and lawyers could mistake silence as ignorance, evasion and confusion. Kaschula and Maseko (2012:330) make a similar observation about amaXhosa: South African English is succinct and to the point whereas isiXhosa proceeds at a steady pace.…”

Section: 6mentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistics for legal interpretation

Carney¹

2023

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Linguistics for Legal Interpretation is a language resource for scholars and practitioners of law who engage and work with statutory interpretation. It draws on lexical semantics, pragmatics and sociolinguistics to both understand and solve language challenges central to the interpretation effort. In addition, this book offers best practice guidelines for dictionary use as well as an introduction to corpus linguistic methods to assist legal interpreters in determining either ordinary or technical meaning. The book illustrates the various language tools and devices by applying them to case law and legislation, and it does so in an accessible style of writing. Terrence R Carney is Associate Professor of Afrikaans Linguistics at the University of South Africa. He specialises in the language of law.

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“…However, it is fundamental to establish prior to any official communication that the speakers do indeed have enough L2 proficiency and understand all the details of what is communicated in a sensitive context such as a criminal investigation. It is not enough to have basic interactional proficiency in the L2 as many scholars have pointed out (e.g., Berk-Seligson, 2002 ; Eades, 2008 , 2012 , 2018 ; Filipović and Abad Vergara, 2018 , among others). As previous research has also shown, even fluent monolingual speakers who speak the language of the justice system in which they are processed (e.g., English) have difficulty understanding some key legal concepts such as the Miranda Rights in the United States or Caution in the United Kingdom ( Pavlenko, 2017 ; Berk-Seligson, 2016 ; see also example (3) in the next section and the “Conclusion and Limitations” section).…”

Section: Previous Relevant Literature: a Selective Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This behavior is in line with culturally driven strong aversion to open conflict and contradiction to authority within a number of minority communities. Eades (1994 , 2004 , 2008 , 2012) reports numerous cases from Australia where the alleged confessions by Aboriginal English speakers were discovered to have been fabricated by the police because they contained statements that could not have been phrased as such in Aboriginal English and alleged references that in fact were culturally unwarranted, such as citations of precise time on the clock (which is not done in the Aboriginal culture in question). Overall, linguistic and cultural minorities do seem to have an additional disadvantage in legal systems around the world, which academic research has identified and helped raise awareness about, and this can then lead to improved outcomes and rectifications of a number of miscarriages of justice (see Eades, 1994 , 2012 ; Coulthard, 2002 ; Berk-Seligson, 2007 , 2009 ).…”

Section: Previous Relevant Literature: a Selective Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Both confessions and admissions can happen inadvertently when given by the speaker or when inadvertently interpreted as such by the hearer, and crucially, they can significantly impact further developments in police questioning as well as potential case outcomes. The phenomenon of inadvertent confession and admission of guilt has been studied before to some extent, for example, in the context of self-implication due to manipulative questioning (see Berk-Seligson, 2009 ; Filipović, 2019 , 2021 ), inadequate language support for suspects from minority language backgrounds ( Eades, 1994 , 2008 , 2012 ; Berk-Seligson, 2007 , 2009 , 2016 ; Filipović, 2007 , 2013 , 2019 , 2021 ) or as a result of patient and meticulous sequential introduction of incriminating evidence in United Kingdom police interviews ( Filipović, 2019 ; Musolff, 2019 ). What the present study brings is a holistic and comparative view of two very different approaches to police questioning as well as contrastive insight into monolingual vs. bilingual police communication and the effect of all these different factors on multiple inadvertent confessions and admissions .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Confession to Make: Inadvertent Confessions and Admissions in United Kingdom and United States Police Contexts

Filipović

2021

Front. Psychol.

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Previous studies have addressed many different kinds of confessions in police investigations – real, false, coerced, fabricated – and highlighted both psychological and social mechanisms that underlie them. Here, we focus on inadvertent confessions and admissions, which occur when a suspect appears to be confessing without being fully aware of doing so, or when police officers believe they have a confession or admission of guilt when in fact this is not the case. The goal of the study is to explain when, how and why these confessions and admissions occur as well as how they are dealt with in two different jurisdictions, the United States and the United Kingdom. We use a discourse analysis approach because inadvertent confessions and admissions of guilt are the product of miscommunication – they happen because the speaker’s meaning and the hearer’s meaning are misaligned. The data consist of 50 interviews from the United Kingdom and 50 interrogations from the United States with both English-speaking and non-English speaking suspects. Our results demonstrate that inadvertent confessions can occur in both locales due to reliance on inference, which is inevitable since inference is the backbone of any human communication, as well as due to additional factors such as linguistic, cultural and procedural issues. We found that these phenomena are more frequent and less well controlled for in the United States context due to (a) no systematic checking of understanding, (b) adversarial questioning techniques and an absence of legal representation, and (c) lack of professional, high-quality interpreting. We discuss the implications of our findings for current efforts to improve access to justice, custodial procedures and language services, and we make recommendations for the implementation of our research in professional practice.

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Communication with Aboriginal Speakers of English in the Legal Process

Cited by 51 publications

References 29 publications

Developing the Little Kids’ Word List app, a fair assessment tool of communicative development for young Aboriginal children in multilingual families in Central Australia

Developing the Little Kids’ Word List app, a fair assessment tool of communicative development for young Aboriginal children in multilingual families in Central Australia

Linguistics for legal interpretation

Confession to Make: Inadvertent Confessions and Admissions in United Kingdom and United States Police Contexts

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