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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Jade Biyu DuORCiD
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Routledge, 2019.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
Owing to its economic growth and social changes in the past two decades, China has become a popular destination for tourists, investors, and diverse communities of migrants. When foreign-language-speaking migrants interact with Chinese criminal justice system, they rely on interpreters to participate in the proceedings. Based on four-month trial observations in a Chinese city that is reported to have the highest concentration of foreign migrants in the country, this paper attempts to empirically explore the communicative complexity between foreign defendants and interpreters when they use English as a lingua franca. Drawing upon discourse analysis of recordings of seven criminal hearings that involve defendants from African countries, this paper shows how intercultural communication in the legal setting becomes challenging when primary participants in the interaction have divergent linguistic repertoires and speak different varieties of English. Variations in pronunciation become barriers to intelligibility; different legal culture and legal systems further complicates mutual understanding. This paper highlights how linguistic differences in interpreter-defendant communication disadvantage defendants in participating in judicial proceedings, which may undermine their legal rights and result in inequality and injustice.
Author(s): Du B
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: International Journal of Multilingualism
Year: 2019
Volume: 16
Issue: 3
Pages: 317-335
Online publication date: 01/04/2018
Acceptance date: 19/03/2018
Date deposited: 28/03/2018
ISSN (print): 1479-0718
ISSN (electronic): 1747-7530
Publisher: Routledge
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2018.1455687
DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2018.1455687
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