Category Archives: Monolingualism

by monzo

The Regulations of the Chilean Constitutional Convention and multilingual deliberation: legitimacy, inclusion, linguistic justice, and hegemonic monolingualism

Marco Espinoza

The constitutional moment in Chile has been highly participative and characterized by the political incorporation of traditionally excluded groups. Conversation and public deliberation have been central in this process. In this context, the diversity of languages and communicative practices has become so relevant that the Convention’s General Regulations explicitly state a series of principles acknowledging the importance of linguistic matters for the deliberative work the Convention (and their relation to rights, non-discrimination, and democratic participation). These include plain language, gender-inclusive language, and linguistic diversity. This presentation focuses on those principles concerned with plurilingualism, multilingual deliberation, and translation of documents from Spanish to the different languages of the territory. 

The analysis and discussion will first focus on the debates, arguments, and agents involved in the promotion of this type of language regulations and language regime for the workings of the Convention. This will be followed by a critical discussion of these regulations in relation to legitimacy, inclusion, and linguistic justice. It is argued that these principles and regulations mainly operate on a symbolic level as a legitimating mechanism of the Convention itself as a representative and inclusive institution. The fact that these regulations are entirely written in Spanish, the absence of actual multilingual deliberation, interpretation, and the multiple translations, are a clear indication of the language hierarchies in the territory, and reproduce assumptions about the monolingual functioning of society. It is concluded that the Regulations, despite their possible interpretation as an attempt at linguistic justice, contribute to validate the hegemonic monolingualism in Spanish that characterizes the country’s institutions, and can hardly contribute to prefigure a context of multilingual deliberation and participation in Chilean institutions. 

Keywords: Chilean constitutional convention, multilingual deliberation, linguistic justice, hegemonic monolingualism.

by monzo

What was the language of the judgment again? – Traces of bilingualism in monolingual trial judgments

Alexander Teutsch

Judicial proceedings tend to favour monolingualism over multilingualism, even where different languages are at play in the courtroom (Maryns, 2012). Courtroom interpretation, for instance, is often considered a technical act, merely transposing oral statements into the “language of the proceeding” (Berk-Seligson, 2017), while prior evidence presented in a foreign language is mostly translated and, where provided orally, rapidly transcribed into a sole language (Bucholtz, 1995; 2007). Even in bi- and multilingual jurisdictions, the preference for a single procedural language leads to the phenomenon of absorption of utterances made in other idioms into that language (Powell, 2008). 

This is exemplified by what this paper claims to be the most evident and misleading representation of the “myth of monolingualism”: the judgment. In framing their decisions, judges mostly pretend all the legal material they cite is in the same language as their judgement. Remarks about sources, i.e. evidence, legislation, or case law, issued in another language are rarely made.This paper aims at uncovering this “myth of monolingualism” of proceedings by showing how, in multilingual jurisdictions, language multiplicity constitutes not just the possibility of having a trial, or parts thereof, in one or another language. More precisely, multilingual courts, operating on a national or subnational level, where legal experts work with different languages on a daily basis, should not be reduced to an “either-or” frame. Rather, they should be seen as working in constant interaction between these languages, by engaging in comparison and translation, in spite of a proceeding officially labelled as monolingual. By analysing “monolingual” judgments issued by first instance judges (giudice di pace/Friedensrichter) in the bilingual province of Südtirol/Alto-Adige (German/Italian) in Italy, this paper shows how overlaps between these two languages occur in judicial reasoning. These include (i) “collages”, being single sentences imported from the other language; (ii) literal translations and summaries; and (iii) direct quotations from the other language.

Keywords: multilingualism; language contact; judicial reasoning; forensic linguistics;