Beyond Difference and Domination?: Intercultural Communication in Legal Contexts

Abstract

This chapter discusses intercultural communication in the legal system, an institutional context where the exercise of power through the manipulation of language is central. It examines the way that an understanding of differences between Aboriginal English and standard Australian English has been used in an initiative aimed at improving intercultural communication in the legal system. But it goes on to show some problems with the assumption's underlying this approach, problems which are highlighted in a particularly shocking court case in 1995. The discussion of this case points to the need for a new approach to intercultural communication in the legal process. The Aboriginal population comprises approximately two percent of the total of nearly 20 million Australians. Like dispossessed indigenous people the world over, Aboriginal people are the most disadvantaged ethnic group in the country in terms of poverty, ill health, discrimination, mortality rates, unemployment, and inadequate housing. They are also grossly overrepresented in police custody and prisons. The first language of most Aboriginal people is either Aboriginal English, or one of the English-lexified creoles, Kriol or Torres Strait Creole, although in the remote northern and central areas of Australia there are still a number of people speaking "traditional" languages. In their dealings with the law most Aboriginal people speak a variety of Aboriginal English or a second language variety of English.