Nationality claims: Language analysis and asylum cases

Abstract

In the first two decades of the development of forensic linguistics, most expert linguistic evidence was in criminal and civil law. However, the most recent legal area in which linguists are becoming involved concerns immigration, specifically in relation to the use of 'language analysis' in the investigation of the nationality claims of asylum seekers who do not have any official documents from their country of origin. This is most commonly referred to as Language Analysis in the Determination of Origin, or LADO (although it has also been referred to as linguistic identification, as in Eades and Arends 2004; and LingID, as in Eades et al. 2003). Language analysis is often sought by immigration departments for use in their administrative processing of claims to asylum, but, given that appeals against decisions of administrators can end up in the legal process, where linguists can be called on as experts to give counter-analyses, then this work comes within forensic linguistics.