A newly released, four-part book examines various aspects of the legal system, including the language used by complainants and witnesses, courtroom discourse, legal education, court interpreting, and the process of taking police statements. 

These are but some of the subjects covered in “Courtroom Discourse: Practical Insights from Legal Linguists", which is edited by Dr Zakeera Docrat, Dr Annelise de Vries, Prof Russell H Kaschula and Dr Paul Svongoro.

In her blurb for the book, Prof Mantoa Motinyane - Deputy Dean of the Arts and Humanities Faculty at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) - described the sixth volume of the Studies in Forensic and Legal Linguistics and Beyond series as a groundbreaking collection which explores the critical role of language in achieving justice, especially in Africa’s multilingual and multicultural societies.

Prof Motinyane said the four sections in Courtroom Discourse offered practical insight into the challenges faced by court interpreters and the legislation.

“The selling-point of this book is that, in the South African context, it speaks directly to the country’s constitutional commitment to multilingualism, access to justice and transformation of legal systems that have been lacking, in terms of linguistic aspects,” said Prof Motinyane. 

South Africa's justice system continues to struggle with significant inequalities, despite its constitution recognising 12 official languages. English and Afrikaans frequently dominate, highlighting these disparities.

“Many people experience barriers in courts and in police stations, because their voices are not adequately heard or accurately represented. These issues are addressed in this volume,” said Prof Motinyane. 

The book also touches on how forensic and legal linguistics can assist in combating crime in South Africa, particularly affecting women and the disabled. Prof Kaschula highlighted that child abuse perpetrators are often older, and that intricate language and cultural nuances frequently lead to dismissed charges or failed prosecutions. He cited a court case in Paarl, detailed in the book's first chapter, where the Afrikaans dialect used was incomprehensible to the courtroom interpreter.

“If you think about it. Every crime has a linguistic foundation because all crime is committed through language. Whether we’re talking about hate speech, sexual violence, or violence against women. It often emanates from linguistic crime,” said Prof Kaschula, who is the head of the department of African Language Studies at UWC and holds the institutional chair in forensic linguistics and multilingualism.

“There's so many facets to understanding the complexities of inter and cross culturalism in courts, and I do think it should form part of the legal curriculum and that all people who are involved in the legal fraternity, whether you're a judge, or whether you're a defence lawyer or a prosecutor, you know, you should be properly trained, as also all interpreters in the country as well, and that's where forensic linguistics and legal linguists come into play and play a very important role as well,” said Prof Kaschula.

He referred to several instances in the book where translations, whether in court or in documents, were misunderstood, leading to a loss of original meaning and, consequently, a misapplication of justice.

“I think it is a very tricky situation in the South African context, where history is so marred by racism and the way in which language is used in a pejorative way,” said Prof Kaschula.

Dr Docrat, a renowned forensic linguist, spoke to the second and third parts of the book, which focus on courtroom discourse and legal education. She emphasised the growing importance of the relationship between legal education and legal practice, noting that lawyers and judges should not limit their thinking to English alone.

“The whole thing revolves around the language of record policy in South Africa. And, you know, when we moved from English and Afrikaans to English-only, it was celebrated, and I can't understand how a monolingual policy was celebrated on the basis of transformation,” said Dr Docrat.

Recently, addressing delegates at the International Association for Forensic and Legal Linguistics conference at UWC, Chief Justice Mandisa Maya reiterated her call for an edict to make English the sole language of record in courts to be revisited. 

Dr Docrat said South Africa had strayed from the policy of inclusive change.

“It's quite sad to see the power of one policy, but the way we teach at our universities and how we produce our LLB graduates, even just our general students, from various other disciplines, we produce monolingual students. And it feeds into the workplace and into the court system,” said Dr Docrat, who shared that LLB students have reportedly resisted the inclusion of an indigenous language in their curriculum, arguing it is irrelevant to their legal practice. This "English-only" approach also burdens court interpreters.

Dr De Vries, distinguished language planner, academic, and forensic linguist, speaking to part four of the book, said one of the chapters in the section dealt with how interpretation was often lost in cultural nuance.

“That is why you need judges and judicial officers who are bilingual or multilingual and actually cultural leaders as interpreters as well, in the courts, in that specific context where the courts are situated. So in shaping the judges' understanding of the eventual verdict, a verdict that was quite difficult. If you don't shape the judge, if the judge doesn't know anything about the context, it's so difficult for him or her to shape the verdict,” said Dr De Vries. 

Dr Docrat urged judges to engage forensic linguists for the interpretation of specialised evidence. She noted that judges often dismissed this need, claiming that evaluating such evidence merely required reading comprehension.

“But the technicalities, again, it goes back to the interpretational issues in courts and the misinterpretation and how we are using our languages where perhaps there's a cultural or there's a linguistic void and there's no equivalence between languages,” said Dr Docrat.