Accessing interpreters along the continuum – Kriol in the justice system

Kriol is an English-lexified creole spoken by a rising number of Aboriginal Australians in parts of the Northern Territory, North Queensland, and Western Australia. As a growing contact language, Kriol is increasingly being used in various settings within Australia’s justice system, with speakers often requiring the aid of professional Kriol interpreters. In this presentation, I will explore some of the factors that may lead to the underutilization of Kriol interpreting services in legal settings, including the creole continuum of Kriol, issues with nomenclature, dialectal variation, attitudes towards the language, and speaker self-identification.

Although Kriol is recognized as a distinct language, rather than a variety of English in Australia, its creole continuum means that sometimes speakers may indeed be speaking a form of Aboriginal English, or on the opposite end of the continuum, a language that is unintelligible to Aboriginal English and Standard Australian English speakers. This, coupled with differing perceptions of languages and dialects within Kriol speech communities, and the varying degrees of Kriol speakers' proficiency in ‘everyday’ or ‘conversational’ English, has considerable ramifications for establishing the need for an interpreter for some Kriol speakers in legal contexts.

Data for this presentation is drawn from a number of discussions and recorded interviews with both Kriol and non-Kriol speakers who routinely engage with each other in legal contexts, including lawyers, magistrates and Kriol interpreters.