Definition
Language Analysis for Determination of Origin (LADO) is a new branch of applied linguistics, used by governments in processing asylum seekers who are applying for refugee status.
Overview
Undocumented asylum seekers present two types of evidence to refugee status determination (RSD) processes:
Their body, i.e., medical evidence relating to age, torture, injury, etc.
Their speech, including both what they say about the reasons for their flight (the narrative content) and the way in which they say it (the linguistic evidence)
Since the 1990s, when language expertise in Scandinavian government bureaux first became outsourced to private language firms, governments have appealed to linguistic evidence as one means of verifying asylum seekers’ claims of identity, ethnicity, origin or nationality, in the context of increasing reliance on scientific evidence (e.g., fingerprints, DNA, x-rays) from expert fields to assist in RSD. Academic and forensic linguists refer to this as...
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References
Baltisberger E, Hubbuch P (2010) LADO with specialized linguists: the development of Lingua’s working method. In: Zwaan K, Muysken P, Verrips M (eds) Language and Origin. The role of language in European asylum procedures: a linguistic and legal survey. Wolf Legal Publishers, Nijmegen, pp 9–19
Blommaert J (2009) Language, asylum, and the national order. Curr Anthropol 50(4):415–441
Eades D (2009) Testing the claims of asylum seekers: the role of language analysis. Lang Assess Q 6:30–40
Foulkes P, French P (2012) Forensic speaker comparison: a linguistic-acoustic perspective. In: Tiersma P, Solan L (eds) The Oxford handbook of language and the law. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 557–572
Language and National Origin Group (2004) Guidelines for the use of language analysis in relation to questions of national origin in refugee cases. In: Eades D, Arends J (eds) Language analysis and determination of nationality. Thematic issue of “Int J Speech Lang Law Forensic Linguist” 11(2):261–226
Patrick PL (2010) Language variation and LADO (language analysis for determination of origin). In: Zwaan K, Muysken P, Verrips M (eds) Language and origin. The role of language in European asylum procedures: a linguistic and legal survey. Wolf Legal Publishers, Nijmegen, pp 73–87
Patrick PL (2012) Language analysis for determination of origin: objective evidence for refugee status determination. In: Tiersma P, Solan L (eds) The Oxford handbook of language and the law. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 533–546
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Patrick, P.L. (2014). Asylum and Language Analysis. In: Bean, F., Brown, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Migration. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6179-7_38-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6179-7_38-2
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Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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