Oral Presentation Session

Reviewed by: Association for Political and Legal Anthropology

Of interest to: Practicing and Applied Anthropologists, Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Students

Primary Theme: Class

Secondary Theme: Identity and Equity

(3-0555) The Role of Language and Class in Legal Identity Formations

Our panel is focused on the role of language and class in shaping the resistance, resilience, and adaptation of actors within legal systems. We are particularly interested in exploring the ways in which class and linguistic practices shape legal identities. The papers presented cover such topics as conflicts between expatriate and local communities over the role of English in Hong Kong LGBTI activism, migrant and working-class litigants' linguistic and economic barriers to family reunification in U.S. dependency hearings, Dalit struggles to find the right language to bring cases of violence to courts in India, working-class Japanese families navigating the linguistic and legal aspects of the compensation scheme following the Fukushima disaster, and the classed and linguistic standards of “objectivity” in American drug courts. The panel seeks to illuminate how class and language use can dictate how individuals are recognized and move through legal systems (Conley and O’Barr 1990; Merry 1990; Phillips 1998). From a more macroscopic perspective, we ask which classes and/or linguistic groups enact law? How do these limited voices use law to reify, disrupt, or reshape inequalities that result from class and language differences? How do race and ethnicity intersect, run parallel to, or contradict class and language use in legal settings? Finally, who are the gatekeepers of law and how do their own classed and linguistic identities restrict or open access to others?

Organizer(s)

• Jessica López-Espino

  PhD Candidate
  New York University

Chair(s)

• Jessica López-Espino

  PhD Candidate
  New York University

Presenter(s)

• Jessica López-Espino

  PhD Candidate
  New York University

Organizer(s)

• Nathan Madson

  Ph.D. Candidate
  New York University

Chair(s)

• Nathan Madson

  Ph.D. Candidate
  New York University

Presenter(s)

• Nathan Madson

  Ph.D. Candidate
  New York University

Discussant(s)

• Justin Richland

  University of Chicago

Presenter(s)

• Sandhya Fuchs

  PhD Candidate
  The London School of Economics and Politics

• Giulia Cavicchioli De Togni

  Third Year PhD Candidate at UCL Anthropology, and Postgraduate Teaching Assistant in Linguistic Anthropology at UCL (London)
  University College London

• Emily Metzner

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Presentations:

• 10:15 AM - 10:30 AM

  Linguistic Hierarchies in Family Reunification: Barriers to ‘Good’ Parenting in U.S. Juvenile Court
  Jessica Susana López-Espino – New York University
• 10:30 AM - 10:45 AM

  "They Don't Do Anything!": Instrumentalizing Language and Class in Hong Kong LGBTI Activism
  Nathan H. Madson – New York University
• 10:45 AM - 11:00 AM

  ‘We Are not Even Worthy of a Case:’ Cultural Idioms, Social Capital and the Dividing Power of Legal Discourse
  Sandhya Irina Fuchs – The London School of Economics and Politics
• 11:00 AM - 11:15 AM

  RIGHT TO EVACUATE: Language, Class and Inequality in Public Trials between Fukushima Nuclear Refugees and the Japanese Authorities
  Giulia Cavicchioli De Togni – University College London
• 11:15 AM - 11:30 AM

  “Is There Rum in this Jamaican Black Rum Cake?”: How Drug Treatment Courts Reproduce the Authority of the Reasonable Man
  Emily Metzner – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 11:30 AM - 11:45 AM

  Discussion
  Justin B. Richland – University of Chicago