Off‐the‐record: Metapragmatic distinctions and linguistic sympathy among interpreters in a California child welfare court

Abstract

AbstractThis article analyzes how trained and certified interpreters navigate ideologies about language interpreting, neutrality, and fairness in a California child welfare court. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork between 2016 and 2018, this analysis demonstrates how trained and certified court interpreters, as well as the attorneys, judges, and social workers with whom they work, distinguish between “off‐the‐record” and “on‐the‐record” legal interactions through shifting demands on interpreters’ labor. The metapragmatic distinctions that court professionals make about interpreting inform practices of interpreting, generate requests for additional forms of ad‐hoc interpreter assistance, and contribute to discourses of linguistic sympathy that center interpreters as central to addressing instances of language marginalization in legal settings. In a court where more than half of the open cases routinely involve Spanish‐dominant parents, interpreters and court professionals depend on court interpreters’ off‐the‐record assistance to meet case‐management goals. However, these metapragmatic distinctions and interpreters’ discourses of linguistic sympathy do little to interrupt systemic forms of marginalization that are reproduced in legal settings. This analysis contributes to theorizations of the interplay of discourses of affective and linguistic labor with institutional goals, as well as of how language ideologies shape interpreters’ social role in legal settings, undermining access to law.