Taalanalyse in Een Meertalige Asielprocedure

This paper surveys recent research and scientific discussions about multilingualism in the Dutch asylum procedure. The paper focuses on the issue of language analysis in relation to questions of national origin in refugee cases. The Dutch institutional procedure is analyzed in order to assess in detail the communicative roles and interactions between the participants in this procedure (i.e. the asylum seeker, the official interviewee, the interpreter, the language analysts, the linguistic contra-experts and asylum lawyers). The main conclusion of the paper is that experts disagree on the reliability of the language analysis. International research is proposed to increase its quality. Moreover, the paper suggests that applied linguists should establish quality norms for the application of their research in legal contexts.