Language and Law w/ Alex Walker: Part 1: Dialectal Due Process

Legal academia is no stranger to questions of linguistics. After all, law is, in some sense, a linguistic construction. But our entire legal system interfaces with language far more than we might think. For a long time, the relationship between linguistics and law has concentrated on philosophy of language and forensic linguistics. Lawyers and linguists become friends over debates about entailment conditions or Constitutional arguments predicated upon the semantic change of a singular noun (arms, anyone?). But Alex Walker (the current Rappaport Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School), works not at the intersection of linguistic structure and the law, but rather on the legal system's reception of linguistic utterances. In Saussurean terms, this is about parole, not langue.

In Part 1 of our conversation, Alex explains his work on linguistic discrimination in the legal system. Why are some voices unable to be heard properly in courtrooms? What is Dialectal Due Process and how will its implementation improve the situation? While linguistic prejudice and misinterpretation are ubiquitous, the consequences can be graver when someone can’t be understood on a witness stand as opposed to a job interview. That's a key part of this conversation: the ideas discussed here closely resemble ideas and concepts discussed in the past by sociolinguists. What's different is the methodology. As a legal scholar, Alex is interested in proposing policy and legal frameworks (backed-up by philosophical, economic, and historical arguments) to address problems that are not inherently linguistic, but rather instantiated through language. Racism won't be eradicated through linguistic justice alone, and linguistic justice won't solve the problem of mass incarceration, either. This is about making sure all people are understood and respected—linguistically and legally.

As always, it was an honor to interview someone so committed to interdisciplinary scholarship. The questions I ask and the arguments he offers are nothing if not legal—litigious, even—but they are concerned with language. And if all people are to be taken seriously in legal contexts, we need to hear them first.

Alex Walker's website

Publications

Black English for Lawyers

Rappaport Fellowship

Artwork by: Maja Mishevska, Brown '27 (https://mishevska.myportfolio.com/)