Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin (LADO): An Introduction

Abstract

The fundamental issue that motivates use of Language Analysis for Determination of Origin (LADO) is that some dislocated people have a right to claim asylum “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for [various] reasons” and cannot “avail [themselves] of the protection of [their own] country” (UNHCR 1951); yet if they lack documentary proof of their nationality, this must be established – and the success of false claims prevented – through the asylum process. Faced with undocumented people seeking asylum, governments began in 1993 to supplement other identification processes by testing their speech – generally, the language they claim as mother tongue. This is LADO. Governments, or the agencies or experts they employ, record and analyze claimants’ speech in order to ascertain whether someone really speaks the language of a group they say they belong to, at the level that should be expected (based on their story), as part of testing their claim to come from a certain nation, region or clan. This is based on the commonsense notion, hardly disputed by linguists, that most people’s native language, and the way they speak it, is linked to their family, geographical and ultimately national origins. Academic linguists sometimes serve as LADO analysts for governments, sometimes provide counter-evidence at appeals, and sometimes are brought in by lawyers as expert witnesses to evaluate – and where necessary challenge – the nature of this evidence; increasingly they also research the issues involved in LADO.The complex nature of the problems with LADO, and the far-reaching scope of the many sorts of people and procedures involved in the asylum context, are the motivation for and subject of this book, and of this introductory chapter, which surveys the LADO context and the other chapters in the volume.