An illusion of understanding

Abstract

In 1966, the Supreme Court of the United States, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, made a landmark decision in the case of Miranda v. Arizona:The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he has the right to remain silent, and that anything he says will be used against him in court; he must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have a lawyer with him during interrogation, and that, if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him. (Miranda v. Arizona, 1966: 437) Extending the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination from the courtroom to the police station, the Miranda decision aimed to safeguard suspects and the court against false and coerced confessions, obtained through deception, physical abuse, threats of punishment, deprivation of basic needs, and prolonged and exhausting interrogations. Once informed of their rights, suspects may relinquish them, "provided the waiver is made voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently" (Miranda v. Arizona, 1966: 444), that is "with a full awareness of both the nature of the right being abandoned and the consequences of the decision to abandon it" (Colorado v. Spring, 1986: 573). If the defense can prove that the defendant waived their rights unknowingly, unintelligently, or involuntarily, their inculpatory statements may be deemed inadmissible, thus weakening the basis for the conviction.Judges, however, tend to be skeptical of the claims that this or that defendant did not understand their rights. So do many journalists, firmly convinced that, thanks to ubiquitous police and court dramas, even the most casual TV viewers are conversant with their rights: "Anyone who's ever watched "Law & Order" has a pretty good understanding of Miranda rights", asserted an editorial in the New York Post. i Police officers may even reference pop culture before reciting the rights: "Okay, basically and you've heard the Miranda warning on Cops and TV and stuff" (Feld, 2006: 76). Chief Justice William Rehnquist summarized this view succinctly in Dickerson v. United States: "Miranda has become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture" (2000: 443). And if they are indeed part of our national culture, who, if anyone, does not understand the warnings and the rights they are intended to convey? Why native speakers of English do not always understand their rightsExperts concur that 80% of adult and 90% of juvenile custodial suspects customarily waive their rights and talk to the police without a lawyer present (

Revisiting the ‘E’ in EMI: students’ perceptions of standard English, lingua franca and translingual practices

“…Thus, the student with what they considered the lowest English proficiency was given a seemingly straightforward task but did not actually understand the instructions. The Chinese student nodded in agreement displaying an 'illusion of understanding' (Pavlenko 2018). This incident points towards a lack of communicative strategies required for communication with L2 speakers.…”

The Journey to Comprehensibility: Court Forms as the First Barrier to Accessing Justice

“…The cognitive and extra-linguistic barriers are given by the discrepancies in the legal and lay knowledge schemata and variations within socio-cultural perceptions, which can be difficult to address. The differences between legal and lay knowledge schemata, whether they have common areas of overlap or not, impede on the comprehension process; lack of understanding or lived-in misconceptions about law thus curb the effectiveness of court users’ participation in legal proceedings [ 30 , 34 ]. Even after the explanation or clarification of common misunderstandings, the misconceptions do not seem to disappear [ 30 ].…”

Everyone has the right to understand: Teaching legal rights to ESL students

“…In the process, teachers can evaluate which terms and linguistic structures students are familiar with and which represent difficulties. In the study of the comprehension of the Miranda warnings, lexical gaps of advanced ESL students included legal terms (e.g., consent , jury ), low‐frequency words (e.g., infringe , seize ), and polysemous words, that is, words with multiple meanings (e.g., capital , present ) (Pavlenko et al, 2019). Even students’ mastery of right was partial: All were familiar with oppositions right/left and right/wrong, but not everyone knew the meaning of right as a legal guarantee.…”

“…Studies to date identify several linguistic factors complicating the understanding of such sentences, including (a) information density, (b) legal jargon (e.g., attorney , court of law , exercise rights ), (c) low‐frequency terms (e.g., afford , remain ), (d) polysemy (e.g., present , right ), and (d) syntactic complexity (e.g., multiple clauses, subordination, embedding, multiple negation, passive and impersonal constructions, nominalizations, prepositional phrases) (Berk‐Seligson, 2009, 2016; Pavlenko, 2008; Pavlenko et al, 2019; Shuy, 1997).…”

“…In New Zealand, Innes and Erlam (2018) found that L1 speakers performed significantly better (90% to 74% accuracy) on comprehension questions following the presentation of rights than L2 speakers (61% to 58%). In a study conducted in the United States by two of the present authors (Pavlenko, Hepford, & Jarvis, 2019), 41 native speakers of English and 59 L2 speakers enrolled in advanced ESL classes, were asked to listen to recorded Miranda warnings, played one sentence at a time, and to write each sentence in their own words. Their responses were then rated by three independent evaluators who assessed each paraphrased clause, assigning 0 points for blank or misunderstood clauses, 1 for partial understanding, and 2 for full understanding, with a maximum score of 22 points.…”