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Individuals with varying types of language expertise - linguists with academic credentials, interpreters with different levels of qualification, native speakers with few or no academic qualifications - are increasingly involved, in different configurations, in the determination of national, regional or ethnic origins of refugees as part of the asylum process (Eades 2005). There has been considerable controversy over the role that language experts and linguistic expertise should play in this process. Attempts to draw up a minimum set of standards (Language and National Origin Group, 2004), though widely endorsed by linguists, are still preliminary and have been contested in proceedings. While each host nation differs in its practices, a common solution for governments is to employ a commercial language firm, such as Sprakab (based in Sweden), who collect speech over the telephone, analyse it, and provide a report within a few hours. These reports may then be relied upon by bodies such as the UK Asylum & Immigration Tribunal in deciding asylum claims.

This paper considers related issues, illustrated with data drawn from recent cases of Somali appellants in the UK asylum process. Somali appeals cases are distinctive: there is rarely disagreement as to whether the applicant speaks a language natively that is characteristically spoken in Somalia - indeed, it is generally granted that the applicant has Somali origins. Rather, the issue at stake is often membership of a minority and persecuted clan, of which the ability to speak the relevant minority dialect of Somali - Af-Reer Hamar - is held to be an index. This focuses the language issues on a set of questions including the following:

o What does it mean to be bi-dialectal? Do linguistically-naïve actors in the asylum process make valid assumptions about multilingualism?

o Why do speakers switch between standard languages & stigmatized minority dialects? What consequences do such language choices have for the asylum process? What effects do the language-testing context have on these choices?

o What effect do language attitudes and ideologies have on the ability of actors in the asylum process to recognize, produce and label ways of speaking?

o How is determination of ethnic identity related to speech evidence?

o What types of analysis need to be undertaken to give accurate and reliable results? What standards of accuracy and reliability should be applied? What qualifications ought to be required of those claiming language expertise?

o What actual qualifications, types and levels of expertise are possessed by those now submitting evidence to the UKAIT process? Does practice meet international scientific standards? Does it match standards of expertise required in civil and criminal court processes in the UK?

Conclusions are drawn concerning the nature of expertise that is recommended for practitioners of language analysis.

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