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Article published In:
Unpacking Sign Language Interpreting: Special issue of the Journal on Translation and Interpreting Studies 17:3 (2022)
Edited by Hilde Haualand, Maartje De Meulder and Jemina Napier
[Translation and Interpreting Studies 17:3] 2022
► pp. 381–405

Integrated monolingualism and audism governing Spanish Sign-Language users’ self-determination in the legal system

ORCID logo | Universitat Jaume I
ORCID logo | Universidad Rey Juan Carlos

Many legal systems have begun to adjust their social and linguistic practices to accommodate non-dominant social groups. However, linguistic diversity is often framed as an exception, and interpreters are viewed as a service to address these exceptions rather than as part of broader structural changes to enable access to justice. This article explores the access to and participation in the Spanish legal system of Spanish Sign-Language users (SSLUs) who are deaf or heard of hearing. Through semi-structured interviews with SSLUs, the article elicits their perceptions of the legal field. These data are analyzed from the perspective of self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan 1985) to identify how SSLUs’ psychological needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness are linked to the social, cultural, and economic capital invested and distributed through social practices. The goal is to clarify how SSLUs’ habitus sustains or resists monolingual and audist ideologies establishing hierarchies between language communities.

Keywords: social practice, self-determination theory, capital, habitus, monolingualism, audism
Article outline
  • Introduction: The law as cooperation and oppression
  • Monolingualism and audism as oppressive ideologies in the Spanish legal system
  • Power and self-determination in exploring self-oppression
  • Method
  • Results and discussion
    • Cultural capital governing the self-determined habitus
    • Social capital governing self-determination
      • Earning social capital
      • SLI services in capital investment and ideology construction
      • Linking, bonding, and bridging in the legal field
    • Economic capital governing self-determination
  • Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 6 March 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.21029.mon
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