Choosing is losing: language policy and language choice acts at the asylum law firm

It seems impossible to explain language choice and practice in the multilingual, understudied context of an asylum law firm by simply referring to official policy texts and linguistic (human) rights. Based on linguistic-ethnographic data (in the form of participant observations, recordings and interviews conducted in the Belgian context), this study integrates a top-down perspective (focusing on the influence of language management) with a bottom-up perspective (by eliciting the research participants’ language attitudes and ideologies and by investigating what actually happens in practice). Approaching these different parameters of language policy from a discourse analytical perspective, shows how a clear framework of linguistic (human) rights to regulate lawyer-client communication is missing. Because of the lack of concrete stipulations on how to make language choice acts, interpretation of linguistic needs is left to the individual assessment of lawyers. This leads to highly situated decision-making practices, where lawyers draw on their own experience as well as the input of others to organise multilingual interaction. Although a top-down policy exists, practice shows a lack of regulation and transparency in the selection of linguistic strategies/support on the ground.