About
Margaret van Naerssen, PhD, (Applied Linguistics) is an Expert in Second Language Development, English Language Proficiency Assessment, and Language in Social Contexts). Since 1997, her forensic linguistics consultant work primarily has involved non-native English speakers.
She’s worked with defense and prosecution, primarily in criminal cases (some also civil). Cases have included Murder, Rape, Drugs, Terrorist Conspiracy, Police Interrogations, and Illegal Arrest, frequently involving Miranda Rights/Waivers issues. She’s testified in 5 federal courts: hearings, depositions, and bench trials, two involving the US Navy.
Dr. van Naerssen brings over 50 years of global experience (US and 55 other countries) to legal cases.
Below are some of the questions that Dr. van Naerssen has been asked to address.
The legal issue drives the question the expert witness is asked to address.
• What is the assessed English language proficiency of the NNS?
(NNS= Non-native speaker)
• How likely is it that the NNS had communicated in his/her truthful second
language (L2) proficiency? OR
How likely is it that the NNS had been intentionally trying to fake a lower
than truthful L2 proficiency for a perceived legal advantage?
• What is the likely impact of the person’s assessed English proficiency on
language/ linguistics aspects of the case? In police interview? In undercover
recordings? In a deposition? What evidence is there of comprehension or lack of
communication?
• To what extent did law enforcement and judicial officials make efforts to
adjust their communications to a NNS with a low level of English
proficiency? And allow for clarifications?
• What misbeliefs or myths did law enforcement or judicial officials have
about NNSs and their communication skills, and how might these have
affected their opinions about the NNS?
• What external conditions might have affected communications?
• With written documents, how likely were they accessible to the NNS based
on the NNS’s assessed L2 literacy and based on the overall readability of the
documents by native speakers?
• Are initials/ sign-offs on a document valid if the NNS probably didn’t
understand the document?
• Was interpreting needed? Was it provided? Was it appropriate?
In many of the cases she is hired for--involve doing a language assessment of the person's English language communication skills. This has involved assessments in a maximum security prison, federal and state detention centers, and in jails, including one by Zoom into a rural jail across the country during COVID and another by Zoom into Eastern Europe. This has also included assessments in a local library, in the offices and hallways of hiring attorneys' work areas, and even in a defendant's kitchen.
Unlike in many expert cases, in cases involving non-native speakers, the linguistics expert might communicate personally with the defendant as part of language proficiency assessments and the gathering of additional language samples, through appropriate through communicative tasks.
This communication does not involve lengthy causal conversations--beyond introductions and appropriate "warm-up" tasks as part of a formal assessment. The expert must avoid becoming too involved and must not communicate about the case.
Dr. van Naerssen has worked primarily on cases in Daubert jurisdictions with one Frye exception, a hearing in a Pennsylvania state case. Her other 7 state cases (Daubert) have been in Florida, Illinois, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon,
Tennessee, and Virginia (mixed Daubert & Frye). One case crossed international boundaries.