This paper demonstrates the usefulness of social semiotic linguistic anthropology’s communication theory, for example, metapragmatics and linguistic ideology, for court interpreting studies. On the basis of a literature review and an analysis of data collected by the author, the paper puts forth the following arguments: Referential linguistic ideology, which considers verbatim translation to be the most accurate, constitutes a court interpreting ideology that tends to define the normative role of court interpreters. Monolingualism ideologies like national language ideology, which equates a language with a nation, and standard language ideology, which disregards other language varieties, prevail in court, but various language varieties are actually used. There is a gap between these ideologies and the discursive practice in court. Therefore, selecting court interpreters on the basis of “linguistic community” (Gumperz, 2001/1968) may serve to create “linguistic minorities” who are linguistically underprivileged and vulnerable. This paper concludes that, in order to guarantee justice in court, it is necessary to assign interpreters on the basis of “speech communities” (Gumperz, 2001/1968). This is because members of the same linguistic community do not necessarily share metapragmatic norms and thus belong to different speech communities.

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