This paper reports the analysis of qualitative data from a broader study of young people’s representations of conflicting roles in child development. Just over a quarter of the group, bilingual students who spoke a variety of first languages had had personal experience of child language brokering (CLB). Employing vignette methodology, they were invited to reflect on the implications of an adolescent boy’s language brokering activities for, among other things, his relationships within his family. In this paper, we will present brief case studies to illustrate different positions that members of the group adopted in relation to developmental scripts emphasizing independence and interdependence between young people and their parents (Dorner et al. 2008). Through an analysis of individual CLB case studies, we illustrate various ways in which individual young people reported the balancing of the demands of autonomy and connectedness in their analysis of relationships between young people and their parents.
2002“Exploring Ways Parents Participate in Their Children's School Mathematical Learning: Cases Studies in Multiethnic Primary Schools”. Transitions Between Contexts of Mathematical Practices ed. by Guida de Abreu, Alan J. Bishop and Norma C. Presmeg, 123–148.Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Cline, Tony, Sarah Crafter, Lindsay O'Dell & Guida de Abreu
2011“Young People's Representations of Language Brokering”. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 32: 3. 207–220.
Cohen, Suzanne, Jo Moran-Ellis & Chris Smaje
1999“Children as Informal Interpreters in GP Consultations: Pragmatics and Ideology”. Sociology of Health and Illness 21: 2. 163–186.
Crafter, Sarah, Lindsay O’Dell, Guida de Abreu & Tony Cline
2009“Young Peoples’ Representations of ‘Atypical’ Work in English Society”. Children and Society 23. 176–188.
Dorner, Lisa M., Marjorie F. Orellana & Rosa Jiménez
2008“It's One of Those Things That You Do to Help the Family”: Language Brokering and the Development of Immigrant Adolescents”. Journal of Adolescent Research 23: 5. 515–543.
Free, Caroline, Green, J., Bhavani, V. & Newman, A.
2003“Bilingual Young People’s Experiences of Interpreting in Primary Care”. British Journal of General Practice 53. 530–535.
Morales, Alejandro & William E. Hanson
2005“Language Brokering: An Integrative Review of the Literature”. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 27: 4. 471–503.
O’Dell, Lindsay, Guida de Abreu, Tony Cline & Sarah Crafter
2006Young People’s Representations of Conflicting Roles in Child Development. End of Award Report, ESRC. Ref. RES-000-22-0549. [URL] (last viewed February 2, 2014).
O'Dell, Lindsay, Sarah Crafter, Guida de Abreu & Tony Cline
2010“Constructing 'Normal Childhoods': Young People Talk about Young Carers”. Disability & Society 25: 6. 643–655.
Pope, Catherine, Sue Ziebland & Nicholas Mays
2006“Qualitative Research in Health Care: Analysing Qualitative Data”. British Medical Journal 320. 114–116.
Tse, Lucy
1996“Language Brokering in Linguistic Minority Communities: The Case of Chinese- and Vietnamese-American Students”. The Bilingual Research Journal 20. 485–498.Weisskirch, Robert S. 2006 “Emotional Aspects of Language Brokering among Mexican American Adults”. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 27: 4. 332–343.
Wu, N. H. & SuYeong Kim
2009“Chinese American Adolescents’ Perceptions of the Language Brokering Experience as a Sense of Burden and Sense of Efficacy”. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 38. 703–718.
Cited by
Cited by 7 other publications
Ackroyd, Vicci & Barry Wright
2018. Working with British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters: lessons from child and adolescent mental health services in the U.K.. Journal of Communication in Healthcare 11:3 ► pp. 195 ff.
2021. Reconstructing the experiences of child language brokering: a focus on the socio-emotional impact of the practice. The Translator 27:2 ► pp. 216 ff.
Crafter, Sarah & Humera Iqbal
2020. The Contact Zone and Dialogical Positionalities in “Non-Normative” Childhoods: How Children Who Language Broker Manage Conflict. Review of General Psychology 24:1 ► pp. 31 ff.
Crafter, Sarah & Humera Iqbal
2022. Child language brokering as a family care practice: Reframing the ‘parentified child’ debate. Children & Society 36:3 ► pp. 400 ff.
García-Sánchez, Inmaculada M.
2018. Children as Interactional Brokers of Care. Annual Review of Anthropology 47:1 ► pp. 167 ff.
Thoma, Nadja & Anna-Katharina Draxl
2022. Transforming language brokering policies at school: Learning from students with transnational biographies. European Educational Research Journal► pp. 147490412211265 ff.
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