Child language brokers’ representations of parent–child relationships

Tony Cline | University College London, London

Sarah Crafter | Open University, Milton Keynes

Guida de Abreu | Oxford Brookes University, Oxford

Lindsay O’Dell | Open University, Milton Keynes

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.

Keywords: case studies, child development, family dynamics, semi-structured interviews, vignettes

Published online: 19 June 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.129.14cli

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Cited by

Cited by 5 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.

Ceccoli, Federica

2020. Reconstructing the experiences of child language brokering: a focus on the socio-emotional impact of the practice. The Translator ► pp. 1 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

2021. Child language brokering as a family care practice: Reframing the ‘parentified child’ debate. Children & Society

García-Sánchez, Inmaculada M.

2018. Children as Interactional Brokers of Care. Annual Review of Anthropology 47:1 ► pp. 167 ff.

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