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Part of
Non-professional Interpreting and Translation: State of the art and future of an emerging field of research
Edited by Rachele Antonini, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato and Ira Torresi
[Benjamins Translation Library 129] 2017
► pp. 337–357

Chapter 17
Seeing brokering in bright colours

Participatory artwork elicitation in CLB research

A recurrent issue in child language brokering (CLB) research is how to best adjust ethnographic methodologies in order to collect data from young children. There are a number of practical considerations in addition to the necessary ethical aspects. Questionnaires and other methods relying on the written word may prove inadequate for first- and second-graders, and even for older bilingual or multilingual children who may not have the same level of literacy in all their languages. Methods relying on the spoken word, such as interviews, focus groups or participant observation, may prove similarly problematic when groups of respondents have mixed language proficiency levels. Artwork elicitation, on the contrary, can be an effective and inclusive way to collect qualitative data about young children’s feelings and perceptions about CLB. It has the potential to elicit visual narratives from large groups of children (e.g. entire classes or schools), while leaving them free to include aspects of the phenomenon being investigated that would otherwise be difficult for them to describe in words. This chapter explores primary school children’s experience of CLB as it emerges from artwork submitted for the “Budding translators” competition described by Antonini (this volume), and proposes an analysis that draws mainly on visual and social semiotics.

Keywords: artwork elicitation, visual narratives, participatory ethnological research, visual semiotics, perceptions of CLB
Article outline
  • 1.Why artwork elicitation
  • 2.The study: Data collection and method of analysis
  • 3.The child in the middle: Where does the broker stand?
  • 4.The colours of brokering
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.129.17tor
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Ceccoli, Federica
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. DOI logo
Napier, Jemina
2021. Doing Research on Sign Language Brokering. In Sign Language Brokering in Deaf-Hearing Families, ► pp. 111 ff. DOI logo

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