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Article published In:
Mediation Strategies
Edited by Anthony Pym
[Language Problems and Language Planning 42:3] 2018
► pp. 328–343
Articles / Articulos / Aufsätz / Arikoj

The complementary nature of linguistic mediation in transnational adoption mobility

| University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne
In order to explore why people in multilingual contexts choose one mediation strategy or another, we conducted case studies involving short-term mobility for adoption purposes. For parents who adopt a child born in a different country, the experience necessitates a range of linguistic strategies that include language learning, interpreting and translation services, lingua francas, and intercomprehension. A study of ten Italian transnational adoptive families shows that adoptive parents tend to combine these strategies according to the situational relevance of four mobility-related variables: parental agency, accuracy of information, self-reliance, and intimacy. The adoptive parents’ opinions about the benefits and limitations of each strategy indicate that mediation strategies are complementary means to reach the complex general purpose of acquiring parenthood.
Keywords: transnational adoptive parents, short-term mobility, mediation strategies, complementarity, intercomprehension
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The study
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Interviews
    • 2.3Context
  • 3.Mediation strategies and mobility-related variables
    • 3.1Official meetings with adoption institutions
    • 3.2Official meetings with the central authority in the country of origin
    • 3.3Informal exchanges with local people
    • 3.4The first meeting with the child outside child care institutions and family intimacy
  • 4.The complementarity of linguistic mediation
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 28 June 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lplp.00026.fio
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