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Translation and Interpreting Studies: Online-First Articles

Communication in child language brokering

Role expectation and role performance

ORCID logo | Heriot-Watt University
ORCID logo | University of Bologna

Child Language Brokering (CLB) refers to the mediation and translation activities performed by bi/multilingual children and adolescents for their peers, family members, and/or other people belonging to their linguistic community who may not be proficient enough to communicate in the societal language. Since child language brokers engage in interpreted communicative events and implement communicative strategies, one interesting but also controversial area of CLB is the communicative role children play and the expectations of other parties about that role. In this paper we examine frequent communication strategies implemented by a child language broker and study if/how they meet the other parties’ expectations. Specifically, two child language brokering strategies are examined: replacement of a monolingual interlocutor and summarizing of the monolingual interlocutors’ statements. We also discuss child language brokers’ roles and their alignment with adults’ expectations, an innovative focus that merits deeper discussion.

Keywords: childhood studies, child language brokering, ad-hoc interpreting, role expectation, role performance
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • An interdisciplinary theoretical framework: From Grice’s maxims of communication to childhood studies
  • Review of relevant literature
    • Fluidity of CLBs’ roles: Spotlight on their communicative role
    • Adults’ expectations about CLB
  • The study
    • Ethical considerations over collecting data with minors
    • The site
    • Contextualized information on role expectations and role materialization
    • The participants
    • Data transcription and coding
  • Data analysis
    • Contextual information
    • Replacing the monolingual interlocutor: When Liling replaces Hu
    • Replacing the monolingual interlocutor: When Liling replaces Anna
    • Summarizing the monolingual interlocutor’s turn
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion, implications, limitations and call for further research
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 May 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.21084.ang
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