Publications

Publication details [#64153]

Fiorentino, Alice. 2018. The complementary nature of linguistic mediation in transnational adoption mobility. Language Problems and Language Planning 42 (3) : 328–343.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Journal DOI
10.1075/lplp

Annotation

In order to explore why people in multilingual contexts choose one mediation strategy or another, this research 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.