Research Project
Children and Adolescents as Language Brokers
ESRC Seminar Group
A one-day conference on 12th March 2005
Sessions and presenters
Nigel Hall
Institute of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University
An introduction to child and adolescent language brokering
This session examines the notion of language brokering and raises a number of questions about areas within language brokering that have so far received less attention than they merit.
Jo Moran-Ellis
Department of Sociology, University of Surrey
Language brokering and the sociology of childhood
Building on ideas of agency and social competence, and the challenges that the new sociology of childhood has made to the hegemony of developmentalism and socialisation in defining the nature of children and childhood, this chapter will show that understandings of the language and cultural brokering that children undertake must have at their heart a notion both of the child as a social actor, and as someone structurally positioned within multiple cultural contexts, social relations (including inter-generational and intra-generational), and in wider ideological contexts.
Anita Wilson
Spencer Fellow, Linguistics Department, Lancaster University
He wrote something rude …so I hit him’: Language and literacy brokering in prison settings
While global statistics suggest a notion of prisoners as non-literate and disengaged, ethnographers such as myself are finding a wealth of prisoner-generated literacy-related activities, practices and artefacts that range across institutional settings. They reflect significant engagement with literacy as a means of maintaining social identity, personal networks and cultural loyalty. This presentation will share some on-going issues from my recent work with young men in prison settings on reciprocity and brokerage.
Zhiyan Guo
Ph. D Student, Institute of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University
Child cultural brokering in Mandarin-speaking Chinese families in the UK.
Language brokering is part of cultural brokering and this session considers cultural brokering by very young children in a social group that as Mandarin speakers are in a minority within the overall Chinese population of the UK.
Iris Guske
Deputy Head of the Kempten School of Translation and Interpreting Studies and a researcher at the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex
"The Impact of Immigrants' Monolingualism on their Adolescent Children's Identity Formation"
The aim of the study carried out in Germany was to find out if their parents' real and/or perceived linguistic inadequacies and the concomitant role reversal put second-generation immigrants under pressures not experienced by their host-culture peers, whether they consequently gravitated towards their ethnic peers, and how cross-pressure situations thus experienced impacted on the development of the self.
Lorraine Davis
Devon Education Service
Language Brokering: the experience of pupils in Devon schools.
The presentation considers the experiences of child language brokers from the perspective of teachers, parents and the children. It explores the extent to which language brokering is occurring and the situations in which it takes place.
Sue Jones and Nigel Hall
Manchester Metropolitan University
Language brokering and CODA children
Hearing children of deaf parents may find themsleves acting as language brokers between their signing parents and the Hearing world. This session considers the lives of brokering CODA children and issues associated with translation between different language modes.
Mano Candappa
Thomas Coram Research Unit, London University
Refugee children as language brokers: rewards and tensions
The language brokering tasks undertaken by refugee children are critical to the functioning of their families when the language of the host country is unfamiliar to their parents. This session considers changes in terms of the inter-generational contract, and ways in which refugee children and more senior members of their families relate to each other when adults find themselves dependent on their children following forced migration. The session is based on recent research with refugee and asylum seeker children in the UK, conducted under the ESRC's Children 5-16 Programme.
Marjorie Orrelana
Department of Education, UCLA, USA.
"In Their Own Words: Literacy Brokering by Immigrant Youth in the United States."
In this presentation I will provide an overview of my ethnographic research with the children of immigrants from Mexico to the United States who are active language brokers for their families. Drawing from interviews, observations, transcripts of audiotaped translations episodes, and journal entries written by the youth, I focus especially on children's interpretations of written texts for their families, and consider implications for children's literacy development.
Caroline Free
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Bilingual children’s accounts of interpreting in health care settings.
Young people are sometimes used as interpreters in health care settings. This study sought to explore young peoples accounts of this contribution to the family's health care.
Charmian Kenner, Mahera Ruby and John Jessell
Goldsmiths College, London.
The exchange of linguistic and cultural resources between Bangladeshi children and grandparents in East London
Our study of intergenerational learning in East London has revealed the reciprocity of teaching and learning between 3-6 year olds and their grandparents, particularly where new technology is concerned. Here we present an analysis of one such event, in which a grandparent and grandchild jointly undertake a computer activity, switching between Sylheti/Bengali and English and drawing on their repertoire of cultural knowledge to negotiate the task.
Bogusia Temple
Senior Research Fellow, University of Salford
It would be better if my children could come: user preferences for
Interpreters.
This session examines the views of parents who find their lives mediated by child language brokers.
Book notice
Please note that discussions are underway with a major international publisher for an edited book on the topic of child and adolescent language brokering.