Language Brokering in Immigrant Families

Theories and Contexts

Robert S. Weisskirch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138185111
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317289838
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Translating & Interpreting
• Index: Social Sciences

Language Brokering in Immigrant Families: Theories and Contexts brings together an international group of researchers to share their findings on language brokering—when immigrant children translate for their parents and other adults. Given the large amount of immigration occurring worldwide, it is important to understand how language brokering may support children's and families' acculturation to new countries. The chapter authors include overviews of the existing literature, insights from multiple disciplines, the potential benefits and drawbacks to language brokering, and the contexts that may influence children, adolescents, and emerging adults who language broker. With the latest findings, the authors theorize on how language brokering may function and the outcomes for those who do so.

Part I

Frameworks of Language Brokering

1

A Developmental Perspective on Language Brokering

Robert S. Weisskirch

Introduction

Language brokering has been defined as the process whereby children interpret from one language to another for parents and other adults (Tse, 1996b). Many children who speak and understand more than one language may begin language brokering as children but may continue to engage in the practice through adolescence and into adulthood (Valdes, 2003; Weisskirch, 2006; Weisskirch, et al., 2011). The experience of language brokering may affect children, adolescents, emerging adults, and adults differently because of the unique characteristics of each developmental period and because of the varying role of parents in language brokering during each of these periods.

Contexts of Language Brokering

Language brokering occurs in a wide range of locations, situations, with a range of items requiring translation.¹ In the past, language brokers have reported translating in a variety of places (e.g., medical offices, social service offices, immigration offices, schools, and parental worksites), with a diversity of items (e.g., rental agreements, immigration forms, notes from school, insurance documents, bills), and in many types of settings and situations (e.g., hospital emergency rooms, parent-teacher conferences, parent’s workplace, on the phone, and in stores) that may require sophisticated conceptual understanding linguistically, culturally, and conceptually (Acoach & Webb, 2004; Morales & Hanson, 2005; Orellana, Dorner, & Pulido, 2003).

Language brokering for parents within a family merits specific discussion. In families, parents typically hold a position of power and authority. However, when youth language broker for parents, it may alter typical and expected patterns of authority. Parents may feel less able to direct the family with the outside world and feel diminished in their role as parents and, possibly, personally as individuals, in consequence (Oznobishin & Kurman, 2009; Titzmann, 2012). However, there is growing evidence that parental interactions with child language brokers may shape the outcome for all parties involved. That is, parents who provide a supportive relationship in which to provide language brokering tend to have children who report positive outcomes (Shen, Kim, Wang, & Chao, 2014; Weisskirch, 2007; Wu & Kim, 2009). In contrast, parents who are less positive (i.e., demanding, place undue expectations, etc.) have child language brokers who report more negative experiences with language brokering (Hua & Costigan, 2012; Love & Buriel, 2007; Weisskirch, 2007). How parents frame language brokering tasks for their children may be an extension of their general parenting style, a new pattern of behavior in response to their language deficit, or even both. Since parents strongly influence developmental outcomes for children, how parents interact with and respond to their children when language brokering may have immediate and cumulative effects. Further, how language brokers view language brokering may be perceived by them as an extension of their parent-child relationship. Hence, in language brokering, the family environment and parent-child relationships intersect distinctively with developmental processes for children, adolescents, and emerging adults.

The family lifecycle may also affect the experience of language brokering. McGoldrick and Shibusawa (2012) asserted that there are developmental times in which the family relationships are closer and inward-focused toward the family, and times in which they are more distant, expansive, and outward-focused. For example, when children are infants, families across generations may be closer, given the focus on family building. When children are adolescents, the relationships may be more distant. Adolescents’ attentions are focused outside the family, parents (typically in their 40s) are engaging in some reevaluation of their lives, and grandparents may be preparing for retirement. During the children-as-adolescents cycle of the family, inserting language brokering may further place the family system in disequilibrium.

In the family lifecycle, researchers asserted that unpredictable stressors such as immigration may disrupt the family system. Falicov (2012) further noted that immigrants to the United States experience loss, mourning, and grief related to immigration similar to those experiencing the death of loved ones. The loss continues to “reach forward to shape future generations born in the new land” (p. 301). However, Falicov indicated that immigrating families become resilient, use their resources (such as language brokering), and can reorganize relationships to become adaptive and thrive in the host country.

Given that immigration is an unpredictable life event (even if the immigration was planned), in order to adapt to the host country families may need to use their assets, which include language brokering among other adaptive acculturative processes (Berry, 2003). Most often, language brokering occurs in immigrant families, where cultural expectations may differ from the host countries. Many of the immigrants are leaving countries with collectivist cultural origins and moving to countries where the culture is more individualistic, such as the United States, UK, Canada, Germany, and Israel (Hofstede, 1980; Triandis, 1995). The cultural shift in the host country also may contribute to how youth experience language brokering.

Individuals from collectivist societies tend to favor their in-groups—such as family, tribe, clan, or nation—and shape their behaviors to support the group norm or expectations. Individuals from individualistic societies support the notion that individuals are autonomous and independent from their in-groups and favor personal goals over group goals, shaping behaviors to support achievement of their own goals (Triandis, 2001). For parents from collectivist cultural backgrounds, their beliefs may be that one sacrifices one’s own goals for the betterment of the family. Carrying this belief into the language brokering situation, parents may expect their children to cease their own activities and step into the position to help the parents and the family unit as whole by language brokering. Youth, with greater exposure in an individualistic society like the United States, UK, Germany, etc., than their parents, may want to focus their time and efforts on their own activities and may not fully understand, or perhaps empathize with, why their parents cannot be more independent in their dealings. This lack of understanding may be developmental in that the children or adolescents may not be fully able to take other perspectives, and it may also be a lack of cultural socialization in that the children or adolescents may not have been taught how to think and behave in a manner consistent with the collectivist heritage background.

Indeed, language brokering may support family ethnic socialization in which parents and others provide guidance (e.g., explicitly teaching, commenting on behavior, using a heritage language use, etc.) on beliefs and behaviors that are valued with the ethnic group of origin (Huynh & Fuligni, 2008). Many ethnic minority individuals are taught about their ethnic heritage and about how to cope with discrimination. Language brokering may be a vehicle by which parents engage in cultural socialization by encouraging heritage language use, learning cultural customs, and providing enculturation of values (Hughes, Rodriguez, Smith, Johnson, Stevenson, & Spicer, 2006). Indeed, Wu and Kim (2009) indicated that when Chinese American youth are more Chinese oriented they feel a sense of efficacy in brokering for parents. Further, Weisskirch et al. (2011) found greater support for cultural values of origin among frequent college student language brokers in comparison to non–language brokering co-ethnic college students. Similarly, Cila and LaLonde (2015) reported a significant association between the number of items translated and heritage value orientation among a sample of South Asian Canadian college students. There is some evidence that individuals gain a greater understanding of their heritage culture through language brokering, which may, in turn, contribute to positive individual development as well.

Language Development in Children

Theories support the notion that humans evolved to develop language (Dunbar, 1993). Research has found that children in utero react to external sounds. Shortly after birth, infants will prefer the sounds of their mother’s voice over others (DeCasper & Fifer, 1980). Infants through the first year and beyond gradually attune their discrimination of the sounds of the language(s) to which they are exposed (Werker, 1989). Children within the first 2 years move from producing sounds to forming words and small phrases to learning several words a day (Tamis-Lemonda, Bornstein, Kahana-Kalman, Baumwell, & Cyphers, 1998). By the time children are 6 years old, they may have as many as 14,000 words in their vocabulary (Clark, 1993). For children who grow up bilingual, the same is true. Bialystok, Craik, Green, and Gollan (2009) noted that “Bilingual language acquisition is as effortless, efficient, and successful as monolingual acquisition” (p. 90). Given their developing language abilities, children can readily acquire a second language (or more) from being in an environment where the languages are used.

Within immigrant families, however, full bilingualism may not be achieved. For children who immigrate to the United States, the level of bilingualism may depend on the age of arrival and exposure to English. Those children who arrive at older ages (e.g., close to or at adolescence) may retain nativity in the first language. Children who arrive at younger ages may lack exposure to in-depth heritage language learning due to insufficient opportunities for heritage language retention, and they may shift quickly to English dominance (Suárez-Orozco, Abo-Zena, & Marks, 2015). For children who grow up in a two-language household but are not immigrants themselves, there may be dominance in one language over the other. In addition, because English is the language of instruction in school, children may develop an English-dominant academic vocabulary with a home-life vocabulary focused on the heritage language. Although these speakers of two languages may have some understanding of both languages, their level of bilingualism may be incomplete.

Children and Language Brokering

Although full bilingualism may not be achieved, language brokering may begin early in life. There are some qualitative and case studies of immigrant children to provide evidence that children serve as language brokers as soon as they acquire the host language (e.g., Guo, 2014; McQuillan & Tse, 1995; Vasquez, Pease-Alvarez, & Shannon, 1994). In retrospective qualitative and case studies of immigrant adolescents and adults, many participants indicate that they have engaged in language brokering since childhood (e.g., Valdes, 2003). A few studies report that participants indicate beginning to language broker between 8 and 12 years old, on average (Chao, 2001; Cila & LaLonde, 2015; McQuillan & Tse, 1995; Tse, 1995, 1996a) and within 1 to 3 years of arrival in the United States (Tse, 1995, 1996b). Given the average of when children begin language brokering as reported in the research literature, the subsequent section will focus on this developmental period.

Children in Middle Childhood and Language Brokering

According to Piagetian theory, children between roughly ages 7 to 11 are in the stage of Concrete Operational Thought. In this stage of development, children are able to successfully “conserve” mass, weight, volume, and area on classic Piagetian conservation tasks—which means that children can hold at least two different conceptual ideas in their minds at the same time when performing a task. Guo (2014) provided an example of an 8-year-old Chinese immigrant boy to the UK who in overhearing a conversation between the parent and a researcher in Mandarin about the pine trees in the garden interjected that the pine trees are called conifers, using the English word because it was a word he did not know in Mandarin. His ability to recognize the class inclusion of pine trees as a kind of conifer—let alone following the conversation in Mandarin and responding with the English concept—is characteristic of children in the Concrete Operational Thought stage. At this stage, children can engage in transformational thought where they can mentally reverse mental actions (Piaget, 1953). Children also move away from egocentrism and are better able to see things from others’ perspectives, given their experience interacting with others (Piaget, 1928). However, they lack some abilities to engage with abstract concepts and thoughts, and they may be limited in their ability to engage in scientific processes.

Applied to language brokering situations, children at this age may find themselves able to understand the languages for translation but may struggle with a limited vocabulary and incomplete conceptual understanding. They may reshape the discussion of topics in a way that fits with their vocabulary and understanding of the text or communication. For example, in one study, Hai, a 7-year-old Chinese immigrant to Britain, explained to his mother about wearing a poppy for Remembrance Day in commemoration of those who served in military battles. He explained, mostly in Mandarin, that “In the trench, there is Yuk mud, nothing grows but only poppy grows, and poppy is pretty” (Guo, 2014, p. 82). Hai’s understanding of why poppies are worn demonstrated partial understanding, as may be characteristic of a child language broker in the stage of Concrete Operational Thought. Further, children at this stage, may try to advance their understanding through the interaction as best they can. Vasquez et al. (1994) gave an example of a Latina language brokering child, Leti, who in a chiropractor’s office with her mother fails to translate accurately but becomes aware of how she can choose what gets translated. Further along in her narrative, Leti explained that her mother went to a specialist for women in another town to address her abdominal pain. The doctor replied with a specialist—a gastroenterologist. Leti acquiesced that the doctor’s assumption was correct because she did not know the term “gastroenterologist.” Later, she did not know the word matriz (uterus), in Spanish or its English equivalent and substituted “stomach” because that was how her mother had referred to the area that was causing pain. This example may be emblematic of the newly developed cognitive skills that children in the Concrete Operational Thought stage are able to do—manipulate the vocabulary and concepts to present their understanding, despite the imprecision or inaccuracy. In addition, because of her developmental level, she may not fully have grasped the outcome that the doctor was incorrect in his understanding of the kind of medical specialist. Further, she did not recognize the limitation in her vocabulary, did not have the cognitive abilities yet to realize that her understanding and translation were inaccurate, and did not know to ask for clarification, which may be typical of children in Concrete Operational Thought.

According to Eriksonian theory, children from ages 6 to 12 are in the Industry versus Inferiority stage of ego development. At this stage, children should be able to resolve the central psychosocial task by being productive and feeling competent in their abi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Frameworks of Language Brokering
• Part II Family Dynamics
• Part III Applied Contexts and Settings
• Part IV Parents’ Roles and Emerging Adult Language Brokers
• Index