Communication in child language brokering. Role expectation and role performance

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 soci- etal language. Since child language brokers engage in interpreted commu- nicative 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 exam- ine frequent communication strategies implemented by a child language broker and study if/how they meet the other parties’ expectations. Specifi- cally, two child language brokering strategies are examined: replacement of a monolingual interlocutor and summarizing of the monolingual interlocu- tors’ statements. We also discuss child language brokers’ roles and their alignment with adults’ expectations, an innovative focus that merits deeper discussion.