The Transcultural Virtuosity of Immigrant Child Language Brokers

• In Event: Learning "In-Between" Cultural Worlds: An Immigrant Perspective on Education

Abstract

This paper examines the “transcultural repositioning” (Guerra, 2003) or transcultural virtuosity displayed by immigrant youth language brokers: their orientation toward and disposition to understand the perspectives of people from backgrounds different than one’s own, and the ability and willingness to adapt behaviors, discursive practices and epistemological stances flexibly in interactions with others. Such dispositions may be fostered by people growing up in Anzaldúa’s (1999) metaphorical “borderlands,” or what Mary Pratt (1991) calls “contact zones:” (social spaces where “cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other”). I focus on the children of immigrants who have extensive experience serving as translators/interpreters or language brokers for their immigrant families.
The mediational work done by language brokers offers particularly rich terrain for examining this phenomenon, because language brokers are called upon to negotiate differences for others in a wide range of situations as they use their abilities in two languages to speak, read, write, listen, and do things for others (Orellana, 2009). Using a sociocultural framework (Cole and Scribner, 1973) I ask what are the cognitive, social, linguistic and cultural competencies that are cultivated through language brokering work?

Author

• Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, University of California - Los Angeles