Co-Constructing Narratives of Language Brokering and Learning through Digital Discourse

• In Event: Language Brokering in Diverse Contexts: Implications for Schools

Abstract

Objective
Despite the ubiquitous nature of language brokering (henceforth LB) for many youth of immigrant backgrounds, LB is often invisibilized or treated as non-normative (e.g. Antonini, 2016; Orellana, 2009). As such, my first objective is to explore ways in which LB experiences are made visible through digital media, specifically TikTok, where LB videos receive millions of views and thousands of comments. Due to the wide audience reach, these videos provide novel opportunities for language brokers to see how other language brokers present and speak about the sociocultural, cognitive, and linguistic skills and labor involved in LB. I then explore the ways that video creators, viewers, and commentators co-construct LB narratives and specifically look at a subset of videos highlighting the learning and skills involved in LB.

Framework
This study is rooted in ethnographic LB research (e.g. García-Sánchez, 2018; Reynolds & Orellana, 2014) positioning LB as a translinguistic practice (García-Sánchez & Orellana, 2022) and highlighting the learning that occurs in LB (e.g. Dorner et al., 2007; Orellana & García-Sánchez, 2023). I put this in conversation with Citizen Sociolinguistics (Rymes et al., 2017) to frame how narratives co-constructed online by content creators, commenters, and viewers can (re-)shape lay perceptions of language and how online videos can be pedagogical tools to raise the metalinguistic awareness of young people in classrooms.

Methods and Data Sources
Findings are based on analysis of over 100 social media LB videos. This commenced with systematic online observations (Kreis, 2022) to ensure understanding of the digital landscape (i.e. relevant accounts, hashtags, and keywords). I then collected public social media videos and their comments throughout 2024 before engaging in digital discourse (Vasquez, 2022) and conversational narrative (Rymes and Leone-Pizzighella, 2018) analyses to the co-creation of LB narratives.

Results
Through digital media, language brokers were represented in ways that made them feel “seen”. Importantly, a subgroup of content creators used digital media to demonstrate their metalinguistic and metapragmatic awareness of LB in multiple ways, including directly stating what they learned while LB, encouraging others to see LB as a highly skilled activity, and demonstrating the metalinguistic skills involved in LB through performing skits recreating LB experiences. I show the ways in which these narratives of learning and skill both were and were not taken up through comments and video responses. I conclude by arguing that such videos highlighting LB learning and skills are important to both challenge and (re-)produce dominant deficit discourses about language and LB (e.g. languagelessness) and can be used to make other language brokers aware of their metalinguistic and metapragmatic awareness.

Significance
Despite digital media’s potential as a locus of study for scholars to understand how language brokers make sense and talk about LB experiences, little work has been done on LB digital media. I argue that such videos could be an essential tool to cultivate the metalinguistic and metapragmatic strategies needed to bridge learning from outside the school with what students are asked to do in classrooms (Lee, 2007; García-Sánchez & Orellana, 2019).

Author

• Flora Zempleni, University of California - Los Angeles