Parents with limited or no English proficiency skills often rely on their bilingual children to act as interpreters and translators (De Ment, Buriel, & Villanueva, 2005; Morales & Hanson, 2005). This process is commonly termed “language brokering,” in which an untrained, bilingual child or adolescent culturally and linguistically mediates for a monolingual adult (most commonly the mother; Kam & Lazarevic, 2014). Language brokering has received increasing attention due to the ubiquity of this task (Morales & Hanson, 2005), and the potential severity of positive and negative outcomes for both mother and child (e.g., health care experience, depression; Green, Free, Bhavnani, & Newman, 2005; Love & Buriel, 2007). Studies have examined various aspects …show more content…
Specifically, in language brokering the issues of face, culture, and power may be salient in respect to identity and relationships. Politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987) is based the concept of face, or a person’s social identity. According to the theory, individuals strive to maintain themselves as likeable, socially approved, capable, and independent individuals. Issues of face may arise for children when language brokering, as acting as a socially-approved individual may differ depending on whether the child is interacting with their mother or the non-Latino, English-speaker. Mexican-American youth reported cultural dissonance between the way that they are expected to act at home and at school; at school they were assertive and behaved as an American, while at home they were expected to be quiet and respectful (De Ment et al., 2005). Language brokering may make ethnic identities particularly salient (Kam, 2011; Weisskirch, …show more content…
293), which can be used to assert one’s identity either socially or as an individual. Identity issues may arise in language brokering as brokers may attempt to identify as both American and Latino/a (Orellana, 2009). Thus, language brokers are expected to attend to the goal of acting Latino/a when talking to their mother in order to identity with and please their mother. Additionally, brokers may be cognizant of acting American with the English-speaker. Language brokers may want to accommodate to the English-speaker by identifying as members of the same group who speak the same language. Children may feel more comfortable if they think that their interaction with the English-speaker is between two members of an “in-group” rather than being seen as a member of the
Immigrants have helped shape American identity by the languages they speak from their home country. Richard Rodriguez essay “Blaxicans and Other Reinvented Americans” reveals Rodriguez’s attitudes towards race and ethnicity as they relate to making people know what culture really identifies a person rather than their race. For example, in the essay, it states that Richard Rodriguez “ is Chinese, and this is because he lives in a Chinese City and because he wants to be Chinese. But I have lived in a Chinese City for so long that my eye has taken on the palette, has come to prefer lime greens and rose reds and all the inventions of this Chinese Mediterranean. lines 163-171”.
Language is an important part of who we are. It influences the way we think and behave on a great scale. However, sometimes it is forced upon us to go in different directions just so we can physically and mentally feel as if we belong to the society in which we live in. Just as we see in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez’s “A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, both authors faced some challenges along the way by coping with two different languages, while still trying to achieve the social position which they desired.
America is a presumptuous country; its citizens don’t feel like learning any other language, so they make everyone else learn English. White Americans are the average human being and act as the standard of living, acting, and nearly all aspects of life. In her essay “White Privilege: The Invisible Knapsack,” Peggy McIntosh talks about how being white has never been discussed as a race/culture before because that identity has been pushed on everyone else, and being white subsequently carries its own set of advantages. Gloria Anzaldua is a Chicana, a person of mixed identities. In an excerpt titled “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” she discusses how the languages she speaks identify who she is in certain situations and how, throughout her life, she has been pushed to speak and act more “American” like.
Recently immigrated parents often learn English from their children. Over 70% of Hispanic Americans in California are English Language Learners (ELL) and are given the resour...
It is important to maintain children’s home language as it may help them learn and understand a second language. Barratt-Pugh (2000) discusses the benefits of bilingualism and maintaining it through early childhood settings, also mentions the concerns families have for their children maintaining two languages through schooling. Research within the article states that children who speak more than one language will have a higher level of understanding literacy content, form, genre, as well as understand the differences and translating within both languages. This demonstrates a contrast of strengths and experiences with literacy (linguist...
Another struggle for identity with Latinos is their struggle with the Spanish and English languages. While some Latinos may speak Spanish in their homes, the language may not be conversationally used in their schools. Some Lat...
Immigrants who recently immigrated to America may not know English fluently. This language barrier limits communication as they do not speak the same languages. This cause immigrants to "stay within a circle of" culturally similar people (Wan Shun Eva Lam, 2006, p 177). Being in an unfamiliar environment and unable to speak the same language deter communication. Language is a very complex entity and without an understanding of language, communication and intention is obscure (Katz, 1947, 17). Without a valid form of interaction, it will be harder to influence Millennials; however, there are forms of breaking the language
“The Contact Zone”, is defined by Mary Louis Pratt as “the space in which transculturation takes place – where two different cultures meet and inform each other, often in highly asymmetrical ways.” Pratt describes what she calls ‘contact zones’ and elaborates on the pros and cons of these cultural interactions. She sees the contact zone as a place that allows people to exchange cultural ideas and break down the dividing cultural borders. When a contact zone is started, people are able to interact on new levels gaining a new perspective because they are able to collaborate with people from foreign cultures. If you are always with people of the same culture as you, you become used to hearing everything from the same perspective. With a new perspective, you can see your culture from a different point of view and reanalyze the logic behind your cultural traditions. Every ethnic/ religious/ regional/ cultural group has its high and low points, and it is just as important to learn about the low points as it is to learn about the highs. Gloria Anzaldua’s essay, “how to tame a wild tongue”, focuses on the ideas of losing an accent or native language to conform to the dominant culture.
She describes it as “subtractive schooling,” a process in which students are left vulnerable to academic failure due to structural forces that impose on their ethnic identities and cultural backgrounds. The author explains that immigrants go through a dis-identification process, which seeks to Americanize them inadvertently forces minority status upon them. The division comes when their own ethnic identity of what it means to be Mexican to them is compromised. A prime example of this the use of linguistics and cultural practices. In the subtractive schooling process, all things Mexican or tied to the students’ identity is purposely diluted as is the use of the Spanish language. The concept of Mexicanidad becomes blurry as many Mexican/Mexican-American’s consider speaking Spanish as synonymous to what being Mexican is. In the subtractive schooling process, students are expected to know and speak English fluency, on the other hand in order to be considered truly Mexican they must also speak Spanish fluently. Many 2nd generational immigrants don’t fair as well as 1st generation because of the lack of bilingualism and biculturalism, skills that make the 1st generation more successful than the
My point of departure is Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) article titled Identity and Interaction: A Sociocultural Approach. They propose five principles important to the study of language identity. These principles are emergence, positionality, indexicality, relationality and partialness. I draw on the “tactics of intersubjectivity’ to better understand the relationship between language and identity formation for male youth, and how it is performed in their social spaces. Bucholtz and Hall (2005:587) suggest identities should be seen as socially structured and “the only way that such self-conceptions enter the social world is via some form of discourse.” Their work adds a new perspective to a long-standing body of work on language and identity, starting with traditional sociolinguistic approaches. Sociolinguistics seeks to observe relationships between language and society. The variationist view illustrates correlations of linguistic and social variables.
The front doors of Chamberlain Elementary School in Goshen, Indiana are plastered with advertisements for GED courses for Spanish speakers and bilingual memos reminding parents of the upcoming parent-teacher conferences. Colorful posters in either Spanish or English, with the corresponding translation posted alongside them, deck the hallways. Over a third of the student body belongs to a linguistic minority group, with Spanish being by far the most common language. Thus, Chamberlain administrators and teachers face the daily challenge of meeting the needs of a diverse student body within the context of an English-speaking public institution. The school is well known throughout the area for its efforts in embracing diversity, projecting itself as a multicultural institution, and connecting with families regardless of their cultural background. However, in meeting the linguistic needs of its diverse population, Chamberlain falls sadly short. Volunteers or trained teachers pull students out of their classrooms for a brief lesson each day in English as a Second Language (ESL). Language minor...
For more than 300 years, immigrants from every corner of the globe have settled in America, creating the most diverse and heterogeneous nation on Earth. Though immigrants have given much to the country, their process of changing from their homeland to the new land has never been easy. To immigrate does not only mean to come and live in a country after leaving your own country, but it also means to deal with many new and unfamiliar situations, social backgrounds, cultures, and mainly with the acquisition and master of a new language. This often causes mixed emotions, frustration, awkward feelings, and other conflicts. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, the author describes the social, cultural and linguistic difficulties encountered in America as he attempts to assimilate to the American culture. Richard Rodriguez by committing himself to speaking English, he lost his cultural ties, family background and ethnic heritage.
Passing fluent English: Latino immigrant children mask language proficiency. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 40(1), 20-40.
Politeness strategies are tested on a social network, to see how a person rejects someone showing interest in them. To discover how a rejector make use computerized features at their disposal to their own advantage, how they reduce the need for mental usage in the process of declining someone else’s request. Social distance between acquaintances and the type of technology at play effect on the variety of politeness strategies used. Online message senders of frequently produce positive face threats because partakers are geologically distant.
In many parts of this world, former existing borders are removed and people move closer together. It has to be admitted that most of the time this happens due to economical reasons, and the phenomenon of mass media has to be mentioned in this context as well. Therefore it becomes even more important to be able to understand cultures of different life-styles. But the success or failure of communication does not only depend on how well a language is spoken, but also on intonation and body language. Dr. Mehrabian, a prominent and successful psychologist, is perhaps best known for the investigation of the role of non-verbal communication. He published findings indicating that spoken words only account for 7% of what a listener perceives. The remaining 93% of what a listener comprehends originate from the speaker's body language and tone employed in the delivery of the words.