Work

The gift of language: An anthropological approach to child language brokering in Barcelona

Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: The phenomenon of child language brokering (CLB), that is, translation and interpreting tasks children take on to facilitate communication for their parents and other adults, is often invisible or neglected. The present article seeks to study CLB in the province of Barcelona (Spain) through the theoretical lens of Marcel Mauss's anthropological concept of the ‘gift’. The authors employ interviews with child language brokers, young mediators and parents to show that children's language competences circulate as a gendered gift that produces and reproduces social ties of different kinds—family, extended family, community, the public—and with different levels of reciprocity.
Language: English
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,800
OpenAlex ID: W4200326210
FWCI: 2.969
Cites: 23
Cited by: 9
Related to: 10