“The older I got, it wasn’t a problem for me anymore”: Language brokering as a managed activity and a narrated experience among young Vietnamese immigrants in the Czech Republic

• Published in: Multilingua 2017-01, Vol.36 (1), p.1-29
• Main Authors: Sherman, Tamah, Homoláč, Jiří
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biographies; Code Switching (Language); College Graduates; College Students; Communication Problems; Community living; Correlation; Czech language; Families & family life; Family Relationship; Females; Foreign Countries; Immigrants; Innovations; International languages; Interpreting; Interviews; Language attitudes; language biography interview; language brokering; Language disorders; language management; Language Planning; Language policy; Language usage; Languages; management summaries; Management theory; Public officials; Respondents; Siblings; Slavic Languages; Sociocultural factors; Sociocultural Patterns; Sociolinguistics; Sociology; Translation; Vietnamese; Vietnamese in the Czech Republic; Vietnamese People
• ISSN: 0167-8507; 1613-3684
• DOI: 10.1515/multi-2015-0027

Language brokering (LB) practices are a widespread phenomenon in transnational communities. This paper aims to add to the description and analysis of these practices within a community which has not been extensively studied – the Vietnamese in the Czech Republic, as well as show how LB is embedded in other sociolinguistic aspects of community life. Based on language biographies of 13 Vietnamese female brokers, we explore LB by focusing on the respondents’ descriptions and summaries of their beginnings with it, the difficulties that occurred, and how they were overcome. The findings suggest that, among others, the brokers gradually perceive brokering as a normal practice and as one of their family responsibilities. A methodological innovation is the use of Language Management Theory (Nekvapil, Jiří & Tamah Sherman. 2015. An introduction: Language Management Theory in Language Policy and Planning. 232. 1–12.), through which we examine language brokering as a practice oriented toward language problems stemming from broader communication and sociocultural problems. This perspective, along with attention devoted to the activities, approaches and attitudes of all participants in the brokering (e. g. parents, public officials) enables us to demonstrate the relationship of the brokering to family language policy and also the fact that, for the brokers, the sociocultural dimension of LB can be more important than the linguistic one.