Across Languages and Cultures: Brokering Problems of Understanding in Conversational Repair

Across Languages and Cultures: Brokering Problems of Understanding in Conversational Repair

Galina Bolden (School of Communication, Rutgers University)
Friday, April 29 / 1:30 PM
Education 1205

This presentation examines the interactional construction of language competence in bilingual immigrant communities. The focus is on how participants in social interaction resolve problems of understanding that are demonstrably rooted in their divergent linguistic and cultural expertise. Using the methodology of conversation analysis to examine mundane video-recorded conversations in Russian American immigrant families, Bolden describes a previously unanalyzed communicative practice for solving understanding problems: by one participant enacting the role of a language broker in a repair sequence.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Language, Interaction, and Social Organization (LISO) RFG.
Website: http://www.liso.ucsb.edu/event.html?e=52