The construction of moral and social identity in immigrant children's narratives-in-translation

Abstract

In this article we examine the complexities of immigrant children's role as translators and linguistic mediators between their parents and their teachers during parent-teacher conferences. In our analyses, we first examine the linguistic structure of teachers’ narratives about the children, and then look at how children construct their moral and social identities as students in their translations of these narratives, and how parents respond to their children's translations. We found that in their translations children consistently downgraded their teachers’ praise and exaggerated their responsibility for any problems the teachers identified; parents in turn took up the problem focus and underscored children's responsibility. Implications for the socialization of immigrant children and parents into educational institutional ideologies, as well as the impact of these practices on children's development are discussed.