Importarle un Cucumber: How Differences Among Bilinguals in Language Brokering Experience Affects Idiom Processing

Abstract

Language brokering refers to a widespread practice in refugee and/or immigrant communities whereby bilingual individuals act as linguistic and/or cultural intermediaries on behalf of family or community members. Previous psycholinguistic research suggests brokering may lead to a heightened awareness of semantic equivalence across language boundaries. The present research examined the impact of brokering experience on the semantic processing of idioms across languages. Specifically, the research examined how brokering experience affects same vs. different language semantic processing of decomposable and non-decomposable idioms. Across three experiments, proficient Spanish-English bilinguals, classified as brokers or non-brokers saw a series of idioms in one language; each idiom was followed by a target word (in the same or different language) that was related to the meaning of the idiom (critical trials) or unrelated (control trials). Idiom reading times and relative speed and accuracy of idiom-target semantic relatedness judgments were examined as a function of group (brokers vs. non-brokers), target word language (Spanish or English), and idiom type (decomposable or non-decomposable). Idioms in Experiments 1 and 2 consisted of “unidirectional” idioms, i.e., those with an idiomatic form in only one of the languages; those in Exp. 3 consisted of “bidirectional” idioms, i.e., those with an idiom counterpart in both languages. It was hypothesized that whereas brokers and non-brokers would be equally fast at reading idioms for meaning, brokers should experience less disruption than non-brokers in judging semantic relatedness of idioms and target words when idiom and target language differed than when they were the same. It was further hypothesized that non-decomposable idioms would be processed differently than decomposable ones but that the nature of the difference may interact with target language and group. The findings generally support the hypotheses and suggest that brokers activate phrase meaning more easily than non-brokers across language boundaries even when processing expressions that are typically fixed with respect to language. More generally, this research underscores the theoretical and practical significance of systematically studying individual differences in language experience within bilingual ethnic minority communities.