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The purpose of the study was to identify distinctive types of language brokering among Latinx college students. A sample of 678 Latinx college students attending two Southern California teaching colleges participated in the study. A cluster analysis was conducted using the four subscales of the Language Brokering Scale: People, Places, Things, and Feelings. The analyses identified three types of language broker based on levels of brokering: high, moderate, and low language brokers. Each group was compared on their scores on the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, the State and Trait Anxiety Inventory for Adults, and the Parent-Child Bonding Scale. The results revealed that high fønguage brokers scored significantly higher on depression, anxiety, and parent-child bonding compared to the other two groups. Recommendations for future research and implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Children of immigrant parents in the United States support their families in multiple ways (Orellana, 2003; Valenzuela, 1999). Often the impact of these contributions goes unnoticed and is understudied in the literature. An example of such contribution is language brokering (LB), the action of interpreting and translating for parents and other members of the family (McQuillan & Tse, 1995). When studying the effects of LB, researchers stress the importance of the multidimensionality of this phenomenon. For example, some research indicates that LB has damaging and long-lasting effects on brokers, while other studies have found the opposite (Kam & Lazarevic, 2014a). LB scholars speculate that these patterns are due to distinctive types of LB (Love & Buriel, 2007; Martinez, McClure, & Eddy, 2009). This means that some child language brokers may find translating and interpreting beneficial because of stronger bonding with parents and bicultural/bilingual abilities, while others experience negative outcomes such as parentification and heightened psychological distress. To start untangling the multidimensionality of LB and its impact on those who play this role, a person-centered approach is needed to investigate the unique types of LB and their association with psychological health. This approach allows the assignment of people into groups based on categories and the observation of how groups are heterogeneous or homogenous (Muthén & Muthén, 2000). Thus, given the paucity of research in the literature, the purpose of this study is twofold. First, our study examined the distinct types of...