Language mediation in schools. The case of parent-teacher meetings.

This chapter focuses on interpreter-mediated interactions between teachers and migrant parents. The chapter includes a review of studies on interpreter-mediated interactions in schools, a description of the data and methodology adopted and the discussion of our data. The main corpus of data consists in audio-recorded interpreter-mediated interactions between teachers and foreign-speaking parents in Italian contexts, largely in primary schools. Interpreting is provided by professional intercultural mediators, who are employed to provide interpreting service in many Italian public areas. The teachers participating in the interactions all speak Italian while parents are of diverse provenances and they speak Chinese, Twi, Arabic, Urdu and Albanian. The main issues dealt with in our interpreter-mediated interactions concern the children’s performance, both at school and during education activities at home (mainly homework). Some reflections are drawn on the ways in which language mediation may affect school–family communication when the families are migrant.