Berlin: Peter Lang GmbH International Academic Publishers,
Abstract
This chapter will examine the collaborative, multimodal and plurilingual construction of the mediation activity between Catalan youth and a Chinese adult in the context of an out- of- school digital storytelling project. Following Goffman's (1981) approach to participation frameworks and Wadensjö's (1995) insights into interpreting activities, we analyse the participant roles deployed dynamically and multimodally in interaction in order to, on the one hand, facilitate communication and the progressivity of the interaction and, on the other hand, to focus on the linguistic form. The results shed light on how participation status is constructed and roles and responsibilities are distributed in a specific multilingual and multicultural context. Moreover, the analysis shows how an inanimate participant - a laptop computer with the Google Translate tool - is afforded the role of animator and reporter in the interaction and functions as an active participant in the encounter. We contribute to understandings of the complexity of linguistic mediation, its connection with digital technologies and its possible role in plurilingual education and the development of competences for the 21st century