How (not) to talk about adoption: On communicative vigilance in Spain

Abstract

A B S T R A C TTransnational adoption is very difficult to talk about in Spain. For this reason, speakers use "communicative vigilance" to emphasize the appropriate ways to speak and particularly not to speak about it. Part of the difficulty, we demonstrate, is that adoption talk must mediate two contradictory understandings of talk and kinship: (1) a referentialist one in which adoption's undesirability must be first acknowledged and then masked and (2) a performative one in which talk can create a new world where transnational adoption is equivalent to and as valuable as traditional ways of creating families. Our findings have implications for both language-socialization studies and kinship studies.

‘Homework’ and transnational adoption screening in Spain: the co‐production of home and family

“…The phrase that titles this section is often used to describe the culmination of an international adoption (Joyce 2013, Frekko et al 2015), when the newly adopted children are brought ‘home’ to live with a new family. Our observations of intense parental concern over what professionals think that ‘home’ should consist of provoked this essay.…”

“…At a formal level, this simply confirms that prospective adopters have complied with the rules. As we have argued elsewhere (Frekko et al 2015), an interesting feature of the suitability process is that the material world is not required to match the representation of it. Houses are made to align with the rules, at least for the purposes of the inspection, but they may afterwards return to their previous state.…”

“…A more dramatic example of reconfiguring and representing a home comes from Clara and David, a Barcelona couple Susan Frekko interviewed who changed their living arrangements in anticipation of the home inspection (see Frekko et al 2015). …”

“…She believed her rejection was actually due to her colourfully dyed hair and her unconventional admissions that she neither especially wanted to bear a child, nor did she want to have her partner’s child in particular. The suitability interview process requires applicants to ‘flip the script’ and verbally rehearse the accepted norms (see Carr 2010, Frekko et al 2015), and she had not done so. However, given the explicit emphasis on the unsuitability of her home, Sonsoles understood that her only option was to rent a new residence and begin the process again.…”

Photographs as a Research Tool in Child Studies: Some Analytical Metaphors and Choices

“…Alonso, 2012;Poveda et al, 2015;Brown et al, 2014). On the other hand, using visual materials with adoptive children helps handling and working through some of the "silences" that surround adoptive families: the topics, experiences and feelings that are not easily talked about or do not emerge often in conversations in adoptive families (Frekko, Leinaweaver, & Marre, 2015). Yet, given these conditions, the same photographs can have very different meanings for each family member, encapsulate very different emotions and serve different social functions for each family member.…”