The article examines smartphone use among Middle Eastern refugee families recently resettled in northern New Jersey as an opportunity to reconceptualize the language barrier during the early stages of refugee resettlement. Smartphone access and use among families reveal the interlinguistic conditions of life in resettlement, and ethnographic research demonstrates the way a tech‐savvy population, conventionally considered “digitally unprepared,” creatively approaches communication. We explore smartphones as tools of translanguaging: a strategy in which speakers “mesh” and weave linguistic repertoires together. Qualitative research upends the idea of a language barrier as final or surmountable only through formal language instruction. Instead, smartphones offer multimodal communicative strategies with pragmatic and affective dimensions. We argue that refugees’ own culturally specific interactional norms and priorities can be revalorized within host societies as foundations for linguistic and social integration.

中文翻译：

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重新思考数字鸿沟：智能手机作为新泽西州中东难民中的翻译工具

这篇文章研究了最近在新泽西北部重新定居的中东难民家庭中的智能手机使用情况，以此作为在难民重新定居初期阶段重新认识语言障碍的机会。家庭中智能手机的访问和使用揭示了移民过程中的语言环境，民族志研究表明，通常被视为“数字化未做好准备”的精通技术的人们以创造性的方式进行交流。我们将智能手机作为翻译的工具，这是一种将说话者“啮合”并将语言库编织在一起的策略。定性研究颠覆了语言障碍的观念，认为语言障碍是最终的或只有通过正式的语言教学才能克服的障碍。取而代之的是，智能手机提供具有实用和情感维度的多模式通信策略。