Exploring the multilingual family repertoire: ethnographic approaches

ABSTRACT

Introduction of the special issue ‘Exploring the multilingual family repertoire: ethnographic approaches'.

Situated at the crossroads between language policy research and studies on bilingual child acquisition (King, Fogle, and Logan-Terry 2008), the field of Family Language Policy (FLP) looks into issues involving the role of language and languaging in multilingual families, paying attention to (the interaction between) language planning, language beliefs, and language practices. Although FLP has been successful in identifying and exploring various factors that contribute to language maintenance and shift in a wide array of (minority language) contexts, some family configurations and contexts of multilingual childrearing have remained under-researched, even if these are increasingly common (see Wright and Higgins forthcoming). These contexts include for example single-parent or blended families, LGBTQ-identified families (Goldberg and Allen 2012), adoptive families (Fogle 2012), families with ‘new speakers’ (Pujolar and Puigdevall 2015), families with co-located grandparents (Ruby 2012), families in endangered language communities (Nandi 2016; Smith-Christmas 2016), transcultural and transnational families (Batamula 2016; Curdt-Christiansen and Lanza 2018; Fogle and King 2013; Hua and Wei 2016; King 2016; King and Lanza 2019; Lanza and Wei 2016; Lee 2021; Obojska and Purkarthofer 2018; Van Mensel 2018; Wei 2012), diaspora families (Gharibi and Mirvahedi 2021), families with differing sensorial capacities (e.g. families with deaf or blind members), and mixed deaf/hearing families who use a combination of signed and spoken languages in various contexts (De Meulder, Kusters, and Napier forthcoming; Kanto, Huttunen, and Laakso 2013; McKee and Smiler 2017; Pizer 2013, 2021).

This special issue brings together four empirical studies looking into the family language policies and practices of some of these under-studied families, covering a wide array of (named) languages (both signed and spoken), contexts, and research methods. Indeed, as Said (this issue) states: ‘only through increasingly varied accounts of how families in different contexts envision their language(s) and enact language practices in their everyday lives can the field of FLP truly present a more holistic understanding of how families manage languages’.

The four studies cover sixteen named languages altogether: Arabic, Auslan, British Sign Language, Danish, DTS (Dansk tegnsprog/Norwegian Sign Language), Dutch, English, German, Hindi, Indian Sign Language, International Sign, Irish, Norwegian, Polish, VGT (Vlaamse Gebarentaal/Flemish Sign Language), and Welsh. In fact, the number of signed languages under investigation here (six out of sixteen) stands out. In their overview of languages investigated in FLP studies between 2008 and 2019, Lanza and Lomeu Gomes' call (2020) only list two named sign languages: American Sign Language and New Zealand Sign Language. Indeed, the few studies that do include sign languages and explicitly frame themselves as FLP research are studies that cover these languages (Batamula, Kite Herbold, and Mitchiner 2020; Kite 2019; Mitchiner and Batamula 2021; Pizer 2013, 2018; Pizer, Walters, and Meier 2013 for ASL and McKee and Smiler 2017 for NZSL).

The studies in this special issue each address the multilingual family repertoire, understood as a set of multilingual practices that is shared within the family and which plays a significant role in creating and maintaining family life (Van Mensel 2018, 2020). We view the family as a temporary social assemblage (Hiratsuka and Pennycook 2020) and a dynamic temporal body (Lanza and Lomeu Gomes 2020). Although the studies in this issue take the nuclear family (or families in Kusters et al.) as their initial research locus, they all take a closer look at how elements beyond the nuclear family may impact the dynamics of / interact with the family repertoire.

In a study focusing on their own families plus one other family, Kusters, De Meulder & Napier discuss how intrafamilial FLP at home informs interfamilial FLP on holiday, and how interfamilial contact on holiday informs intrafamilial FLP during that same holiday. Their study moves away from most previous FLP research in a number of ways: through (1) its focus on interfamilial FLP (and not solely intrafamily communication); (2) its focus on language use in mixed deaf-hearing families with the children all being above two years of age, and (3) its focus on the senses. As some language modalities are not sensorily accessible to all family members, this informs both intra- and interfamilial FLP. The four families in Kusters et al.’ study share some communicative resources (different varieties and registers of named languages, gestures and other semiotic resources) but do not have completely overlapping repertoires. In fact, there was not a single language that was accessible to all family members.

Smith-Christmas then examines one nuclear family in the space of the home: a transnational family in Ireland with a strong pro-Polish FLP. The children in this family have the upper hand in the majority language (English), while their parents have the upper hand in the language of the home (Polish). The paper illustrates how Irish, the autochthonous minority language, operates as a kind of neutral, third space, providing a way for the parents to mitigate the potential power shift caused by English. The analysis of the family members’ micro-interactions shows how talk in and on Irish usefully contributes to the continuous negotiation of the power/solidarity equilibrium within the family as well as (albeit more indirectly) of the family’s FLP. As Smith-Christmas (this issue) states, ‘asymmetry in language competencies among family members […] can be a key component of how power and solidarity are negotiated in multilingual families.’ This dimension of power and solidarity is equally present in the other three papers, as is the constant renegotiation of FLPs, again foregrounding the dynamic nature of the family repertoire.

Purkarthofer looks into two nuclear families within the context of migration (German speakers living in Norway). She focuses on the parts of the family repertoire that are not only shared within the family but also with others (such as close friends and researchers). This entails a broadened view on agency of all (extended) family members and also, just like Kusters et al., a focus on access to languages. Doing so, she argues that ‘[…] resources are not integrated into the repertoires for single use but they are always stored with the information about use, affective aspects and with their links to specific experiences.’

The contribution by Said sheds light on how nuclear families, although existing in the space of the home, are virtually expanded into extended formations where family members from across the world partake in everyday multilingual talk. Parents recruit technology to promote their language beliefs and technology in turn informs the unprecedented learning and use of the heritage language. Through technology, parents manage to create ‘a varied and personal linguistic soundscape’ supporting access to and learning of the heritage language. This aligns with Lanza and Lomeu Gomes (2020) for more attention to digital communication in FLP studies.

Each study in this special issue adopts sociolinguistic (auto)ethnographic and biographic approaches. A wide array of methods are used, covering fieldnotes and video recorded family interactional data (Kusters et al.), (biographical) interviews (Kusters et al., Purkarthofer, Said), language portraits, drawings and other creative tasks (Purkarthofer), photographs (Smith-Christmas), self-recordings of interactions in the family (Purkarthofer, Said), language background surveys (Said), multimodal language diaries (audio-recordings and video) (Said, Smith-Christmas), written diary entries (Smith-Christmas), and collaborative transcription of excerpts (Smith-Christmas). These ethnographic methods and interactional analyses are not coincidental. They are the very methods that allow for a study of the complexity of the semiotic and linguistic repertoires used by the families, and they enable the researchers to reveal not only the planning (policy) and beliefs but also the actual language practices in families (Lanza and Lomeu Gomes 2020). Such an approach aligns with more recent work in the field, in which the focus has shifted from the outcomes of family language policies to an examination of language-mediated experiences within the family (King and Lanza 2019; Lanza and Curdt-Christiansen 2018), in which both the children and the caregivers’ role in shaping the FLP is taken into consideration (e.g. Curdt-Christiansen 2018; Gafaranga 2010; Van Mensel 2018). They also contribute to the call for more interactional data in FLP studies, which still mostly build their findings on interviews (Purkarthofer 2019).

In line with the ethnographic approach, all articles discuss author positionality and researcher effects. By studying their own and other (befriended) families on holiday, with various family members making their own field notes and being involved in the generation of data, Kusters et al.’s methodology grew into a form of ‘collaborative auto-ethnography’ (Student, Kendall, and Day 2017). This method suited an intimate context like a family holiday. Given that the families are friends and know each other quite well, the long-time immersion that is crucial in linguistic ethnography (Copland and Creese 2015) was not required here; the authors were not ‘strangers’ coming into previously unknown families. At the same time, as they were both participants and researchers in the interactions, the researchers acknowledge that this made them mindful of the observer’s/participant paradox. Purkarthofer and Smith-Christmas were also both participants and researchers in the interactions. In her contribution, Smith-Christmas discusses the researcher effects of not speaking Polish in a family with a strong pro-Polish FLP. Since her visits became an opportunity for English language use, this had an immediate effect on the participants: their home became a space for English language use, which made some of the participants uncomfortable for various reasons. At the same time, Smith-Christmas contends that her not speaking Polish also yielded advantages: one was her reliance on family members for their interpretations of the recordings they made, which extended into a collaborative transcription of excerpts which included the mother and two daughters. Purkarthofer argues that researchers are actually present in family encounters even when they are not present, for instance by research participants anticipating the researcher’s future visit, and discussing their language repertoire vis-à-vis that of the researcher. Finally, Said also acknowledges her double position as both insider and outsider with respect to the families under investigation.

To conclude this special issue, the discussion by Lanza draws together the various research threads foregrounded in the contributions, and makes a convincing case for considering the notion of the family as a space that is negotiated through the multilingual family repertoire. Through a combination of ethnographic and interactional approaches, the contributions to this special issue together advance the study of multilingual families in promising ways.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luk Van Mensel

Luk Van Mensel is a postdoctoral researcher at the NaLTT Research Institute of the University of Namur (Belgium), and a visiting lecturer at the KU Leuven (Belgium). He has published on a variety of subjects in SLA and sociolinguistics, including linguistic landscapes, language education policy, and multilingualism in the family.

Maartje De Meulder

Maartje De Meulder is senior researcher at the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht in the Netherlands. She is interested in language and communication from applied language studies and Deaf Studies perspectives. She has published in a range of different journals and is co-editor of Innovations in Deaf Studies (Oxford University Press, 2017) and The Legal Recognition of Sign Languages (Multilingual Matters, 2019).