This presentation revolves around the contributions of our understanding of "multilingual families as discursive spaces" to existing studies of language and family. Language Socialization (LS) (Ochs & Schieffelin 1984) and Family Language Policy (FLP) (King and Fogle 2006) have been the approaches through which Sociolinguistics has given an account of the ways in which families socialise their children into the dispositions and orientations that will allow them to become competent members of their societies, and to what they consider the "right" language choices and uses for their children's futures. With LS, we share the ethnographic approach to language issues and the understanding that it is through language that children are socialised to language use and language ideologies. We also align with most of FLP findings, which have brought to the fore parents' language ideologies and strategies to promote multilingualism, in its different versions, at home. However, we feel that an ethnographic approach that claims for a definition of families as discursive spaces (Heller 2007) entices an inductive and deeper investigation of the social fabric of families in late modernity, and the role of language in such a venture. We also believe that children's perspectives cannot be understood in isolation from their parents' and other siblings' stances. We argue that families are ecologies of practice and ideology, and often, spaces of struggle and dissent, where members belonging to different generations negotiate their individual (mis)alignments with respect to 'established' norms and orientations. In this presentation, we will draw on the case studies of the different panel presentations -as well as on our research with families- to bring to the fore the key issues related to the definition of the notion of "family" discussed in each presentation, the kinds of subjectivities constructed by family members and how they (mis)articulate, the type of social relations established (i.e. who is a member -including pets- and who is not; and who does what with whom and why?), and the semiotic-discursive-narrative practices that shape these families' understandings of their position in the wider social space. That is, we will bring to the discussion how children's practices and ideologies have to be understood against the background of family history, daily life rituals and celebrations, and the shared stories that circulate amongst family members. We will also pay attention to the dispositions, orientations and aspirations that are transmitted through these rituals and stories, and the ways in which all the members position themselves towards them.
Heller, M. (2007). Distributed knowledge, distributed power: A sociolinguistics of structuration. Text & Talk, 27(5-6), 633-653
King, K. & L. Fogle (2006) Bilingual Parenting as Good Parenting: Parents' Perspectives on Family Language Policy for Additive Bilingualism, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 9:6, 695-712
Ochs, E., & Schieffelin, B. (1984). Language acquisition and socialization. Culture theory: Essays on mind, self, and emotion, 276-320.
