Multilingual Families in a Digital Age

Kristin Vold Lexander, PhD, is a researcher at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, and a former postdoctoral fellow at MultiLing Center for Multilingualism in Society Across the Lifespan, University of Oslo. She has worked on digital interaction in Senegalese contexts since 2005 and has published a range of articles and book chapters on the subject.Jannis Androutsopoulos, Dr. Phil., is Professor of German and Media Linguistics at Universität Hamburg, Germany, and from 2016 to 2023 was a research professor at MultiLing, University of Oslo. His research interests include the sociolinguistics of mediated communication and multilingualism online. He is editor of Polymedia in Interaction, Special Issue of Pragmatics and Society 12:5 (2021), and Digital language practices: media, awareness, pedagogy, Special Issue of Linguistics and Education 62 (2021).

"This book crackles with innovation and promises a new future in multilingual family communication research. Lexander and Androutsopoulos provide detailed discussions on how to document, analyze, and visualize the multilingual, multimodal repertoires of Senegalese diasporic family communication, highlighting digital communication as a “key enabler” of transnational family life." - Lyn Wright, Professor of Applied Linguistics/TESOL, University of Memphis, USA"This timely book provides a much-needed empirical study of language and media practices in transnational families. Using four Senegalese families in Norway as a case in point, the authors examine how these transnational families engage with a wide range of semiotic resources, including multiple languages and media platforms, in the act of ‘doing family.’ The book provides a new integrated theoretical perspective, mediational repertoire, to understand the interactional dynamics underlying family relationships. This book is a definite must-read for researchers, students, and practitioners who work with family, language and media in cross-disciplinary contexts." - Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen, Professor of Applied Linguistics in Education, University of Bath, UK

• List of tables, images, and figuresPrefaceAcknowledgments1 Introduction: Doing family and language in a digital age 1.1 A day in the digital life of a young multilingual family member1.2 Theoretical dimensions: Family multilingualism, digital interaction, and polymedia 1.3 Fieldwork for this book 1.4 Outline of the book 2 Multilingual families online: Repertoires and practices 2.1 Multilingual practices2.1.1 Practice approaches to multilingualism2.1.2 Repertoires and registers2.2 Family multilingualism2.2.1 Family language policy and practice2.2.2 Heritage language practices and heritage language socialisation2.2.3 The discursive construction of the multilingual family space2.2.4 A ‘digital turn’ in FLP literature2.3 Multilingualism online2.3.1 Code-switching approaches2.3.2 Networked multilingualism and digital translanguaging2.3.3 Affordances for mediated interaction in the digital ecology2.4 Transnational families and digitally mediated communication2.4.1 ‘Doing family’ transnationally2.4.2 Digital co-presence in transnational families2.2.3 Polymedia: An ecology of media choices2.2.4 Language and media in family-making practices2.5 Conclusion: Towards the study of mediational repertoires3 Media and language use in multilingual families: An ethnographic study in Norway3.1 Sociolinguistic research with Senegalese migrants in Norway 3.1.1 Language and society in Senegal 3.1.2 Language and immigration in Norway 3.1.3 Senegalese immigrants in Norway 3.2 Presentation of participants 3.2.1 The Diagne family 3.2.2 The Bâ family 3.2.3 The Sagna family 3.2.4 The Coly family 3.3 The families’ linguistic repertoires3.3.1 Wolof 3.3.2 Joola3.3.3 Peul3.3.4 French3.3.5 Arabic3.3.6 English3.3.7 Norwegian 4 Visualising languages, modalities, and media: From language portraits to mediagrams 4.1 Visualizing repertoires4.1.1 Language portraits and network graphs4.1.2 Media maps4.1.3 Mediagrams4.2 Data collection4.3 Developing mediagrams4.4 Data analysis4.5 Ethical considerations and other challenges5 Analyzing mediagrams: Mediational choices in polymedia environments5.1 Pleasure and pressure: Balancing co-presence 5.2 Multilingualism and multimodality: Managing a network of generations 5.3 Media, language, and connectedness: A comparison of three fathers 5.4 Media choices5.5 Conclusions 6 ‘Doing family’ online: Translocality, connectivity, and affection 6.1 Language, power, morality, and solidarity in the family 6.2 Translocal connectivities 6.2.1 Mediated interaction in the household: Coordinating family issues 6.2.2 Translocal household interaction: Making decisions and sharing 6.2.3 Transnational family-making: Power, solidarity, and teasing 6.3 Multilingual expressions of affection 6.3.1 Wife and husband 6.3.2 Parents and children 6.3.3 Extended family and beyond 6.4 Conclusions 7 Transnational families, diaspora practices, and digital polycentricity 7.1 Diaspora and digital diaspora 7.2 Digital diaspora and polycentricity7.3 Polycentric participation: A kaleidoscope of practices7.3.1 Digital spaces of diasporic sociality 7.3.2 The Senegalese public sphere7.3.3 Religious discourse7.3.4 Beyond diaspora: Traces of Norway and global pop culture7.4 Conclusions8 Heritage language repertoires 8.1 Parents’ ideologies of linguistic heritage 8.2 Heritage language repertoires in time and space 8.3 Children’s transnational heritage language practices 8.3.1 Heritage repertoires by interlocutors 8.3.2 Heritage language registers8.3.3 Learning Wolof through online interaction 8.4 Conclusions: Heritage languages and mediational repertoires 9 Conclusions 9.1 Multi-sited ethnography: Studying mediational repertoires 9.2 Transnational connectivity and family multilingualism9.3 A digital perspective on heritage language repertoiresReferencesIndex