Homework in a bi-national family: The mobilisation of others in resolving language-related epistemic issues

Abstract

This study adopts a conversation analytic approach to present a close analysis of the sequential organisation of a parent-child homework activity in a Swedish-English bi-national family. Families formed within migration contexts are increasingly common in an ever-globalised world, but current research has not fully investigated how parent-child homework practices are affected by parents who possess differing levels of expertise in the societal language. This article examines a number of episodes where the progressivity of a homework activity is halted due to language-related epistemic issues. More specifically, these halts in progressivity are caused due to the homework tasks being written in Swedish in combination with the English mother's lack of language expertise in Swedish. The episodes exemplify how these epistemic deadlocks are resolved through the mobilisation of a more knowledgeable party, the Swedish father, who orients to translation as a trouble resolution tool which facilitates epistemic progression and the progressivity of the homework activity.