Abstract
AbstractThis article explores playfulness and creativity in translingual family interactions. In particular, it focuses on how and to what ends adolescents mobilize multilingual resources in family interactions. It investigates the cases of two multilingual families with adolescent children (13–18 years old). The families have different linguistic backgrounds, but have in common that one of the parents have migrated from a Spanish-speaking Latin-American country to Northern-Norway, and that Spanish represents a linguistic resource and a heritage language in the families. The data consists of self-recorded family interactions (29 recordings, ca. 5 h.) and were collected over the course of one year. By analysing interactions where the adolescents employ Spanish features, the article offers insights into how adolescents negotiate the position of the heritage language Spanish in the family. A close, turn-by-turn analysis demonstrates that the adolescents in a creative and playful manner employ a multitude of linguistic resources to fulfil interactional achievements: Through metalinguistic talk and playful translingual practices, the adolescents challenge and negotiate identities and family roles, exert agencies, and demonstrate metalinguistic awareness and sociolinguistic control.
Highlights
Research on how children and adolescents employ multilingual resources in creative and playful ways, and how such practices reflect metalinguistic awareness and trigger metalinguistic reflections, have been conducted in various contexts, such as peer groups (Lytra 2007; Madsen and Svendsen 2015; Svendsen 2004) classrooms and schools in general
In the turns preceding Excerpt 1, Tania talks about an upcoming test in Spanish, a topic that triggered a high percentage of Spanish utterances and metalinguistic talk about Spanish words in this self-recording
The adolescents engaged in negotiating the position of Spanish in the family, and thereby negotiating social positions within the family
Summary
Research on how children and adolescents employ multilingual resources in creative and playful ways, and how such practices reflect metalinguistic awareness and trigger metalinguistic reflections, have been conducted in various contexts, such as peer groups (Lytra 2007; Madsen and Svendsen 2015; Svendsen 2004) classrooms and schools in general This article puts to ground a close, interactional sociolinguistic analysis of family interactions to explore i) how adolescents use their multilingual resources creatively and playfully in intergenerational talk and ii) how they accomplish interactional endeavours and challenge and negotiate ascribed roles and identities in family interactions. Playful interactions are analysed to explore the ways adolescents negotiate agencies and use their multilingual resources to accomplish and challenge interactional goals within the family context. The article contributes to research on adolescent language use as well as research on family multilingualism, and highlights playful talk as privileged sites for studying identity negotiations
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