A linguistic ethnography of everyday translingual practices in a Japanese-Spanish-English-speaking family — The Association Specialists
  1. Schedule
  2. SESSION 6: Sociolinguistic methodologies
  3. A linguistic ethnography of everyday translingual practices in a Japanese-Spanish-English-speaking family

A linguistic ethnography of everyday translingual practices in a Japanese-Spanish-English-speaking family (20054)

Akiko Hiratsuka 1
  1. University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, NSW, Australia

This linguistic ethnography explores the translingual practices of a Japanese-Spanish-English-speaking family. The study focuses on the family’s diverse semiotic resources and repertoires and how they operate in everyday interactions. The main data consist of digitally recorded household activities involving five family members including two children aged between two and six. The data were collected and analysed by the researcher, who is also a parent of the children.

The study adopts a critical poststructuralist sociolinguistics perspective (García et al., 2016), viewing language as an everyday social practice in which participants draw upon available semiotic resources to make sense of situated actions and activities. Within this perspective, translingual practices, involving diverse linguistic and other resources, are considered ordinary as they function to perform tasks and facilitate interactions in the participants’ daily life. However, translingualism is often researched as a distinctive phenomenon based on the specific linguistic characteristics of families and their use of languages, rather than on their household activities and resources. Therefore, this study aims to address this limitation and extend the research focus to include translingual practices and its ordinariness as an integral part of everyday family activities.

This presentation primarily discusses the methodological considerations associated with the data-driven approach used in the study, which exemplifies an approach that offers a nuanced and comprehensive account of family interactions. The data are examined in the presentation to demonstrate how this study conducts a detailed and thorough analysis of situated actions, space, and artifacts, in conjunction with in-depth ethnographic insights into the family’s everyday life. In conclusion, the presentation highlights the role of translingual practices in enhancing family engagement with each other.

García, O., Flores, N., & Spotti, M. (Eds.). (2016). The Oxford Handbook of language and society. Oxford University Press.