Critical Perspectives on Language and Kinship in Multilingual Families

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Description

Applying critical kinship perspectives to the study of multilingual families, this book foregrounds family formation processes, gender, and sexuality in examinations of language use. Focusing on historically marginalized families (such as single parent, adoptive, and LGBTQ+), the analyses draw on data from private and public spheres including interviews and recorded interactions in homes, as well as memoirs, documentaries, news media, and even comedy. Lyn Wright addresses questions such as why single parents might be better at raising bilingual children, how multilingualism plays a role in constructing shared histories in adoptive families, and what translingual resources allow LGBTQ+ families to negotiate gender roles and family relationships. In addition, she examines the construction of monolingual, nuclear family norms in public discourse that potentially constrain families everyday multilingual identities. Integrating related fields of family discourse, family language socialization, and family language policy unifies ways of understanding the intersections of kinship and language. The analyses in this book provide insight into multilingual family experiences, childrens language development, and societal level language maintenance and shift.

Reviews

This book is well constructed by Lyn Wright with her perspicacious eyes and empathetic heart ... This groundbreaking study not only lends itself to the first-hand empirical pool of knowledge about multilingual families, but also opens a new window for researchers to detect the dynamics, and even the nuances, of language development at the societal level. * Language in Society *
Wrights new book is just what the field needs. Firmly grounded in current scholarship across several related disciplines, Wright brings together cutting-edge theory and original empirical findings to advance the field in important ways. This clear, convincing and engaging text delivers sophisticated analysis of fascinating data on ordinary, but often overlooked, modern families. * Kendall King, Professor of Second Language Education, University of Minnesota, USA *
This is a ground-breaking study that fruitfully engages disparate fields and varied methodologies to carefully examine how kinship and multilingualism are constructed in diverse cases of non-normative, multilingual families against a backdrop of public discourse about gender, sexual and ethnolinguistic identities, mono- and multilingualism, parenting and family. * Holly R. Cashman, Chair and Associate Professor of Spanish (Linguistics), University of New Hampshire, USA *
A timely critical volume written by a pioneer in research on family language policy. Wright gives a voice to twenty-first-century diverse multilingual families whose stories are noticeably absent in mainstream studies. A must-read that will definitely advance our understanding of how multilinguals discursively negotiate and construct family! * Elizabeth Lanza, Professor of Linguistics, University of Oslo, Norway *

Author Bio

Lyn Wright is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Memphis, USA.