Language and the Family: Stretching Concepts, Challenging Methods

This volume revisits language and meaning-making in family life by stretching what counts as "family" and "language" in a deliberately expansive way. Across intergenerational, mobile, and mediated contexts, the chapters examine multilingual and multivarietal repertoires, speaking and signing, embodied interaction, and more-than-human participation (including pets and technologies). A central thread is that conceptual stretching has methodological consequences: issues of access, ethics, researcher positioning, and data-making become analytic matters rather than mere constraints. Taken together, the contributions suggest that family languaging is most productively studied when categories and methods remain open to revision in the face of practice.

Luk Van Mensel, XJTLU University, Suzhou, P.R. China; Eline Zenner, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.