(Trans)languaging of plurilingual speakers in the context of familylect and ecolect


Thematic Section: Language and communication in transcultural families

family language policy, transcultural bi/multilingual families, translanguaging, migrant families, language ideology

Hadrian Lankiewicz, University of Gdańsk
 
Drawing on the concept of ecolect (Lankiewicz, 2013) and familylect (Søndergaard, 1991) as well as the translingual instinct (Li, 2011), the author of the paper delves into the problem of linguistic repertoires among plurilinguals. In his research based on narrative studies and in-depth interviews with plurilingual university students of international backgound, he tries to disclose how their linguistic repertoires echo the family-specific frames and family cultures (familylect) in reference to “private language” (Tannen, 2001), “family expressions” (Randall, 2005), “family words” (Dickson, 2007), “family humour style” (Everts, 2003) and how these are evocative of language mixing (Canagajarah, 2013). The ultimate objective of the proposal is to delineate the elements of family-related (trans)languaging (Mazak and Carroll, 2017; Auer, 2019; Dietrich-Grappin, Hufeisen, and Li, 2019; García and Otheguy, 2019) within linguistic repertoires of plurilingual speakers, conceptualized as part of their ecolect.