Multilingual families at the crossroads of  private and public discourses

In sociolinguistics, the family has traditionally been considered a private domain with language practices among family members determined by certain parameters, all within the confines of the home. Given the social, cultural and linguistic changes brought about by contemporary globalization with new communication technologies, and changes in the political and economic landscape, home language maintenance and development in multilingual families has become highly complex. In my talk, I will give a critical view of the family as a private domain and argue for the need to conceptualize the family as a space that is constructed through discourse. Mediatized discourses on migrant families have forced the family into the public eye, and thus to be constructed as a public space that can be commented upon, accepted and/or rejected. In other discourses, families choose to go public with family matters as in the case of online blogging promoting family language policies for multilingual families. The line between the private and the public is thus blurred, with multilingual families today finding themselves at the crossroads of private and public discourses.