„Mehrsprachigkeit in der Familie“ - Webinar 22.11.23

On 22 November 2023, a new episode will take place as part of the webinar series “Diversity Matters” promoted by the Migrations and Diversities research group of Eurac Research. In this multilingual episode, Anna Ritter (Universität Duisburg-Essen), Maria Stopfner (Eurac Research) and Sabrina Colombo (Eurac Research) will focus on plurilingual families in Germany and South Tyrol and how they live and experience their plurilingualism.

Ritter will first examine how different family languages are used and related to each other, and how the language biographies of individual family members from different generations affect the linguistic situation within the family. Based on audio recordings in ten German-Russian bilingual families (about 600 minutes in total), questionnaires for all participants and interviews with parents, Ritter will describe individual interaction styles of plurilingual families living in Germany and present a typology of bilingual interactions in plurilingual families.

Stopfner and Colombo will then focus on the family language policies of plurilingual families and how different generations situate themselves in a multilingual region like South Tyrol. On the basis of twelve family interviews with at least one parent and one child, different frames of reference become apparent through which the different family members locate themselves and are located by others in discourse and interaction. The two researchers will also discuss the point of view of more than 100 professionals working with plurilingual families on language use at home and on the factors affecting the language choices in home settings where more than two languages are spoken.

WHEN: 22.11.2023, 12:00-13:00 CET

WHERE: on TEAMS. Please register here by 21 November 2023 to receive the link to the event.