“Family language policy” is the study of multilingual families’ decision-making processes about the languages they use in their families, the reasons they make these decisions, and the actual language practices in these families.

In 2018-2019, we explored family language policy in three families where spoken language(s) and signed language(s) are used — families communicating across different modalities in everyday face-to-face interaction. In 2018, we made ethnographic video recordings of mealtimes, story time, and other everyday moments, and we interviewed family members and collected language diaries. At that time, our children were between around two and ten years old.

Now, eight years on, we are returning to those same families. Our children are now between nine and eighteen, and a great deal has shifted in their language practices, in their identities, and in the wider dynamics of family communication. Returning to the same families offers a rare opportunity to trace how signing and speaking practices develop across time, and to explore what changes and what stays the same.

In FLP2, we are making new video recordings of family interactions and revisiting the original recordings together. We are interviewing each other again, and we are now interviewing the children themselves, who are old enough to reflect meaningfully on their own language choices, attitudes, and experiences.