Navigating Kinship: Sibling Reference in English, Mandarin, and Bilingual Family Interaction

• In Event: Research in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis: Categories and Identities in Interaction II

Abstract

Person reference is a central mechanism through which family order is constructed and contested. This conversation analytic study examines sibling reference practices in English, Mandarin, and English–Mandarin bilingual family interaction, with a particular focus on how bilingual participants strategically utilize the two kinship systems to negotiate social roles, manage relationships, and accomplish interactional goals.
Drawing on 25 hours of video-recorded, naturally occurring interaction in Taiwanese and Taiwanese American families, I examine sibling reference cases and analyze how different reference forms organize hierarchy, accountability, and family order. The analysis reveals systematic contrasts between the two kinship systems. In English-speaking interaction, proper names are the unmarked default for referring to siblings, while kin terms such as brother and sister appear as marked descriptive recognitionals that explicitly invoke relational categories and associated moral expectations. In Mandarin, by contrast, kin titles gege (older brother), jiejie (older sister), didi (younger brother), and meimei (younger sister) encode gender and relative birth order and function as default reference forms, embedding age-based hierarchy in everyday talk. In bilingual families, participants draw on both systems to accomplish interactional goals. Through code-switching between English names and Mandarin kin titles, speakers negotiate social roles, manage alignment, and selectively reproduce or suspend cultural norms. The findings illuminate how family hierarchy and cultural identity are interactionally accomplished in everyday family life.

Author

• Ruey-Ying Liu, National Chengchi University