Participation in Multiparty Language Play: Navigating Sociability and Learning in Dinnertime Conversations

Abstract

This study examines participation in language play (LP) during spontaneous multiparty talk in a Foreign Language Housing (FLH) program. FLH programs represent hybrid spaces where talk emerges naturally for social reasons but is framed under an institutional purpose for language learning. Given its multifunctional ability to simultaneously coordinate both sociable humor and learning-in-interaction, LP emerges as a salient resource in such dual-purpose environments. Using a multimodal Conversation Analysis of two extended sequences of LP during mealtime conversations, this study analyzes how FLH participants deploy verbal and embodied resources to organize participation in LP. It then illustrates how these strategies dynamically orient to sociability and learning, thereby constructing a hybrid social-and-learning interactional space. As prior studies of LP and learning draw primarily from classroom dyadic conversations, this study sheds additional light on the role of LP in regulating multiparty social talk, with application to understanding the interactional organization of informal immersion-based language learning programs.