Family Dinner Interaction

Abstract

This article provides an overview of a body of research that attends specifically to the analysis of talk at the family dinner table. While studies differ in some ways, they generally share a similar set of goals, which include documenting how children are socialized through dinnertime talk. For these research studies, how children are socialized through talk in turn provides a view of how family culture and culture in general are constructed. The article first considers one main strand of research, which uses a discourse‐pragmatic approach to examine families from different, but often related cultural backgrounds. The article then discusses another main focus of research, which analyzes practices of and socialization into storytelling. Finally, the article considers studies that have other focal topics, including accounts and accountability, negotiations about food and taste, and power and gender roles in the family.