“A slightly hectic but a very normal meal at our house”: Parents’ collaborative facework in a YouTube video for English language learners

Abstract

We draw on theorizing by Goffman on face (1967), framing (1974), and participation framework (1981) to demonstrate how one mother and father do parental and family facework as their young children exhibit what could be construed as “misbehavior” during a videorecording of a family mealtime that the mother, an English-language instructor, made and posted to her YouTube channel for the purposes of providing learners access to “real English conversation.” Our analysis shows how the parents communicate with their co-present young children as well as the YouTube viewers to present themselves as good parents, and the mother as a good language instructor, even though the family mealtime was, in the mother’s words, somewhat “hectic” and “chaotic.” We demonstrate how facework is achieved collaboratively through numerous strategies, including verbal accounting, repetition, laughter, smiles, gaze, hand and arm gestures, eyebrow movements, and on-screen text that is added post-recording. The study contributes to understanding how “private” family interactions are shaped into the “public” YouTube context; how facework is a joint, interactive process; and how parental and family identity presentation occurs in the context of one mother’s professional work (online language instruction).