A new book chapter Masaru co-authored with his MA and PhD advisor, Dr. Patricia Duff has appeared in The Oxford Handbook of Language Socialization. The chapter is entitled: “Theoretical Multiplicity and Methodological Variation in Multilingual Socialization Research.”

This chapter aims to offer a state-of-the-field review of research on multilingual socialization—the processes through which people come to participate in multiple linguistic, cultural, and ideological worlds, whether concurrently, sequentially, or recursively, and often while moving across national and social borders. It traces how language socialization has expanded from its early focus on monolingual children acquiring the language and norms of their home communities toward the multilingual, transnational, and increasingly digital settings that characterize much current work in applied linguistics.

The discussion is organized around two areas. The first, theoretical multiplicity, surveys the range of perspectives and concepts now brought to LS and examines concepts such as peer and self-directed socialization, the disruption of the “expert–novice” binary, dys-socialization and linguistic dissociation, and the distributed agency of digital tools and other non-human actors.

The second, methodological variation, moves from conventional ethnographic and discourse-analytic designs through newer approaches—including photo elicitation, participant self-recording, social network analysis, autoethnography, mixed methods, and critical-transformative intervention. Questions of researcher positionality and reflexivity are also discussed.

Throughout, we argue that this proliferation of theories and methods should be welcomed as a sign of the field’s vitality rather than judged against a narrow “gold standard” for what counts as language socialization research.

Full reference
Duff, P. A., & Yamamoto, M. (2026). Theoretical multiplicity and methodological variation in multilingual socialization research. In B. Smith & E. Berman (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Language Socialization (pp. 1–22). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198873174.013.0005