In this article, we investigate the use of social media in contemporary family
interaction from a linguistic ethnographic perspective. Inspired by Auer’s
(1998) work on code-switching in conversation, we study how family members
choose and sometimes alternate between digitally mediated and faceto-
face modes of communication in various family settings. Based on
ethnographic observations, the participants’ metapragmatic reflections, and
their interactional orientations to mode choices, we show how such choices
serve social and metapragmatic functions in the interaction between family
members who are present in the same house or even in the same room.
Accordingly, we argue in favor of situating peoples’ polymedia repertoires in
a broader framework of communicative repertoires.

Keywords: mode choice, multimodality, digitally mediated interaction,
social media, family interaction, communicative repertoires, polymedia,
linguistic ethnography