“I’ll Name My Own Family, Thank You!”

A 2023 National Communication Association Accepted Paper by Emily T. Dawson, M.A.

Abstract: Western society has seen a decline in the prevalence of two-parent and children biological family units. Given this shift in society away from biology, family communication research has recognized the modern-day definition of family as one that is almost completely discourse-dependent. However, the discourse dependence perspective is a communicative framework focusing on the “how” we define family. This paper considers the “what” do we communicate in defining family and how do the social and legal constructs in our world play a role in our experiences of family through the lens of the discourse dependence perspective and constructing a master narrative of family. To do so, I used interpretive thematic analysis to explore data collected from 16 transcripts of Zoom participant interviews. From this investigation, three overarching themes were produced: (1) young adults’ “layered” family definition process, (2) an emerging master narrative of family, and (3) surnames as a tool for family boundary management.

Keywords: family communication, surnames, discourse dependence perspective, master narrative, qualitative interviews