The understanding of learning has undergone substantial changes in the last decade and has taken a step towards a more social-interactional perspective (Seedhouse et al., 2010). Within this perspective learning and a socially shared cognition are considered as situated in social situations and contexts where participants are engaged in mutual social actions (Enfield and Levinson 2006; Lave, 1993; Lee 2010; Sahlström 2011). The change from an individual and mental understanding towards a more social-interactional understanding of learning has largely gone hand-in-hand with a reconceptualization of language use and language learning. A more usage-based view on language as dynamic and the view on learning a language as a continuous adaptation to changing contexts and emergent local needs have gained ground (Pekarek Doehler 2010). These developments have brought to attention a questioning of the separation between language development and language use (Firth and Wagner 1997). There is currently a growing number of studies on second language (L2) learning that apply a social-interactional and participationist perspective on L2 learning (Firth and Wagner 2007; Lee 2010; Sahlström 2011). Many of these studies argue that conversation analysis (CA) has an understanding of the organization of social interaction, that can help to better understand learning and cognition as social phenomena.

The above-mentioned studies have provided invaluable insight into the intertwinedness of L2 learning and use. However, they also turn the spotlight on the fact that there is still much to be investigated regarding how, for example, L2 learning can be considered a social phenomenon without studying changes in the use of structural-sequential phenomena, but instead consider the learning practice(s) and the learning object(s) as emically co-constructed (Rusk, et al., 2016; Rusk et al., accepted). Additionally, from a social-interactional perspective learning can be done anywhere individuals are engaged in social interaction. It is not a prerogative of, for example, learning institutions, such as classrooms. There is, in other words, a need to broaden both the range of settings that are being studied (cf. Firth, 2007), as well as a need to broaden the range of interactive phenomena that can be considered as indicators of L2 learning (cf. Cekaite, 2006; Pekarek Doehler 2010). This coincides with a call, and a need, for more ecological research with a more holistic approach in the social sciences, which in other words means that the research should also focus on naturalistic settings like homes instead of institutional settings such as workplaces and schools (Barron, 2007).

This article is an effort to respond to this need by using data that has been recorded in the homes of two bilingual families and by approaching L2 learning as social action that participants actively do and orient to in social interaction (Lee 2010; Sahlström 2011; Rusk, Pörn & Sahlström, accepted). The situations analyzed are characterized by a focus child explicitly asking for a translation or meaning of a word, or by the child’s L2 knowledge being contested by her parent(s), in an attempt to discover social practices that participants appear to orient to as doing L2 learning.

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