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Second generation immigrants tend to shift their loyalty from their own languages (‘immigrant languages’) to the language of the host country (‘societal language’), given the socioeconomically weak vitality position of the immigrant languages. This language shift makes intergenerational communication, especially with folk left at home, often problematic. Similarly, intragenerational communication may equally be difficult among young relatives from families having adopted different societal languages. The present study draws from observational speech data of immigrant teenagers of Congolese origin during a seven-week reunion. The teenagers had adopted, respectively, French and English to the detriment of Kiswahili (for both sets) and of French for those who spoke only English. This paper highlights different coping strategies to smooth multilingual intragenerational interaction. These strategies include accommodation (mostly convergence), crossing, code negotiation, and negotiation of meaning. Convergence and divergence can be explained mainly by the existence of differing levels of integrative motivation. The data also reveal boundary crossing as a phenomenon of identity creation in which two of the youngsters engage, in contrast to resistance by another teenager.
