Watching out loud

Building on a diverse body of work and drawing on the notions of dialogicality and intertextuality, this study considers one of the ways families appropriate television texts. Specifically, I analyze how adult members of two American families play along with the participants in the TV quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and refer to the show in their everyday interactions. I suggest that such active involvement with and appropriation of television texts, or watching out loud, enables the participants to create alignments, display or mitigate their knowledge, negotiate their relationships, and do identity work against the backdrop of the TV quiz show genre and family interaction.