This article limns the implicit ideologies that buttress a language revival context and addresses the semiotic processes via which ideological dominance is defied. It shows the role of everyday family interactions in the re-acquisition of a “native” language of one’s ethnic identity. It draws upon 15 hours of audio-recorded interactional data from one urban family of ethnic Kazakhs in which the children, who were brought up speaking Russian, are enrolled in a Kazakh-medium pre-school.