What is bilingualism?

Introduction

Bilingualism is generally defined as the state of knowing two languages. This term is now commonly extended to include multilingualism, the state of knowing three or more languages. Bilingualism has long been of interest to psychologists because it raises interesting questions about the nature of linguistic knowledge and the nature of learning. In addition, because language is intimately tied to culture and one’s sense of group identification, bilingual people may have a more complex and multifaceted sense of self and group identity than monolinguals.

To Know a Language

Knowing a language requires, at a minimum, knowledge of vocabulary (words, how they are pronounced, and the concepts to which they refer) and grammar (the rules for combining words into well-formed sentences). Conventionally, knowing a language also means understanding how to read and write it and how to use it (for example, when to use formal or informal language, proper forms of address, and so forth). This last type of knowledge is often called "communicative competence."

Knowledge of one’s native language usually involves all these components. However, knowledge of a second or third language may be limited: for example, a bilingual person may be better at reading and writing in the second language than at listening and speaking, know only a specific vocabulary (such as that related to work), speak with a heavy accent, or produce ungrammatical sentences.

Types of Bilingualism

Bilingualism is considered to be coordinate, compound, or subordinate. In coordinate bilingualism, a person has parallel but separate systems for each language. This type of bilingualism is most common among people who grew up in two-language households and acquired both languages from infancy. In compound bilingualism, the person does not completely separate the two languages. Typically, the person has a unified concept for physical objects or abstract ideas that is expressed by two different words. Subordinate bilingualism arises when the second language is learned after childhood and sometimes in formal settings: in this case, the person is clearly less proficient in the second language than in the first. Also relevant to this discussion is the notion of language dominance. A bilingual person’s native language is usually the dominant one, but there are exceptions. For example, immigrant children who speak their native language at home may be more eloquent and literate in the ambient language, their second language.

Another common distinction is between simultaneous bilingualism, in which two languages are acquired at the same time in early childhood, and sequential bilingualism, in which the second language is learned later in life. Simultaneous bilingual people, sometimes called "early bilinguals," are typically fully proficient in both languages. However, it is also typical for one language to become more dominant than the other, based on the amount of use. Sequential, or late, bilinguals are likely to exhibit characteristics of nonnative speakers (such as foreign accents or errors in sentence construction), which has led to the idea that the age of language acquisition has an effect on the ability to learn language. The critical period hypothesis proposes that there is a critical developmental period for the acquisition of language, after which native proficiency may never be achieved.

Approaches to the Study of Bilingualism

Bilingualism is a complex, multifaceted area of study that can be approached from many perspectives, including linguistic and psycholinguistic, social, and pedagogical.

Linguistic and Psycholinguistic

In 1957, linguist Noam Chomsky proposed that human beings are endowed with an innate capacity to acquire language: all they need is exposure to language, and the acquisition device figures out the grammar. It has been a matter of some debate whether bilinguals, especially sequential bilinguals, are able to acquire their second language in the same fashion as their first or whether they require the use of general learning strategies, such as rote memorization, and the explicit learning of grammar.

It is clear that on the way to becoming bilingual, second-language learners, unlike native speakers, develop an interlanguage. Certain aspects of this interlanguage may be due to transfer of some aspect of a first language to a second: for example, second-language words may be pronounced with a foreign accent or inflections may be omitted. Other aspects may reflect a universal developmental sequence that learners of a first or second language go through. At a given point in time, a second-language learner develops a stable grammar, or set of rules, for the interlanguage.

Psycholinguistic approaches to bilingualism acknowledge a distinction between knowing a second language (as demonstrated in paper-and-pencil tests) and being able to use that knowledge under time constraints. As speakers and listeners, human beings are time bound: by some estimates, the average speaking rate is 180 words per minute, or 3 words per second. Listeners, of course, must be able to process spoken language efficiently or risk lagging behind and missing some portion of the spoken message. Reading rates, interestingly enough, are typically even faster, with proficient readers reading at a rate of 4 words per second. Hence, one focus of psycholinguistic research on bilingualism has been on the extent to which second-language learners are able to accurately extract the meaning conveyed by spoken or written language and whether they do so in the same time frame as native-language users do.

Research on the production of a second language focuses less on timing. Of course, speaking is also time constrained: listeners have trouble attending to very slow speech. However, speakers are certainly able to impose their own internal constraints on the language they produce, pausing, for example, in the face of word-retrieval difficulty. This is even truer of written production—writers may pause indefinitely—and this is one reason that this area has received relatively less attention. Issues of interest include how speakers manage to keep one language suppressed while speaking the other and the degree to which they can shut off the language that is not in use. Many bilinguals who interact regularly with other bilinguals do not do this; rather they routinely switch between languages (this is called "code switching"), sometimes several times per sentence.

Sociolinguistic

These approaches to the study of bilingualism emphasize communicative competence—knowledge of the implicit rules governing interactions with others in the same speech community. These rules include which topics are suitable in given situations, which speech styles are appropriate for different people, and even when to speak or be silent. If they lack communicative competence, even bilinguals with near-native linguistic competence will stand out as nonnative or be received uneasily by monolinguals in a given speech community. For example, American English speakers expect a response of “Fine,” “Great,” or even “Hey” to the question “How are you?” which is functionally a greeting rather than a question. Nonnative speakers may not know this.

Bilinguals’ varying degrees of communicative competence in their multiple speech communities can complicate their sense of identity and their sense of belonging to a specific community. This, combined with other factors, such as the relative social status of their languages, may increase or decrease the likelihood that they will desire (or be able) to belong to a certain speech community. Communicative competence can even vary across different situations, such as interactions with elders versus those with peers. Some bilinguals may report feeling that they do not completely belong in any given community or feeling uncomfortable using their native language because of the limited contextual rules they know for it. Others, however, report appreciating the larger social access they have because of their ability to communicate in more than one language.

Pedagogical

The pedagogical approach examines two major populations of interest: the students who are nonnative speakers of the community language (second-language learners) and the students who are native speakers of the community language and are learning another language (foreign-language learners). In general, these two types of learners acquire a target language under vastly different circumstances.

Many second-language learners are immigrants who are immersed in the new language and must gain communicative and academic competence quickly. In some cases, a student’s native language is not used at all to teach the new language. This is particularly true of school-aged students because in the United States, they are most likely to be subject to state laws regarding bilingual education. These laws determine whether and how long nonnative English speakers may receive instruction or support in their native or heritage language within American public schools. Many states do not allow any instruction in a student’s native language, and students are simply expected to acquire the language, along with communicative competence to interact in the new language in the new culture.

Foreign-language learners must gain some communicative competence in the relatively short amount of time they spend in the classroom. Foreign-language teaching methods vary depending on the context and the learners’ goals. Large classes and minimal instructor support generally require the grammar-translation method, as it includes little writing, speaking, or interaction, and instead focuses on grammar learning. Given the readily available teaching materials developed for this method, lesson preparation may be relatively less time consuming. This method is also commonly used for those who want to learn to read in a language for research purposes but do not plan to write or otherwise communicate in the language. If listening and speaking skills are the focus, then the audiolingual method may be employed. This involves listening to, repeating, and memorizing dialogues, giving a learner practice with vocabulary, word order, and pronunciation. Most basic language programs in American universities favor the communicative language teaching approach, which counts communicative competence as the ultimate learning goal, even if some grammatical accuracy is sacrificed. This is ideal for those who plan to travel, study, or work abroad for a limited amount of time, but who do not need to be highly proficient in the language. Those who need higher proficiency for work, study, or assimilation purposes typically move on to content-based learning, where a given field is studied in the foreign language (for example, business in German or literature in Russian).

Foreign-language students who wish to become highly fluent generally need a period of time in an immersion situation, living and interacting with speakers of the target language. Not only does this provide a context for the development of communicative competence, it provides a way for learners to achieve real fluency in the language through sheer practice.

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