Bilingualism and multiligualism exist and influence a host of social, cultural, political and psychological issues surrounding us. It is a widespread phenomena. When driven by necessity it usually doesn't go beyond a basic level of proficiency necessary for functional purposes.
In order to be called multilingual or bilingual, one needs to know
Competence in more than one language can be approached from social as well as individual perspectives. A nation may be full of multilingual people, but may not officially recognize all of them. A country may be officially bilingual or multilingual and yet most of its citizens may fall into the monolingual basket. While both individual and social aspects are important, both are treated and studied differently. Individual bilingualism should be studied linguistically and psycholinguistically while the social version is more historical, political, educational, etc. in dimension.
Social bilingualism is certainly of the longstanding type. Individual type is less permanent (Immigrants to USA: first generation monolinguals-second generation bilinguals-third generation monolinguals). When different languages are used in different functions and domains, the situation is referred to as diglossia (English and French in England after Norman conquest). There are various individual and social factors at play in the background when nation is being declared monolingual or bilingual.
People move across the world on various pretexts. Languages get mixed in the process. Trade, military action, political intervention/union, war, etc. are a few instances. For example, when colonial powers entered colonies, they somehow made their language a necessity in the colonies, and to date most colonies continue using the foreign language. Multilingualism is observed in border areas also. Cultural and educational motivation also can be the reason.
Classification
Every language situation is unique. But some of the elements that influence the formation of bilingual or multilingual situations are recurring. Thus there could be a framework to study this phenomenon.
John Edwards has created a typological framework of language–contact settings, with particular reference to minority linguistic groups. The framework begins with the adaptation of a geographical scheme. It has three basic distinctions.
1. Minority Languages
- those which are unique to one state- unique (e.g., Breton in France),
- those which are non-unique but which are still subordinate in all contexts in which they occur- non-unique (e.g., Basque in Spain and France), and
- those which are minorities in one setting but majority varieties elsewhere- local-only (French in Canada and French in France)
2. the type of connection among speakers of the same language in different states; are they adjoining (again, Basque in Spain and France) or non-adjoining (French in Canada and French in France)?
3. what degree of spatial cohesion exists among speakers within a given state? Cohesive (Cree in Canada) and non-cohesive (Spanish in the United States)
The Reality of Multilingualism
‘Link languages’ fall into three categories:
- socalled ‘languages of wider communication,’ varieties that have achieved regional or global power- Languages become those of wider communication not because of their intrinsic qualities, but because of the power and prestige of their speakers. Example: Greek, Latin.
- pidgins (a simplified language or simplified mixture of languages used by non-native speakers), creoles (a stable natural language that has developed from a pidgin becoming nativized by children as their first language, with the accompanying effect of a fully developed vocabulary and system of grammar), and other restricted linguistic forms whose diminished scope is at once easy to master and sufficient for communicative purposes which are, themselves, quite circumscribed; and
- constructed or ‘artificial’ languages (example: Ludwig Zamenhof’s Esperanto).
The other great bridging method is translation. The problem with translation is the elements involved in making the translation. Perfect translation happens only in imagination!
Personal Fluencies
Some views acknowledged bilingualism only where two well-developed and roughly equal fluencies were found. Others have suggested that linguistic repertoire expansion begins with the ability to produce complete and meaningful utterances in a second language. Any attempt to come to grips with bilingual competences must obviously start from definable levels or degrees. There are many elements of a language that can be measured. Proficiency in one doesn't guarantee the same in another.
Many tests have been used to measure bilingualism, including rating scales and tests of fluency, flexibility, and dominance. Factors such as attitude, age, gender, intelligence, memory, inter-linguistic distance, and context of testing are all potentially confounding. Even if you can measure accurately, there would remain problems of adequate labeling (balanced bilinguals, ambilinguals, and equilinguals?).
Receptive (or passive) and Productive (or active) Bilingualism: the difference here is between those who understand a language – either spoken or written – but cannot produce it themselves, and those who can do both.
Additive or subtractive tendencies: does learning a new language represent a repertoire expansion or a replacement of the earlier variety? Outcomes here tend to reflect different social pressures and needs. Additive bilingualism generally occurs where both languages continue to be useful and valued; the subtractive variety typically reflects a setting in which one language is more dominant, where one is on the ascendant and the other is waning.
Primary and secondary bilingualism, between a dual competence acquired naturally through contextual demands, and one where systematic and formal instruction has occurred.
‘élite’ and ‘folk’ bilingualism: The former has typically involved two (or more) prestigious languages, and often had as much to do with social-status marking as it did with a thirst for knowledge and cultural boundary crossing.
The Bilingual or Multilingual Individual
Individuals who are bilingual or multilingual are from all sorts of backgrounds. With sufficient opportunity and motivation, anyone who is sufficiently intelligent can become bilingual.
Can bilingualism increase the scope of intelligence? Today's scholars say otherwise. Florence Goodenough –an important educational psychologist who worked with Lewis Terman, the developer of the Stanford–Binet intelligence test – actually wrote that ‘the use of a foreign language in the home is one of the chief factors in producing mental retardation’!
There are some important difficulties involved in attempting to show a relationship – positive or negative – between bilingualism and cognitive development, mental flexibility, and intelligence.
The most obvious bilingual benefit is of course language choice, but it is also common to find linguistic alteration occurring within one segment of speech. Transfer and code-switching are available. Lexcal transfer, transfer involving translation, morphological transfer, syntactic transfer, and phonological tranfer are varieties. Some of these might represent aspects of borrowing.
Theory and Practice
There are advantages of an early-acquired bilingual competence; these tend to reflect, above all, the relative ease of early learning and the higher levels of fluency and vocabulary that often result. This argument about plasticity of brain led to overemphasis on early acquisition. If there is sufficient motivation, older learners also can be good learners. If we could combine the maturity and articulated necessity of the older with the impressionability, imitativeness, spontaneity, and unselfconsciousness of the younger, we would surely have a recipe for rapid and proficient bilingual acquisition.
The attention on memory based language learning has shifted to conversation/practice based learning. Immersion classrooms provide the most recent and most important embodiment of this principle. In this context many useful theories have emerged.
Most such approached depart from behaviourism and rely upon cognitive conception and go for rule formulation and testing. Learning happens through stages of InterLanguages. Social psychology based theories have looked at motivational features. When the social aspects of language are considered, the force of the situation, and the attitudes it provokes in potential learners, are central. Gardner has consistently attempted to link the social context, and the cultural beliefs within it, to individual learner capacities – including, of course, motivational levels – and the formal/informal settings in which the language is to be learned. Throughout, he stresses the influence of integrative motivation upon positive outcomes.
Clément’s model sees individual motivations more influential in the social setting. He assigns particular relevance for those language learners who are also minority-group members, and whose first language is threatened by the forces of those speaking the second.
Giles considers language learning as an intergroup process, with more attention given to assimilative tendencies and apprehensions, to the preservation of ethnic group boundaries and identities.
Spolsky’s ‘general theory’ (1989) attempts to bring together all aspects of language learning, and assumes learning to be an interactive and socially contextualized process.
As theories advanced, we can see a clear emphasis on social and motivational aspects of learning. Most theories discard the assumption that some 'peoples' have no head for languages. They stress the importance of the setting, desires, needs, attitudes and motivation of ordinary people. The fact that millions of people become bilinguals just because of necessity puts all other factors on the backseat.
Language and Identity
Language is a vehicle of tradition and culture, is a medium of group narrative, and defines one's identity. When more than one language is involved, its implications should be considered carefully. The important factor here is the degree of bilingualism. Studies on personality and identity is difficult because of the lack of sufficient data being collected.
Some have the opinion that bilinguals have 'two' identities/personalities. Language choice has bearings on personality.
Each of us may carry the tribal markings of many groups, that our ‘group identity’ is itself a mosaic rather than a monolith. Still, it is clear that, where language issues are central, the pivotal group is the ethnocultural community: overlaps of importance may occur because of simultaneous membership in gender, socioeconomic, educational, occupational, and many other categories, but the base here is an ethnic one.
How does a bilingual feel about her identity then? Does it lead to the borders of psychological duality? The deeper the linguistic and cultural burrowing into another community the greater the impact upon identity. In case of some bilinguals there is a primary allegiance to one identity. But for some who became bilinguals at a very early age, it is difficult to find such allegiance to one identity.
The influence of language on identity can be clearly seen in the association of language with nationality. Languages in contact can also build walls to protect language identity. An interesting form of this defensive strategy is linguistic prescriptivism or purism which, given free rein, would often lead to proscription. Concern about the ‘contamination’ of one language by another, about infiltration and borrowing and about the bullying of small languages by larger ones is an historically longstanding worry; the desire to keep one’s language ‘pure’ has been strong, at least since the time of the decline of Latin in Europe, the rise of standardized vernaculars, the development of printing, and the growth of literacy.
The importance of being multilingual is, above all, social and psychological rather than linguistic. Beyond types, categories, methods, and processes is the essential animating tension of identity.
Summary of Chapter 1 of-
Tej K. Bhatia and William C. Ritchie. Edited. (2013) The Handbook of Bilingualism and Multilingualism, Second Edition. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
