The Mysteries of Bilingualism. Francois Grosjean
manage to separate them? Why do some bilinguals have an accent in one of their languages whereas others do not? Can you lose a language completely, and this at any age? Is language processing selective or non-selective? Do you really change your personality when you change language? What does it mean to be both bilingual and bicultural?, and so on. Of course, answers to these questions have been proposed by scholars over the years but never totally satisfactorily. This is because the evidence is either absent or unclear, new studies have contradicted earlier ones, the underlying theories diverge, and so on.
In this book, we will examine eleven unresolved issues and, based on past and recent research, we will give the best explanation we have for them. There will be four parts, each part containing two or three chapters. In Part I, Bilingual Adults and Children, the first chapter concerns who is bilingual. We will examine how bilinguals and bilingualism have been characterized and how this has changed over time. To help us do so, we will call on surveys, dictionary entries, as well as definitions proposed by language scientists. We will also discuss important characteristics of bilingual people and see how self-report questionnaires deal with them. The second chapter will address the question of how many bilinguals there are. We will examine why it is so difficult to obtain exact figures and will concentrate on a few national censuses that offer sufficient data from which numbers of bilinguals can be estimated. Finally, the third chapter concerns one of the most intriguing phenomena in bilingualism: how do infants who acquire two or more languages simultaneously manage to separate them? Even though their task seems daunting, a number of studies indicate how they start doing so perceptually as well as pragmatically.
In Part II, Linguistics and Neurolinguistics, we will start with the issue of having an accent in a language. After examining the phonetic and prosodic characteristics of accents, we will present the main factors that account for having an accent – from traditional ones such as maturational aspects to more recent ones such as type and amount of language input. We will also address having an accent in a third language. This will be followed by a chapter on language loss, in adults and in children. As concerns adults, we will cover characteristics of attrition, and go in search of factors that account for language loss. For children, we will describe experimental studies that attempt to see if there are remnants of a language forgotten in very early childhood. We will end with two studies, already quite old, that appear to show that a lost language may be recovered under hypnosis. Finally, the third chapter in this part concerns bilinguals with aphasia, that is those bilinguals who suffer language and speech impairment due to brain damage. We will discuss patterns of language recovery and the factors that account for them. We will also examine language mixing in the speech of aphasic bilinguals and show that it is not always a sign of pathology.
Part III, Language Use and Language Processing, examines first how bilinguals call on their languages, separately or together, when interacting with others. How is the language of interaction – the base language – chosen, and what factors govern whether the other language is brought in in the form of code-switches and borrowings? This will be followed by a chapter on what a bilingual’s languages are used for. Bilinguals usually acquire and use their languages for different purposes, in different domains of life, with different people. This has a very real impact, not yet fully recognized, on language production and perception, language acquisition, memory, mental calculation, and so on. Finally, the third chapter in this part will deal with the question of whether language processing is selective or non-selective when only one language is being use. In other words, when bilinguals perceive and produce just one language, is only that language involved, or do(es) the other(s) intervene? Experimental research these last 20 years has brought answers to these questions.
The last part, Part IV, deals with Biculturalism and Personality. In the first chapter, we describe bilinguals who are also bicultural: how they can be defined, how they become bicultural, how they adapt their behaviors to different cultural situations, and how they identify with their cultures. And in the second chapter, we attempt to answer a question often asked: do bilinguals change personalities when they change language? We will review opinions and beliefs, examine the results of past and present studies, and look at variables that are involved in feeling different when using different languages. We will end with an explanation that finally solves this enigma.
Two points need to be made here. First, the book has been written so that each chapter is self-contained: it raises an issue and then discusses the research that has been done to help solve it. When information that is required is given in another chapter, it is evoked succinctly in the chapter being read and then a reference is given to the other chapter. The second point is that bilingual adults and children are discussed together in every chapter unless there is a reason to separate them. This is the case, for example, in Chapter 5 on language loss where the larger of the two parts concerns children. And, of course, Chapter 3 on language separation is wholly dedicated to them.
This book can be used for courses in psycholinguistics, linguistics, neurolinguistics, cognitive sciences, speech and language pathology, bilingualism, applied linguistics, and first and second language acquisition. It is suitable for upper level BA and BS courses, first- and second-year graduate studies, as well as for laypersons who wish to find out about unresolved issues in bilingualism research.
I would like to thank those at Wiley Blackwell who helped me with the book: Tanya McMullin, Commissioning Editor, who believed in the project and gave me a contract; Rachel Greenberg, Commissioning Editor, who accompanied it through to its completion and production; Clelia Petracca and Anya Fielding, Editorial Assistants; Hannah Lee and Mandy Collison, Managing Editors; John Bowdler, Copy Editor; Kanimozhi Ramamurthy, Content Refinement Specialist; and Gopu Rasuvel, Designer.
Finally, preparing and writing a book such as this one could not have been possible without the kind help of numerous colleagues – experts in their respective domains – who shared with me their publications, answered my questions, and even read and commented on segments of my manuscript, or even on whole chapters. They are: Roman Abel, Dylan Antovich, Mariem Boukadi, Jeffrey Bowers, Mirjam Broersma, Krysta Byers-Heinlein, Jiyoun Choi, Deborah Cobb-Clark, Anne Cutler, Jean-Marc Dewaele, Jennifer Fayard, James Flege, Rosalie Footnick, Mira Goral, David Green, Jason Gullifer, Michael Gurven, Joanne Hans, Ying-yi Hong, Keerthana Kapiley, Michele Koven, Jan Kuipers, Ekaterina Kuzmina, Marjorite Lorch, Ping Li, Sven Matthys, Elke Montanari, Alene Moyer, Elena Nicoladis, Bertrand Ouellet-Léveillé, Christophe Pallier, Ken Paap, Johanne Paradis, Michel Paradis, Silke Paulmann, Lara Pierce, Nairan Ramirez-Esparza, Oliver Robinson, Jenny Saffran, Monika Schmid, Mark Sebba, Wing Chee So, Ágnes Szabó, Debra Titone, Mehrgol Tiv, Janet Werker, and Magdalena Wrembel.
As a sign of my gratitude, I dedicate this book to them.
1 Who Is Bilingual?
One of the most complex questions when studying bilingualism is quite simply: Who is bilingual? If you ask bilinguals themselves whether they are bilingual or not, you may come away with affirmative answers but also negative ones, accompanied by remarks such as, “I’m not bilingual (as) I’m not fluent in all my languages,” “I don’t consider myself bilingual since I don’t know how to write my other language,” “I didn’t grow up with two languages, so I’m not bilingual,” and even, “I have an accent in Spanish so I can’t be considered bilingual.” Then, if you look up the word “bilingual” in dictionaries, you will find a variety of definitions, going from, “Having the ability to speak two languages” (Wiktionary), all the way to, “Able to speak two languages equally well” (Longman). And, finally, if you ask linguists their definitions, you also find an assortment of responses, with a preponderance pulling towards the regular use of two or more languages.
Are things a bit more straightforward when you look at the questions in self-report questionnaires given to bilinguals in an attempt to describe their bilingualism? The answer leans towards the affirmative but there is still a lot of variety. Some ask about language dominance, whereas others do not; some include questions about the biculturalism of bilinguals, but others do not; some ask about the bilingual’s accent,