The Mysteries of Bilingualism. Francois Grosjean
information is needed on how people became bicultural, if that is the case. Did it happen in the family when they were young children, or when they came into contact with a second culture in school, or when, as adolescents, already anchored in a culture, they pursued their studies in another culture, or even when they emigrated as adults? And information on the evolution of their biculturalism over their lifespan will also be required.
Self-report Questionnaires
As the preceding section has shown, describing a bilingual fully, at a particular point in time, and over a life time, is particularly demanding. One approach that has been used is to ask bilinguals to fill in self-report questionnaires that aim at obtaining the kind of information we described. If used along with various verbal tasks, such as picture naming, word and sentence perception and production, etc., they allow us to have a good description of those who interest us (see de Bruin 2019, for a critical review). Three major self-report questionnaires are now available in the field for adults, while other, smaller ones, examine specific behaviors (e.g., language choice and code-switching), or are aimed at describing the bilingualism of children (these are filled in by parents or caretakers).
The three self-report questionnaires are the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q) proposed by Marian, Blumenfeld, and Kaushanskaya (2007), the Language and Social Background Questionnaire (LSBQ) proposed by the York University Lifespan Cognition and Development Laboratory (Anderson et al. 2018), and the Language History Questionnaire (LHQ3) proposed by Li, Zhang, Yu, and Zhao (2020). Since they have very similar acronyms, and to facilitate reading, I will use Q-A for the LEAP-Q, Q-B for the LSBQ, and Q-C for the LHQ3. I examined each questionnaire keeping in mind the factors I discussed above, those pertaining to bilinguals at a particular point in time, and those that concern their language history, and will briefly summarize what I found. This is not meant to be a critical review but simply a way of illustrating how one goes about obtaining extensive biographical language data from bilinguals, and the diversity one can find among the tools available.
Concerning the first aspect – bilinguals at a particular point in time – all three questionnaires request some biographical information, and they all ask questions regarding the first three factors I outlined: Language proficiency, language use, and functions of languages. It should be noted though that Q-A does not ask about writing proficiency, nor does it ask many questions about the languages used in domains such as work, school, shopping, religion, etc. As concerns different language behaviors in different language modes (e.g., language switching or mixing in certain situations), both Q-B and Q-C ask at least one question whereas Q-A does not. The latter, however, is the only one to ask about language dominance. As for biculturalism, Q-B does not ask any questions, and both Q-A and Q-C ask about cultural identity but nothing on bicultural conduct, such as adapting ones behavior, attitudes, and even personality to different cultural situations. It should be noted that two of the three questionnaires (Q-A and Q-C) ask about the bilingual’s degree of foreign accent whereas Q-B does not. Finally, Q-C is the only one to ask questions regarding the person’s language learning skills, their results on standardized proficiency tests, as well as their use of dialects.
As for language history, all three questionnaires ask about the order of acquisition of each language, when they were acquired, and their manner of acquisition. Q-C also asks at which age each language started being used at home, with friends, at school, etc. Q-B is the only one to ask if there were periods when a language was not used, and if so, for how long. Finally, none ask about when the person became bicultural.
The three questionnaires reflect, in their own ways, where things stand concerning the description of bilinguals. They are strong on reported proficiency and use, age and manner of acquisition, and also do well, with one exception, on language functions. They may need to do more, though, on change of language behavior when in monolingual and in bilingual situations, on the evolution of the bilingual’s languages over the years, and on biculturalism. Specific questionnaires already exist for language switching and mixing (e.g., Rodriguez-Fornells et al. 2012) so this may the route they could take in the future for the elements that need to be investigated further.
References
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