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Bilingualism

Bilingualism is a major fact of life in the world today. One in three of the world's population routinely uses two or more languages for work, family life, and leisure. Many more make irregular use of languages other than their native one(s), including those who have learned an additional language at school and use it occasionally for specific purposes (e.g., travel). It seems likely that this trend will continue given the current processes of globalization and the growing need to communicate across political and linguistic borders.

The term bilingualism can be used to describe an individual phenomenon, as in a person's ability to speak two or more languages. It is also possible to talk about bilingualism as a characteristic of a group or community of people, as bilinguals and multilinguals are usually found in groups, communities, or particular regions. In this entry, the discussion of bilingualism focuses on the individual level. The entry commences with a definition of individual bilingualism, followed by a discussion of related dimensions and characteristics. It then provides an overview of the reported advantages of bilingualism and concludes with a description of the factors associated with the development of bilingualism in infancy and beyond.

Defining Bilingualism

The concept of bilingualism has broadened since the beginning of the 20th century. Although earlier definitions tended to restrict bilingualism to equal mastery of two languages, it is now recognized that a bilingual or multilingual speaker uses different languages for different purposes, in different contexts, and in communicating with different partners and does not necessarily possess the same level or type of proficiency in each language. The broadening of the concept of bilingualism is largely due to the realization that the point at which a speaker/user of two languages becomes bilingual is either arbitrary or impossible to determine.

Despite its omnipresence, defining bilingualism, or a bilingual individual, proves to be more difficult than it appears. The term bilingual describes primarily someone who can function in two languages in conversational interaction. It can also include the many people in the world who use, and have varying degrees of proficiency in, three, four, or more languages. In his definition of bilingualism, François Grosjean focuses on the daily use of two or more languages and distinguishes bilinguals, who use two or more languages in daily life, from ‘dormant bilinguals,’ who retain knowledge of different languages but no longer use them in daily life.

Describing Individual Bilingualism

According to linguist William Mackey, bilingualism is a behavioral pattern of mutually changing linguistic practices that vary in degree, function, alternation, and interference, or cross-linguistic influence. It is through these four related characteristics that individual bilingualism may be best described.

Degree. Because bilingualism is a relative concept, it involves the question of degree. In describing a person's bilingualism, the most obvious thing to determine is how well an individual knows the languages he or she uses. Because bilinguals are rarely equally fluent in all language skills in all of their languages, this would involve separate assessments of comprehension and expression in both the oral and written forms of each language. In this way, ability in two or more languages is best understood on a dimension or continuum, with dominance and development varying across people. For example, some bilinguals actively speak and write in both languages. This is referred to as productive competence. Others have more passive, or receptive, ability in a language, such that they may understand or read it but may not be able to speak or write it very well. Ability in each domain may be relatively advanced in both languages or may just be developing in a second or third language.

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