Bilingualism

Bilingualism is the ability to use, or the regular use of, two languages with advanced proficiency and nearly equal fluency in each language. Bilingualism is broadly classified into simultaneous bilingualism, in which a person is introduced to two languages concurrently, and sequential bilingualism, in which a person is introduced to a second language after having been introduced to a first language by the nature of acquisition process. Simultaneous bilingualism generally refers to childhood bilingualism as a result of exposure to two languages in roughly the same degree from birth or very early childhood. This frequent dual-language exposure from early age is established by children's sociolinguistic experiences at school and home, including discourse practices influenced by parental communication patterns and input, and by societal language dominance. Sequential bilingualism refers to second-language acquisition beginning during late childhood or [Page 62]onward; the category of sequential bilingualism is often further subdivided to distinguish between sequential bilinguals who acquire a foreign language as adults (called late bilingualism) and those who acquire a second language at a relatively young age. Given common linguistic understanding of age-related limitations restrictions, second-language acquisition at a younger age results in superior fluency, particularly in the areas of phonology, morphology, and syntax; by contrast, the so-called age effect has suggested that adult second-language learners may develop a more sophisticated fluency than their younger counterparts as a result of a social and psychological maturity that demonstrates cognitive, motivational, and educational strengths. Multilayered variables associated with the learning contexts of simultaneous and sequential bilingualism include motivation, contextual demands, age, and opportunity, though researchers have not yet clearly established definitive documentation of these factors.

Language functions as a regularized code that embodies cultural and ethnic identity by connecting users in shared culture and history of community; for these reasons, bilingualism correlates to a formation of individual identity with social implications. Modes of acquiring a second language, divided into elective and circumstantial, have been used as assessment criteria when bilingualism is critically analyzed from a sociolinguistic perspective. Elective bilingualism refers to learning a second language as an individual choice, whereas circumstantial bilingualism refers to learning a second language by imposition or as a tool of survival due to colonization, annexation, or immigration. Immigrants and colonized or enslaved peoples acquire a second language as an accompaniment of a new social and political reality; however, their ethnic and cultural identities are preserved by maintaining their first languages and heritages in the case of circumstantial bilingualism. Their first language in such a circumstance becomes the bond between individuals and between individuals and groups. Their first language serves intergroup communications as well as facilitating the transmission and the systematic recording of a group's ethnicity, culture, and history.

In colonial and slaveholding societies, prohibition of the first language and imposition of the host country's language can be explained as a process of “de-ethnicizing,” leading to the acculturation of the dominant culture; and therefore, circumstantial bilingualism builds ethnic self-identity because a group's first language essentially represents the control of thought and the sense of the language in precision of vocabulary and structure for a particular social context. For this reason, bilingualism demonstrates the unity of cultural tradition as well as a resistance against the social and political violence of various nations. Immigrants have historically used their first language as a vehicle for the maintenance of their expression of ethnic identity, which can be characterized less by assimilation and acculturation than by the cultural and ethnic cohesiveness created by a nondominant culture.

...