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International Research on Multilingualism: Breaking with the Monolingual Perspective

• © 2019
• Eva Vetter 0 ,
• Ulrike Jessner 1

Center for Teacher Education, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

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Department of English, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria Department of Applied Linguistics (Multilingualism Doctoral School), University of Pannonia, Veszprém, Hungary

• Offers insights on current research into multilingualism, covering a wide range of countries and languages
• Includes discussion, and (re-)conceptualization of dominant language constellations, mother tongue, germination factors and communicative competence
• Demonstrates and identifies current and future challenges for research on third language acquisition and multilingualism

Part of the book series: Multilingual Education (MULT, volume 35)

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About this book

This volume contributes to a better understanding of both psycho- and sociolinguistic levels of multilingualism and their interplay in development and use. The chapters stem from an international group of specialists in multilingualism with chapters from Austria, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain and the United States. The chapters provide an update on research on third language acquisition and multilingualism, and pay particular attention to new research concepts and the exploration of contact phenomena such as transfer and language learning strategies in diverse language contact scenarios. Concepts covered include dominant language constellations, mother tongue, germination factors and communicative competence in national contexts. Multilingual use as described and applied in the volume aims at demonstrating and identifying current and future challenges for research on third language acquisition and multilingualism. The third languages in focusinclude widely and less widely used official, minority and migrant languages in instructed and/or natural contexts, including Albanian, Arabic, Basque, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish, and Vietnamese, thereby mapping a high variety of language constellations.

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A Dominant Language Constellations Case Study on Language Use and the Affective Domain

Knowledge About Bilingualism and Multilingualism

• Multilingualism
• Third language acquisition
• Third language learning

Dominant Language Constellation as a Method of Research

• Sustaining long-term L2 and L3 learning motivation

Table of contents (13 chapters)

Front matter, introduction: advances in the study of third language acquisition and multilingualism.

• Eva Vetter, Ulrike Jessner
• Larissa Aronin

Business as Usual? (Re)conceptualizations and the Multilingual Turn in Education. The Case of Mother Tongue

• Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer

‘Germination’ Factors of Destination Language Learning

• Aloysius N. Conduah

Communicative Competence in the Context of Increasing Diversity in South Tyrolean Schools

• Maria Stopfner, Dana Engel

Transfer Phenomena

Differences in the acquisition and production of english as a foreign language: a study of bilingual and monolingual students in germany.

• Eliane Lorenz, Peter Siemund

Investigating Positive Lexical Transfer from English (L2) to German (L3) by Quebec Francophones

From overhearing to partial immersion: l3 acquisition of romanian in three english-hungarian-speaking siblings.

• Iulia Pittman

How Multilingualism and Sociolinguistic Environment Influence Rear-Burden Usage in Basque: A Study on Bilingual and Trilingual University Students

• Julian Maia-Larretxea, Garbiñe Bereziartua

Language Learning Strategies

Interlingual learning of romance languages at austrian schools.

• Michaela Rückl

Extending Oxford’s (1990) Taxonomy for Multilingual Learners

• Violetta Dmitrenko

Sustaining Long-Term L2 and L3 Learning Motivation in a Monolingual Environment

• Csilla Sárdi

Tense and Aspect in L3 Interlanguage. The Effect of Lexical Aspect and Discourse Grounding on the Development of Tense and Aspect Marking in L3 Italian

• Zuzana Toth

Editors and Affiliations

Center for teacher education, university of vienna, vienna, austria, department of linguistics, university of vienna, vienna, austria, department of english, university of innsbruck, innsbruck, austria.

Ulrike Jessner

Department of Applied Linguistics (Multilingualism Doctoral School), University of Pannonia, Veszprém, Hungary

Bibliographic information.

Book Title : International Research on Multilingualism: Breaking with the Monolingual Perspective

Editors : Eva Vetter, Ulrike Jessner

Series Title : Multilingual Education

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21380-0

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Education , Education (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-030-21379-4 Published: 05 November 2019

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-21382-4 Published: 05 November 2020

eBook ISBN : 978-3-030-21380-0 Published: 22 October 2019

Series ISSN : 2213-3208

Series E-ISSN : 2213-3216

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XI, 254

Number of Illustrations : 26 b/w illustrations

Topics : Educational Policy and Politics , Multilingualism , Language Education , Language Policy and Planning

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Chapter 1. Introduction: The Many Faces of Multilingualism

From the book the many faces of multilingualism.

• Piotr Romanowski
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Article contents

Bilingualism and multilingualism from a socio-psychological perspective.

• Tej K. Bhatia Tej K. Bhatia Department of Linguistics, Syracuse University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.82
• Published online: 28 June 2017

Bilingualism/multilingualism is a natural phenomenon worldwide. Unwittingly, however, monolingualism has been used as a standard to characterize and define bilingualism/multilingualism in linguistic research. Such a conception led to a “fractional,” “irregular,” and “distorted” view of bilingualism, which is becoming rapidly outmoded in the light of multipronged, rapidly growing interdisciplinary research. This article presents a complex and holistic view of bilinguals and multilinguals on conceptual, theoretical, and pragmatic/applied grounds. In that process, it attempts to explain why bilinguals are not a mere composite of two monolinguals. If bilinguals were a clone of two monolinguals, the study of bilingualism would not merit any substantive consideration in order to come to grips with bilingualism; all one would have to do is focus on the study of a monolingual person. Interestingly, even the two bilinguals are not clones of each other, let alone bilinguals as a set of two monolinguals. This paper examines the multiple worlds of bilinguals in terms of their social life and social interaction. The intricate problem of defining and describing bilinguals is addressed; their process and end result of becoming bilinguals is explored alongside their verbal interactions and language organization in the brain. The role of social and political bilingualism is also explored as it interacts with individual bilingualism and global bilingualism (e.g., the issue of language endangerment and language death).

Other central concepts such as individuals’ bilingual language attitudes, language choices, and consequences are addressed, which set bilinguals apart from monolinguals. Language acquisition is as much an innate, biological, as social phenomenon; these two complementary dimensions receive consideration in this article along with the educational issues of school performance by bilinguals. Is bilingualism a blessing or a curse? The linguistic and cognitive consequences of individual, societal, and political bilingualism are examined.

• defining bilinguals
• conceptual view of bilingualism
• becoming bilingual
• social networks
• language organization of bilinguals
• the bilingual mind
• bilingual language choices
• language mixing
• code-mixing/switching
• bilingual identities
• consequences of bilingualism
• bilingual creativity
• and political bilingualism

1. Understanding Multilingualism in Context

In a world in which people are increasingly mobile and ethnically self-aware, living with not just a single but multiple identities, questions concerning bilingualism and multilingualism take on increasing importance from both scholarly and pragmatic points of view. Over the last two decades in which linguistic/ethnic communities that had previously been politically submerged, persecuted, and geographically isolated, have asserted themselves and provided scholars with new opportunities to study the phenomena of individual and societal bilingualism and multilingualism that had previously been practically closed to them. Advances in social media and technology (e.g., iPhones and Big Data Capabilities) have rendered new tools to study bilingualism in a more naturalistic setting. At the same time, these developments have posed new practical challenges in such areas as language acquisition, language identities, language attitudes, language education, language endangerment and loss, and language rights.

The investigation of bi- and multilingualism is a broad and complex field. Unless otherwise relevant on substantive grounds, the term “bilingualism” in this article is used as an all-inclusive term to embody both bilingualism and multilingualism.

2. Bilingualism as a Natural Global Phenomenon: Becoming Bilingual

Bilingualism is not entirely a recent development; for instance, it constituted a grassroots phenomenon in India and Africa since the pre-Christian era. Contrary to a widespread perception, particularly in some primarily monolingual countries—for instance, Japan or China—or native English-speaking countries, such as the United States, bilingualism or even multilingualism is not a rare or exceptional phenomenon in the modern world; it was and it is, in fact, more widespread and natural than monolingualism. The Ethnologue in the 16th edition ( 2009 , http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=lb ) estimates more than seven thousand languages (7,358) while the U.S. Department of States recognizes only 194 bilingual countries in the world. There are approximately 239 and 2,269 languages identified in Europe and Asia, respectively. According to Ethnologue , 94% of the world’s population employs approximately 5% of its language resources. Furthermore, many languages such as Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, Bengali, Punjabi, Spanish, and Portuguese are spoken in many countries around the globe. Such a linguistic situation necessitates people to live with bilingualism and/or multilingualism. For an in-depth analysis of global bilingualism, see Bhatia and Ritchie ( 2013 ).

3. Describing Bilingualism

Unlike monolingualism, childhood bilingualism is not the only source and stage of acquiring two or more languages. Bilingualism is a lifelong process involving a host of factors (e.g., marriage, immigration, and education), different processes (e.g., input conditions, input types, input modalities and age), and yielding differential end results in terms of differential stages of fossilization and learning curve (U-shape or nonlinear curve during their grammar and interactional development). For this reason, it does not come as a surprise that defining, describing, and categorizing a bilingual is not as simplistic as defining a monolingual person. In addition to individual bilingualism, social and political bilingualism adds yet other dimensions to understanding bilingualism. Naturally then, there is no universally agreed upon definition of a bilingual person.

Bilingual individuals are subjected to a wide variety of labels, scales, and dichotomies, which constitute a basis of debates over what is bilingualism and who is a bilingual. Before shedding light on the complexity of “individual” bilingualism, one should bear in mind that the notion of individual bilingualism is not devoid of social bilingualism, or an absence of a shared social or group grammar. The term “individual” bilingualism by no means refers to idiosyncratic aspects of bilinguals, which is outside the scope of this work.

Relying on a Chomskyan research paradigm, bilingualism is approached from the theoretical distinction of competence vs. performance (actual use). Equal competency and fluency in both languages—an absolute clone of two monolinguals without a trace of accent from either language—is one view of a bilingual person. This view can be characterized as the “maximal” view. Bloomfield’s definition of a bilingual with “a native-like control of two languages” attempts to embody the “maximal” viewpoint (Bloomfield, 1933 ). Other terms used to describe such individuals are “ambilinguals” or “true bilinguals.” Such bilinguals are rare, or what Valdes terms, “mythical bilingual” (Valdes, 2001 ). In contrast to maximal view, a “minimal” view contends that practically every one is a bilingual. “That is no one in the world (no adult, anyway) which does not know at least a few words in languages other than the maternal variety” (Edwards, 2004/2006 ). Diebold’s notion of “Incipient bilingualism”—that is, exposure to two languages—belongs to the minimal view of bilingualism (Diebold, 1964 ). While central to the minimalist viewpoint is the onset point of the process of becoming a bilingual, the main focus of the maximalist view is the end result, or termination point, of language acquisition. In other words, the issue of degree and the end state of second language acquisition is at the heart of defining the concept of bilingualism.

Other researchers such as Mackey, Weinreich, and Haugen define bilingualism to capture language use of bilinguals’ verbal behavior. For Haugen, bilingualism begins when the speakers of one language produce complete meaningful utterances in the second language (Haugen, 1953 ; Mackey, 2000 ; Weinrich, 1953 ). Mackey, on the other hand, defines bilingualism as an “alternate use of two or more languages” (Mackey, 2000 ). Observe that the main objective of the two definitions is to focus on language use rather the degree of language proficiency or equal competency in two languages.

The other notable types of bilingualism identified are as follows: Primary/Natural bilingualism in which bilingualism is acquired in a natural setting without any formal training; Balanced bilingualism that develops with minimal interference from both languages; Receptive or Passive bilingualism wherein there is understanding of written and/or spoken proficiency in second language but an inability to speak it; Productive bilingualism then entails an ability to understand and speak a second language; Semilingualism, or an inability to express in either language; and Bicultural bilingualism vs. Monocultural bilingualism. The other types of bilingualism, such as Simultaneous vs. Successive bilingualism (Wang, 2008 ), Additive vs. Subtractive bilingualism (Cummins, 2000 ), and Elite vs. Folk bilingualism (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981 ), will be detailed later in this chapter. From this rich range of scales and dichotomies, it becomes readily self-evident that the complexity of bilingualism and severe limitation of the “fractional” view of bilingualism that bilinguals are two monolinguals in one brain. Each case of bilingualism is a product of different sets of circumstances and, as a result, no two bilinguals are the same. In other words, differences in the context of second language acquisition (natural, as in the case of children) and proficiency in spoken, written, reading, and listening skills in the second language, together with the consideration of culture, add further complexity to defining individual bilingualism.

3.1 Individual Bilingualism: A Profile

The profile of this author further highlights the problems and challenges of defining and describing a bilingual or multilingual person. The author, as an immigrant child growing up in India, acquired two languages by birth: Saraiki—also called Multani and Lahanda, spoken primarily in Pakistan—and Punjabi, which is spoken both in India and Pakistan. Growing up in the Hindi-speaking area, he learned the third language Hindi-Urdu primarily in schools; and his fourth language, English, primarily after puberty during his higher education in India and the United States. He cannot write or read in Saraiki but can read Punjabi in Gurmukhi script, and he cannot write with the same proficiency. He has native proficiency in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. A close analysis of his bilingualism reveals that no single label or category accounts for his multifaceted bilingualism/multilingualism. Interestingly, his self-assessment finds him linguistically least secured in his two languages, which he acquired at birth. Is he a semilingual without a mother tongue? No matter how challenging it is to come to grips with bilingualism and, consequently, develop a “holistic” view of bilingualism, it is clear that a bilingual person demonstrates many complex attributes rarely seen in a monolingual person. See Edwards ( 2004/2006 ) and Wei ( 2013 ) for more details. Most important, multiple languages serve as a vehicle to mark multiple identities (e.g., religious, regional, national, ethnic, etc.).

3.2 Social Bilingualism

While social bilingualism embodies linguistic dimensions of individual bilingualism, a host of social, attitudinal, educational, and historical aspects of bilingualism primarily determine the nature of social bilingualism. Social bilingualism refers to the interrelationship between linguistic and non-linguistic factors such as social evaluation/value judgements of bilingualism, which determine the nature of language contact, language maintenance and shift, and bilingual education among others. For instance, in some societies, bilingualism is valued and receives positive evaluation and is, thus, encouraged while in other societies bilingualism is seen as a negative and divisive force and is, thus, suppressed or even banned in public and educational arenas. Compare the pattern of intergenerational bilingualism in India and the United states, where it is well-known that second or third-generation immigrants in the United States lose their ethnic languages and turn monolinguals in English (Fishman, Nahirny, Hofman, & Hayden, 1966 ). Conversely, Bengali or Punjabi immigrants living in Delhi, generation after generation, do not become monolinguals in Hindi, the dominant language of Delhi. Similarly, elite bilingualism vs. folk bilingualism has historically prevailed in Europe, Asia, and other continents and has gained a new dimension in the rapidly evolving globalized society. As aristocratic society patronized bilingualism with French or Latin in Europe, bilingualism served as a source of elitism in South Asia in different ages of Persian and English. Folk bilingualism is often the byproduct of social dominance and imposition of a dominant group. While elite bilingualism is viewed as an asset, folk bilingualism is seen as problematic both in social and educational arenas (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981 ). One of the outcomes of a stable elite and folk bilingualism is diglossia (e.g., Arabic, German, Greek, and Tamil) where both High (elite) and Low (colloquial) varieties of a language—or two languages with High and Low social distinctions—coexist (e.g., French and English diglossia after the Norman conquest (Ferguson, 1959 ). Diasporic language varieties have been examined by Clyne and Kipp ( 1999 ) and Bhatia ( 2016 ). Works by Baker and Jones ( 1998 ) show how bilinguals belong to communities of variable types due to accommodation (Sachdev & Giles, 2004/2006 ), indexicality (Eckert & Rickford, 2001 ), social meaning of language attitudes (Giles & Watson, 2013 ; Sachdev & Bhatia, 2013 ), community of practice, and even imagined communities.

3.3 Political Bilingualism

Political bilingualism refers to the language policies of a country. Unlike individual bilingualism, categories such as monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual nations do not reflect the actual linguistic situation in a particular country (Edwards, 1995 , 2004/2006 ; Romaine, 1989/1995 ). Canada, for instance, is officially recognized as a bilingual country. This means that Canada promotes bilingualism as a language policy of the country as well as in Canadian society as a whole. By no means does it imply that most speakers in Canada are bilinguals. In fact, monolingual countries may reflect a high degree of bilingualism. Multilingual countries such as South Africa, Switzerland, Finland and Canada often use one of the two approaches—“Personality” and “Territorial”—to ensure bilingualism. The Personality principle aims to preserve individual rights (Extra & Gorter, 2008 ; Mackey, 1967 ) while the Territorial principle ensures bilingualism or multilingual within a particular area to a variable degree, as in the case of Belgium. In India, where 23 languages are officially recognized, the government’s language policies are very receptive to multilingualism. The “three-language formula” is the official language policy of the country (Annamalai, 2001 ). In addition to learning Hindi and English, the co-national languages, school children can learn a third language spoken within or outside their state.

4. The Bilingual Mind: Language Organization, Language Choices, and Verbal Behavior

Unlike monolinguals, a decision to speak multiple languages requires a complex unconscious process on the part of bilinguals. Since a monolingual’s choice is restricted to only one language, the decision to choose a language is relatively simple involving, at most, the choice of an informal style over a formal style or vice versa. However, the degree and the scale of language choice are much more complicated for bilinguals since they need to choose not only between different styles but also between different languages. It is a widely held belief, at least in some monolingual speech communities, that the process of language choice for bilinguals is a random one that can lead to a serious misunderstanding and a communication failure between monolinguals and bi- and multilingual communities (see pitfalls of a sting operation by a monolingual FBI agent (Ritchie & Bhatia, 2013 )). Such a misconception of bilingual verbal behavior is also responsible for communication misunderstandings about social motivations of bilinguals’ language choices by monolinguals; for example, the deliberate exclusion or sinister motives on the part of bilinguals when their language choice is different from a monolingual’s language. A number of my international students have reported that on several occasions monolingual English speakers feel compelled to remind them that they are in America and they should be using English, rather than say Chinese or Arabic, with countrymen/women.

Now let us examine some determinants of language choice by bilinguals. Consider the case of this author’s verbal behavior and linguistic choices that he normally makes while interacting with his family during a dinner table conversation in India. He shares two languages with his sisters-in-law (Punjabi and Hindi) and four languages with his brothers (Saraiki, Punjabi, Hindi, and English). While talking about family matters or other informal topics, he uses Punjabi with his sisters-in-law but Saraiki with his brothers. If the topic involves ethnicity, then the entire family switches to Punjabi. Matters of educational and political importance are expressed in English and Hindi, respectively. These are unmarked language choices, which the author makes unconsciously and effortlessly with constant language switching depending on participants, speech events, situations, or other factors. Such a behavior is largely in agreement with the sociolinguistic Model of Markedness, which attempts to explain the sociolinguistic motivation of code-switching by considering language choice as a means of communicating desired group membership, or perceived group memberships, and interpersonal relationships (Pavlenko, 2005 ).

Speaking Sariki with brothers and Punjabi with sister-in-laws represent unconscious and unmarked choices. Any shift to a marked choice is, of course, possible on theoretical grounds; however, it can take a serious toll in terms of social relationships. The use of Hindi or English during a general family dinner conversation (i.e., a “marked” choice) will necessarily signal social distancing and fractured relations.

Languages choice is not as simple as it seems at first from the above example of family conversation. In some cases, it involves a complex process of negotiation. Talking with a Punjabi-Hindi-English trilingual waiter in an Indian restaurant, the choice of ethnic language, Punjabi, by a customer such as this author may seem to be a natural choice at first. Often, it is not the case if the waiter refuses to match the language choice of the customer and replies in English. The failure to negotiate a language in such cases takes an interesting turn of language mismatching before a common language of verbal exchange is finally agreed upon; often, it turns out to be a neutral and prestige language: English. See Ritchie and Bhatia ( 2013 ) for further details. When the unmarked choice is not clear, speakers tend to use code-switching in an exploratory way to determine language choice and thus restore a social balance.

During a speech event, language choice is not always static either. If the topic of conversation shifts from a casual topic to a formal topic such as education, a more suitable choice in this domain would be English; subsequently, a naturally switch to English will take place. In other words, “complementarity” language domains or language-specific domain allocation represent the salient characteristics of bilingual language choice. The differential domain allocation manifests itself in the use of “public” vs. “private” language by bilinguals, which is central to bilingual verbal repertoire (Ritchie & Bhatia, 2013 ). Often the role of expressing emotions or one’s private world is best played by the bilingual’s mother tongue rather than by the second or prestige/distant language. Research on bilingualism, emotions, and autobiographical memory accounts of bilinguals shows that an account of emotional events is qualitatively and quantitatively different when narrated in one’s mother tongue than in a distant second language (Devaele, 2010 ; Pavlenko, 2005 ). While the content of an event can be narrated equally well in either language, the emotional experience/pain is best described in the first language of the speaker. Particularly, bilingual parents use their first language for terms of endearment for their children. Their first language serves as the best vehicle for denoting emotions toward their children than any other language in their verbal repertoire. Taboo topics, on the other hand, favor the second or a distant language.

Any attempt to characterize the bilingual mind must account for the following three natural aspects of bilingual verbal behavior: (1) Depending upon the communicative circumstances, bilinguals swing between the monolingual and bilingual language modes; (2) Bilinguals have an ability to keep two or more languages separate whenever needed; and (3) More interestingly, they can also carry out an integration of two or more languages within a speech event.

4.1 Bilingual Language Modes

Bilinguals are like a sliding switch who can move between one or more language states/modes as required for the production, comprehension, and processing of verbal messages in a most cost-effective and efficient way. If bilinguals are placed in a predominantly monolingual setting, they are likely to activate only one language; while in a bilingual environment, they can easily shift into a bilingual mode to a differential degree. The activation or deactivation process is not time consuming. In a bilingual environment, this process usually does not require bilinguals to take more than a couple of milliseconds to swing into a bilingual language mode and revert back to a monolingual mode with the same time efficiency. However, under unexpected circumstances (e.g., caught off-guard by a white Canadian speaking an African language in Canada) or under emotional trauma or cultural shock, the activation takes considerable time. In the longitudinal study of his daughter, Hildegard, reported that Hildegard, while in Germany, came to tears at one point when she could not activate her mother tongue, English (Leopard, 1939–1950 ). The failure to ensure natural conditions responsible for the activation of bilingual language mode is a common methodological shortcoming of bilingual language testing, see Grosjean ( 2004 / 2006 , 2010 ). An in-depth review of processing cost involved in the language activation-deactivation process can be found in Meuter ( 2005 ). Do bilinguals turn on their bilingual mode, even if only one language is needed to perform a task? Recent research employing an electrophysiological and experimental approach shows that both languages compete for selection even if only one language is needed to perform a task (Martin, Dering, Thomas, & Thierry, 2009 ; Hoshino & Thierry, 2010 ). For more recent works on parallel language activation and language competition in speech planning and speech production, see Blumenfeld and Marian ( 2013 ). In other words, the potential of activation and deactivation of language modes—both monolingual and bilingual mode—hold an important key to bilingual’s language use.

4.2 Bilingual Language Separation and Language Integration

In addition to language activation or deactivation control phenomena, the other two salient characteristics of bilingual verbal behavior are bilinguals’ balanced competence and capacity to separate the two linguistic systems and to integrate them within a sentence or a speech event. Language mixing is a far more complex cognitive ability than language separation. Yet, it is also very natural to bilinguals. Therefore, it is not surprising to observe the emergence of mixed systems such as Hinglish, Spanglish, Germlish, and so on, around the globe. Consider the following utterances:

Such a two-faceted phenomenon is termed as code-mixing (as in 1 and 2) and code-switching (as in 3). Code-mixing (CM) refers to the use of various linguistic units—words, phrases, clauses, and sentences—primarily from two participating grammatical systems within a sentence. While CM is intra-sentential, code-switching (CS) is an inter-sentential phenomenon. CM is constrained by grammatical principles and is motivated by socio-psychological factors. CS, on the other hand, is subject to discourse principles and is also motivated by socio-psychological factors.

Any unified treatment of the bilingual mind has to account for the language separation (i.e., CS) and language integration (CM) aspects of bilingual verbal competence, capacity, use, and creativity. In that process, it needs to address the following four key questions, which are central to an understanding the universal and scientific basis for the linguistic creativity of bilinguals.

Is language mixing a random or a systematic phenomenon?

What motivates bilinguals to mix and alternate two languages?

What is the social evaluation of this mixing and alternation?

What is the difference between code-mixing or code-switching and other related phenomena?

I. Language mixing as a systematic phenomenon

Earlier research from the 1950s–1970s concluded that CM is either a random or an unsystematic phenomenon. It was either without subject to formal syntactic constraints or is subject only to “irregular mixture” (Labov, 1971 ). Such a view of CM/CS is obsolete since late the 20th century . Recent research shows that CM/CS is subject to formal, functional, and attitudinal factors. Studies of formal factors in the occurrence of CM attempt to tap the unconscious knowledge of bilinguals about the internal structure of code-mixed sentences. Formal syntactic constraints on the grammar of CM, such as The Free Morpheme Constraint (Sankoff & Poplack, 1981 ); The Closed Class Constraint (Joshi, 1985 ), within the Generative Grammar framework; and The Government Constraint and the Functional Head Constraint within the non-lexicalist generative framework, demonstrate the complexity of uncovering universal constraints on CM; for details, see Bhatia and Ritchie ( 2009 ). Recently, the search for explanations of cross-linguistic generalizations about the phenomenon of CM, specifically in terms of independently justified principles of language structure and use, has taken two distinct forms. One approach is formulated in terms of the theory of linguistic competence within the framework of Chomsky’s Minimalist Program (MacSwan, 2009 ). The other approach—as best exemplified by the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model (Myers-Scotton & Jake, 2001 ) is grounded in the theory of sentence production, particularly that of Levelt ( 1989 ). Herring and colleagues test the strengths and weaknesses of both a Minimalist Program approach and the MLF approach on explanatory grounds based on switches between determiner and their noun complements drawn from Spanish-English and Welsh-English data (Herring, Deuchar, Couto, & Quintanilla, 2010 ). Their work lends partial support to the two approaches.

II. Motivations for language mixing

While research on the universal grammar of CM attempts to unlock the mystery of the systematic nature of CM on universal grounds, it does not attempt to answer Question (II), namely, the “why” aspect of CM. The challenge for linguistic research in the new millennium is to separate grammatical constraints from those motivated by, or triggered by, socio-pragmatic factors or competence. Socio-pragmatic studies of CM reveal the following four factors, which trigger CM/CS: (1) the social roles and relationships of the participants (e.g., dual/multiple identities; social class); (2) situational factors (discourse topic and language domain allocation); (3) message-intrinsic consideration; (4) language attitudes, including social dominance and linguistic security. See Ritchie and Bhatia ( 2013 ) and Myers-Scotton ( 1998 ) for further details. The most commonly accepted rule is that language mixing signals either a change or a perceived change by speaker in the socio-psychological context of a speech event. In essence, CM/CS is motivated by the consideration of “optimization,” and it serves as an indispensable tool for meeting creative and innovative needs of bilinguals (Bhatia, 2011 ). A novel approach provides further insights into a discourse-functional motivation of CM, namely, coding of less predictable, high information-content meanings in one language and more predictable, lower information-content meanings in another language (Myslin & Levy, 2015 ).

III. Social evaluation of language mixing

Now let us return to Question (III). From the discussion of Questions (I and II), it is self-evident that complexity and multifaceted creativity underlies CM/CS in bilingual communication. Surprisingly, though, the social evaluation of a mixed system is largely negative. Even more interestingly, bilinguals themselves do not have a positive view of language mixing. It is the widely held belief on the part of the “guardians” of language (including the media) and puritans that any form of language mixing is a sign of unsystematic or decadent form of communication. Bilinguals are often mocked for their “bad” and “irregular” linguistic behavior. They are often characterized as individuals who have difficulty expressing themselves. Other labels such as “lazy” and “careless” are also often bestowed upon them. Furthermore, the guardians of language often accused them of destroying their linguistic heritage. For these reasons, it is not surprising that even bilinguals themselves become apologetic about their verbal behavior. They blame mixing on “memory lapse,” among other things, and promise to correct their verbal behavior, vowing not to mix languages. In spite of this, they cannot resist language mixing!

Table 1 illustrates the anomaly between the scientific reality of language mixing and its social perception. Social perception translates into the negative evaluation of mixed speech.

Table 1. Language Mixing (CM/CS) Anomaly (Adapted from Bhatia & Ritchie, 2008 , p. 15).

Backlash to mixing is not just restricted to societies and bilinguals; even governments get on the bandwagon. Some countries, such as the newly freed countries of the ex-Soviet Union and France, regulate or even ban mixing either by appointing “language police” or by passing laws to wipe out the perceived negative effects of “bad language” in the public domain. Asia is not an exception in this regard. A case in point is a recent article by Tan ( 2002 ) reporting that the Government of Singapore has banned the movie Talk Cock because it uses a mixed variety of English, called Singlish. Linguistic prescriptivism clearly played a central role in the decision. In spite of the near-universal negative evaluation associated with CM/CS, the benefits rendered by language mixing by far outweigh its negative perception, which, in turn, compels the unconscious mind of bilinguals to mix and switch in order to yield results that cannot be rendered by a single/puritan language use; for a typology of bilingual linguistic creativity, and socio-psychological motivations, see Ritchie and Bhatia ( 2013 ).

IV. Language mixing and other related phenomena

Returning to the fourth question, it should be noted that CM/CS is quite distinct from linguistic borrowing. The primary function of linguistic borrowing is to fill a lexical gap in a borrower’s language (e.g., Internet, satellite). Furthermore, with borrowing, the structure of the host language remains undisturbed. However, CM requires complex integrity of two linguistic systems/grammar within a sentence, which may yield a new grammar. Other mixed systems, such as pidgin and creole languages, often fail to match the complexity and creativity of CM/CS. The distinction between code-mixing and code-switching is controversial for a number of reasons, particularly the integration of the participating grammar’s intrasententially details; see Bhatia and Ritchie ( 2009 ). Additionally, Deuchar and Stammers ( 2016 ) claim that code-switches and borrowings are distinct on the basis of frequency and degree of integration. Specifically, only the former are low in both frequency and integration. For details about contrasting and comparing different positions on this issue, see Myslin & Levy ( 2015 ); Poplack and Meechan ( 1998 ); and Lakshmanan, Balam, and Bhatia ( 2016 ). Furthermore, there is a debatable distinction between CM and Translanguaging (Garcia & Wei, 2014 ).

5. Bilingual Language Development: Nature vs. Nurture

Beyond innateness (e.g., nature, Biolinguistic and Neurological basis of language acquisition), social factors play a critical play in the language development of bilinguals. As pointed out earlier, describing and defining bilingualism is a formidable task. This is due to the fact that attaining bilingualism is a lifelong process; a complex array of conditions gives rise to the development of language among bilinguals. Based on the recommendation of educators, among others, bilingual families usually adopt a “One-Parent/One-Language” strategy with different combinations, such as language allocation based on time and space; for example, using one language in the morning and other in the evening or one language in the kitchen and another in the living room. This is done to maintain minority language. In spite of their obvious potential benefits for language maintenance, such strategies fall short in raising bilingual and bicultural children for a number of reasons, including imparting pragmatic and communicative competence and providing negative and positive evidence to children undergoing heritage language development with sociolinguistically real verbal interactional patterns (Bhatia & Ritchie, 1995 ). Therefore, De Houwer ( 2007 ) rightly points out that it is important for children to be receiving language input in the minority language from both parents at home. This also represents a common practice in non-Western societies in Asia (e.g., India) and Africa (e.g., Nigeria) where both parents, including members of the joint family minority languages, speak in their minority language.

While raising bilingual children does not pose any serious challenge for majority children (e.g., English-speaking children learning French in Canada), it is a different story for minority or heritage children. Sadly, a complex mix of political and social bilingualism leads heritage/minority parents, who themselves experience adverse discrimination in social and work settings, simply to prohibit the use of minority languages in family and educational environments. This practice, no matter how well intended, often results in negative school performance and emotional problems for minority children.

6. Simultaneous vs. Sequential Childhood Bilingualism

Broadly speaking, childhood bilingualism can manifest itself in two distinct patterns: (1) Simultaneous bilingualism and (2) Sequential bilingualism. A child being exposed to two languages to more or less to the same degree from birth onward is described as a simultaneous bilingual; conversely, a child being exposed to one language first followed by a second language, with the latter coming after the age of five, is referred to as sequential bilingual. Sequential bilingualism takes place either in schools or in peer groups and/or family settings. Surely, sequential bilingualism can persist throughout the adulthood. How is early bilingualism different from late bilingualism? Research on sequential and adult language acquisition shows that the pattern of sequential/successive language acquisition falls somewhere in the middle of the continuum between a simultaneous bilingual and an adult language learner.

7. Adult Bilingualism: UG and Native Language Dominance

Why is the task of learning a second language by adults more difficult and time consuming than by children? In spite of considerable motivation and effort, why do adults fall short of achieving native-like competency in their target language? Why do even very competent and balanced bilinguals speak with an “accent”? The Critical Period Hypothesis by Lenneberg ( 1967 ) attempts to answer these questions, and it is sensitive to age (Lenneberg, 1967 ). Children are better equipped to acquire languages because their brains are more “plastic” before they hit maturity. They have access to UG, to which adults have either no access or only partial access. Afterward, the loss of plasticity results in the completion of lateralization of language function in the left hemisphere. Even though adults are more cognitively developed and exhibit a high degree of aptitude, they have to rely on their native language (L1 transference—including “foreign accent” together with morphological features) in the process of learning a second language (Gass, 1996 ). Then there comes a time when their ultimate attainment of L2 falls short of the native language target, termed “fossilization” stage. No amount of training allows them to bypass this stage to free themselves from second language errors. Siegel, for instance, offers an alternative explanation of the language attainment state termed fossilization in second language acquisition research—a stage of falling short of attaining a native-speaker end grammar (Siegel, 2003 ). He argues that fossilization is not biologically driven but is the reflection of learners’ decisions not to clone the native speaker’s norm in order to index their own identity. Some researchers believe that this stage does not have a biological basis; instead, it is the result of bilingual, dual, or multiple identities. Adult learners are not ready to give up their identity and, as a result, this prevents them from having a perfect native-like competency of L2. For alternative theories of language acquisition, see, for example, a usage-based approach by Tomasello ( 2003 ); and the Dynamic System Theory by De Bot, Wander, and Verspoor ( 2007 ).

The differential competencies, as evident from the different types of adult bilinguals, can be accounted for primarily on sociolinguistic grounds. For instance, gender or the period of residency in a host country yields the qualitative and quantitative differences in bilingual language acquisition. Factors such as access to workplace, education, relationship, social networks, exogamic marriage, religion, and other factors lead to differential male and female bilingualism in qualitative grounds (Piller & Pavlenko, 2004/2006 ). Additionally, learners’ type, their aptitude, and attitude also contribute to a variable degree of language learning curves. Instrumental learners who learn a second language for external gains tend to lag behind Integrative learners who aim at integration with the target culture. Similarly, the Social Accommodation Theory (Sachdev & Giles, 2004/2006 ) attempts to explain differences in language choices and consequences on one hand and the social evaluation of speech (good vs. bad accents) on the other, which influence the social-psychological aspects of bilingual verbal interaction in different social settings (Altarriba & Moirier, 2004/2006 ; Lippi-Green, 2012 ).

8. Effects of Bilingualism

Until the middle of the 20th century in the United States, researchers engaged in examining the relationship between intelligence and bilingualism concluded that bilingualism has serious adverse effects on early childhood development. Such findings led to the development of the “factional” view of bilingualism, which was grounded in a flawed monolingual perspective on the limited linguistic capacity of the brain on one hand and the Linguistic Deficit Hypothesis on the other.

Their line of argument was that crowding the brain with two languages leads to a variety of impairments in both the linguistic and the cognitive abilities of the child. Naturally, then, they suggested that bilingual children not only suffer from semilingualism (i.e., lacking proficiency both in their mother tongue and the second language) and stuttering, etc., but also from low intelligence, mental retardation, left handedness, and even schizophrenia.

It took more than half a century before a more accurate and positive view of bilingualism emerged. The main credit for this goes to the pioneering work of Peal and Lambert ( 1962 ), which revealed the actual benefits of bilingualism. The view of bilingualism that subsequently emerged can be characterized as the Linguistic Augmentation Hypothesis (Peal & Lambert, 1962 ). Peal and Lambert studied earlier balanced bilingual children and controlled for factors such as socioeconomic status. Sound on methodological grounds, their result showed bilinguals to be intellectually superior to their monolingual counterparts. Their study, which was conducted in Montreal, changed the face of research on bilingualism. Many studies conducted around the globe have replicated the findings of Peal and Lambert. In short, cognitive, cultural, economic, and cross-cultural communication advantages of childhood and lifelong bilingualism are many, including reversing the effects of aging (Bialystok, 2005 ; Hakuta, 1986 ). Nevertheless, the effects of bilingualism on children’s cognitive development, particularly on executive function and attention, is far from conclusive; see Klein ( 2015 ) and Bialystok ( 2015 ).

9. Bilingualism: Language Spread, Maintenance, Endangerment, and Death

Language contact and its consequences represent the core of theoretical and descriptive linguistic studies devoted to bilingualism, and onto which globalization has added a new dimension. Ironically, in the age of globalization, the spread of English and other Indo-European languages, namely, Spanish and Portuguese, has led to the rise of bilingualism induced by these languages; they also pose a threat to the linguistic diversity of the world. Researchers claim that about half the known languages of the world have already vanished in the last 500 years, and that at least half, if not more, of the 6,909 living languages will become extinct in the next century (Hale, 1992 ; Nettle & Romaine, 2000 ). Research on language maintenance, language shift, and language death addresses the questions of why and how some languages spread and others die. Phillipson and Mufwene attempt to account for language endangerment within the framework of language imperialism ( 2010 ) and language ecology ( 2001 ), respectively. Fishman ( 2013 ) examines the ways to reverse the tide of language endangerment. Skutnabb-Kangas views minority language maintenance as a human rights issue in public and educational arenas ( 1953 ).

Critical Analysis of Scholarship

Advances in our understanding of bilingualism have come a long way since the predominance of the “factional” and linguistically deficient view of bilingualism. The complexity and diverse conditions responsible for lifelong bilingualism has led to a better understanding of this phenomenon on theoretical, methodological, and analytical grounds. A paradigm shift from monolingualism and the emergence of a new, interdisciplinary approach promises new challenges and directions in the future study of bilingualism.

Issues and Conceptualization

Although bilingualism is undoubtedly a widespread global phenomenon, it is rather ironic that, for a number of reasons, including the primary objective of linguistics, multidimensional aspects of bilingualism, and misperception of bilingualism as a rare phenomenon, the study of bilingualism has posed—and continues to pose—a serious of challenges to linguistics for quite some time. This is evident from eminent linguist Roman Jacobson’s observation from more than half a century ago: “bilingualism is for me a fundamental problem of linguistics” (Chomsky, 1986 ). Similarly, Chomsky remarked that the pure idealized form of language knowledge should be the first object of study rather than the muddy water of bilingualism (Grosjean, 1989 ). Consequently, research on bilingualism has taken a backseat to monolingualism, and monolinguals have served as a benchmark to characterize and theorize bilinguals, which, in turn, led to the ill conceptualization of the bilingual person as “two monolinguals in one brain” (Dehaene, 1999 ).

Are bilinguals just a composite or sum of two monolinguals crowded in one brain? A large body of research devoted to the bilingualism and intelligence debate either implicitly or explicitly subscribed to the “two monolinguals in one brain” conception. This set the stage for the “linguistic deficiency hypothesis” about bilingual children and adults on one hand and the limited linguistic capacity of the brain on the other. When looking from the lens of monolingualism, a “factional view” (Bhatia & Ritchie, 2016 ; Nicol, 2001 ), or even distorted view, of bilingualism emerged that portrayed bilinguals as semilinguals with a lack of proficiency not just in one but two languages. Although still in its infant stage, from recent research on bilingualism, a more accurate or holistic view of a bilingual and multilingual person has begun to emerge in 1990s, namely, just as an individual bilingual does not constitute two monolinguals in one brain, a multilingual is not merely a byproduct of bilingualism alone or vice versa. Similarly, the notion that brain capacity is ideally suited for one language is a myth. Additionally and interestingly, no two bilinguals behave the same way all the time since they are not a clone of each other.

Bilingualism, unlike monolingualism, exhibits complex individual, social, political, psychological, and educational dimensions in addition to involving a complex interaction of two or more languages in terms of coexistence, competition, and cooperation of two linguistic systems. Additionally, although bilingualism is a lifelong process, the language development among bilinguals is not merely a linear process; there are turns and twists on the way to becoming bilingual, trilingual, and multilingual. The path to trilingualism is even more complex than growing up with two languages (Bhatia & Ritchie, 2016 ).

The role of sociolinguistic factors in language learning; language use (creativity); language maintenance; and language shift, particularly in trilingual language acquisition and use, opens new challenging areas of future research. The main challenge for theoreticians and practitioners is how to come to grips with various facets of the bilingual brain ranging from language contact, bilingual language interaction, to language modes of the bilingual mind/brain on one hand and methodological issues on the other.

Despite a number of studies on the Critical Period Hypothesis, and other competing hypotheses of bilingual language acquisition, future research in cognitive aptitude, age, and multiple language effects with the lens of interdisciplinary debatable findings and methodologies continues to pose new challenges and promises to the field of bilingualism (Long, 2016 ).

Further Reading

• Auer, P. , & Wei, L. (Eds.). (2007). Handbook of multilingualism and multilingual communication . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Bhatia, T. , & Ritchie, W. (2004/2006). The handbook of bilingualism . Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Bhatia, T. , & Ritchie, W. (2013). The handbook of bilingualism and multilingualism . Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Ferreira, A. , & Schwieter, J. W. (Eds.). (2015). Psycholinguistic and cognitive inquiries into translation and interpreting . Amsterdam: Benjamins.
• Heredia, R. , & Cieś licka, A. (Eds.). (2015). Bilingual figurative language processing . New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Schwieter, J. W. (Ed.). (2015). The Cambridge handbook of bilingual processing . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Foundational Works

• Bialystok, E. , & Hakuta, K. (1994). In other words: The science and psychology of second language acquisition . New York: Basic Books.
• Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the cross-fire . Clevedon, U.K.: Multilingual Matters.
• Edwards, J. R. (1994). Multilingualism . London: Routledge.
• Grosjean, F. (2008). Studying bilinguals . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Haugen, E. (1953). The Norwegian language in America: A study in bilingual behavior . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Mackey, W. F. (1967). Bilingualism as a world problem/Le bilinguïsme: Phenomène mondial . Montreal, QC: Harvest House.
• Romaine, S. (1995). Bilingualism (2d ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
• Weinreich, U. (1953). Languages in contact: Findings and problems . The Hague, The Netherlands: Mouton.

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• Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development . Multilingual Matters, Clevendon, U.K.
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Defining multilingualism.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2013

This article looks at the definitions and scope of multilingualism and the different perspectives used in its study. Multilingualism is a very common phenomenon that has received much scholarly attention in recent years. Multilingualism is also an interdisciplinary phenomenon that can be studied from both an individual and a societal perspective. In this article, several dimensions of multilingualism are considered, and different types of multilingualism are discussed. The article summarizes the themes researched in various areas of the study of multilingualism such as neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, linguistics, education, sociolinguistics, and language policy. These areas look at language acquisition and language processing as well as the use of different languages in social contexts and adopt a variety of research methodologies. The last section of the article compares monolingual and holistic perspectives in the study of multilingualism, paying special attention to new approaches developed in the past few years that argue for establishing more fluid boundaries between languages.

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Annotated bibliography.

Cook , V. , & Bassetti , B. (Eds.). ( 2011 ). Language and bilingual cognition . Oxford, UK : Psychology Press .

This edited book explores the relationship between language and cognition. The volume is divided into three parts: (a) the relationship between language and cognition, (b) bilingual cognition, and (c) applications and implications of bilingual cognition research. The volume explores the relationship between language and cognition in different domains of thinking, including time, space and motion, reason, and emotion and sensory perception. This volume can certainly be of great interest for students and researchers.

De Groot , A. M. B. ( 2011 ). Language and cognition in bilinguals and multilinguals: An introduction . New York, NY : Psychology Press .

This monograph looks at individual multilingualism from a psycholinguistic approach. This substantial, introductory text of more than 500 pages provides an up-to-date account of comprehension, production, and acquisition processes. The volume also discusses the cognitive consequences of multilingualism and neuropsychological aspects of multilingualism. It is a very welcome contribution to studies on multilingualism that can be highly recommended both to students and researchers.

García , O. ( 2009 ). Introducing bilingual education . In García , O. (Ed.), Bilingual education in the 21st century: A global perspective (pp. 3 – 17 ). Chichester, UK : Wiley-Blackwell .

This volume presents a holistic approach to the study of multilingual education. The author proposed a new paradigm looking at the complexity and dynamics of multilingual education. This book is highly recommended for all those interested in multilingual education and multiple discursive practices in school contexts. The book contains 15 chapters and covers a range of topics: translanguaging, educational policies, assessment, education practices, and multiliteracy.

Li , W. , & Moyer , M. (Eds.). ( 2008 ). The Blackwell handbook of research methods on bilingualism and multilingualism (pp. 3 – 17 ). Oxford, UK : Blackwell .

This edited volume contains 22 chapters and specifically addresses methodological issues when conducting research on multilingualism. It provides a theoretical background of research in bilingualism, but the main focus is on procedures, methods, and tools. The last part of the volume provides ideas for projects and dissemination and provides sources on multilingualism. It is an excellent multidisciplinary guide for students and new researchers in multilingualism.

Martin-Jones , M. , Blackledge , A. , & Creese , A. (Eds.). ( 2012 ). The Routledge handbook of multilingualism . London, UK : Routledge .

This edited volume contains 32 chapters and focuses on sociolinguistic and ethnographic research in multilingualism. It looks at discourses about multilingualism in social, cultural, and political contexts; multilingualism in education; multilingualism in other institutional sites; multilingualism in social and cultural change; and multilingual practices. It is an outstanding contribution to the study of societal multilingualism.

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• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S026719051300007X

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The Benefits of Multilingualism to the Personal and Professional Development of Residents of The US

Judith f. kroll.

University of California, Riverside

Paola E. Dussias

Pennsylvania State University

Paola E. Dussias (PhD, University of Arizona) is Professor of Spanish, Linguistics, and Psychology and Head of the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, Pennsylvania State University, University Park.

In the past two decades, new research on multilingualism has changed our understanding of the consequences of learning and using two or more languages for cognition, for the brain, and for success and well-being across the entire lifespan. Far from the stereotype that exposure to multiple languages in infancy complicates language and cognitive development, the new findings suggest that individuals benefit from that exposure, with greater openness to other languages and to new learning itself. At the other end of the lifespan, in old age, the active use of two or more languages appears to provide protection against cognitive decline. That protection is seen in healthy aging and most dramatically in compensating for the symptoms of pathology in those who develop dementia or are recovering from stroke. In this article we briefly review the most exciting of these new research developments and consider their implications.

Although most of the world is multilingual, the use of two or more languages in the United States has historically been marked as a complicating factor rather than a benefit. Attitudes toward languages other than English have been confounded with attitudes toward immigration and cultural diversity, resulting in a wealth of mythology surrounding language learning and language use. The assumption of English as the only language, or the majority language, in the United States has helped promote the belief that acquiring a second language as an adult is an impossible task that can be accomplished successfully only by the few who possess a special talent for language learning. Likewise, although young children appear to be able to acquire multiple languages easily, it has often been assumed that introducing a second language too early during infancy will produce confusion and cause irrevocable damage to the child’s language and cognitive development. It has also been suggested that language mixing or language switching among proficient speakers of two or more languages when they converse with others who are similarly proficient is a sign of pathology or incomplete language ability. These and other attitudes toward and views of multilingualism in the United States have affected not only public perceptions, but also those of educators and scientists.

However, accumulating data have shown that the assumptions and attitudes that have been prevalent historically are in fact myths: 1 Far from being a complication, research has shown that multilingualism provides benefits to individuals at all points along the lifespan, from the youngest infants and children, to young adults, and to older adults who may be facing cognitive decline ( Bialystok, Craik, & Luk, 2012 ). Young babies are not confused by hearing two or more languages but develop the ability to discriminate among the languages they hear; they are more open to new language learning than their monolingually exposed counterparts ( Petitto et al., 2012 ). Adult learners who are well past early childhood have been shown to be able to acquire sensitivity to the grammar of a second language despite their age ( Morgan-Short, Steinhauer, Sanz, & Ullman, 2012 ). As for language mixing, code-switching is a common feature of bilingual discourse, is rule governed, and reflects a sophisticated cognitive strategy that enables listeners to exploit the features of bilingual speech as speech is produced ( Fricke, Kroll, & Dussias, 2016 ). Taken together, a growing set of research discoveries in the last two decades provides compelling evidence to reverse the older false beliefs about multilingualism. For language scientists, the multilingual speaker is now seen as a model for understanding the way that language experience shapes the mind and the brain ( Kroll, Dussias, Bice, & Perrotti, 2015 ). 2

How then does language experience shape the brain? First, studies have shown that the brain has far greater plasticity throughout the lifespan than previously understood. Life experience at all ages has consequences for cognition and for both the structure and function of the brain. As an important aspect of life experience, language use reveals these consequences ( Baum & Titone, 2014 ). Contrary to the view that the brain evolved to speak one language only, the evidence suggests that two or more languages coexist in the same brain networks, each language activating the other even when only one of the languages is in use. One might think that the engagement of all known languages would impose a terrible burden on bilingual and multilingual speakers; however, recent studies demonstrated that while there may be some small disadvantages with respect to speed, those disadvantages are far outweighed by what bilinguals and multilinguals learn about how to control potential competition across the two or more languages. Elsewhere, researchers have described the bilingual as a mental juggler, able to keep both languages in the air, as it were, and to simultaneously be able to use the intended language without making obvious mistakes ( Kroll, Dussias, Bogulski, & Valdes-Kroff, 2012 ). Recent studies have substantiated the claim that this ability to juggle all the languages in play creates consequences more generally for bilinguals and multilinguals that enhance the ability to ignore irrelevant information, to switch from one task to another, and to resolve conflict across different alternatives ( Bialystok, Craik, & Luk, 2012 ). These consequences may be most apparent at the two ends of life, for the youngest babies and children and for the oldest speakers.

In addition, the observation that a second or third language engages the same underlying cognitive and neural machinery as the first language also has implications for language itself. The interactivity of the networks that support all of the known languages comes to affect the native language. The native language of a bilingual or multilingual speaker differs from the native language of a monolingual speaker, reflecting the influence of the second or third language on the first. What is remarkable is that these bidirectional influences can be seen at every level of language use, from the way speech is perceived and spoken to the way that grammar is processed and to the way one chooses words to describe perceptual experience ( Ameel, Storms, Malt, & Sloman, 2005 ; Dussias & Sagarra, 2007 ). An even more striking finding, in keeping with the claims about the plasticity of life experience, is that changes in the native language have been observed in second language learners at the earliest moments of new learning ( Bice & Kroll, 2015 ; Chang, 2013 ).

Because the native language of the bilingual is no longer like the native language of the monolingual speaker, it becomes easy to see that these changes to the native language may be seen as a negative consequence of new language learning or at the very least as an indication of language attrition. However, that view fails to account for the variation that is normally seen among monolingual speakers themselves. Most Americans accept the idea that people living in the South will speak with a different accent than people living in the Northeast or Midwest. These regional differences in dialect among monolingual speakers may in fact be related to the changes that are observed in the native language of bilingual or multilingual speakers: Not all monolinguals are the same, and recent studies have begun to identify the ways that monolingual speakers of the same native language may differ from one another ( Pakulak & Neville, 2010 ).

This growing body of evidence not only refutes some of the long-standing myths about multilingualism, but it also has implications for the contexts in which the benefits of multilingualism may best be realized. This article has two goals:

• It focuses on those groups who are most vulnerable and for whom the opportunities and protections afforded by multilingualism—and thus the overall benefits to society—may be greatest. These include young children, for whom the failure to acquire literacy skills may endanger academic outcomes, and older adults, facing normal cognitive decline as they age or pathology if they are likely to develop dementia.
• It proposes general directions for best practices in second language learning and offers recommendations about the types of investments that need to be made to overcome the myths and biases about multilingualism that prevent the full range of benefits to be observed for all Americans across the diverse contexts in which they find themselves.

Literacy and Academic Achievement in Young School-Age Children

One in five children in the United States lives in a household in which a language other than English is spoken ( U.S. Census Bureau, 2013 , n.p.). However, speaking a language other than English in the home is associated with a number of risk factors. The 2004 National Center for Education Statistics has reported that about 30% of children who speak English but who are exposed to another a language at home do not complete high school ( National Center for Education Statistics, 2004 , p. 9). Many studies have shown a well-established relationship between low socioeconomic status and low English skill level in children from homes where a language other than English is spoken ( Hoff, 2003 , 2006 ). Recent work has also suggested that speaking a language other than English at home acts as an independent risk factor ( Lonigan, Farver, Nakamoto, & Eppe, 2013 ). Poor literacy outcomes among a significant portion of the population constitute a substantial public health concern because low levels of literacy are associated with higher rates of incarceration, unemployment, and mental illness ( Chevalier & Feinstein, 2007 ). These facts are alarming and suggest that unless there is a marked improvement in the literacy skills of today’s minority children, the future labor force will have lower literacy skills than the labor force of today ( Murnane, Sawhill, & Snow, 2012 ). When considering this body of evidence, parents, educators, policy makers, and pediatricians unfortunately operate on the basis of a mix of folklore and intuition: Because mastery of English by immigrant children in the United States is a critical aim, one response has been to push aside the development of the home language to encourage the development of English. Furthermore, findings that bilingualism affects the rate at which each language is acquired ( Hoff & Place, 2012 ) have been misinterpreted by some as evidence that bilingualism provides an inadequate environment for the development of English language skills. However, quite to the contrary, research that has systematically examined early and concurrent acquisition of a home language and a majority language has suggested a number of positive linguistic, cognitive, and academic outcomes that have the potential for significant impact for both multilingual children and society. First, home language development is related to the quality of relationships within the family and to measures of psychosocial adjustment in adolescence ( Oh & Fuligni, 2010 ). Further, home language skill is important because in some linguistic domains (e.g., phonological awareness), skills acquired in one language support the acquisition of skills in the other language ( Barac & Bialystok, 2012 ; Bialystok, Majumder, & Martin 2003 ; Dickinson, McCabe, Clark-Chiarelli, & Wolf, 2004 ). Multilingualism is a significant economic asset for individuals, and a bilingual and biliterate workforce is a national asset.

In addition to the value that home language development brings to children via its role on family relations and positive outcomes to society, recent scientific findings have dispelled the belief that children are confused by dual language input ( Kovács & Mehler, 2009 ; Werker & Byers-Heinlein, 2008 ); more important, these findings demonstrate that bilingualism confers advantages in executive control—the brain’s functions that allows humans to carry out complex tasks such as solving problems, planning a sequence of activities, inhibiting information that has already been perceived, directing attention to achieve a goal, or monitoring performance. To illustrate how important executive control is, individuals who show damage in the brain areas that are responsible for coordinating executive function show impaired judgment, have difficulty with decision making, and have impaired intellectual abilities. A rapidly growing body of literature has indicated that bilingual children with abilities in psychomotor speed, general cognitive level, and socioeconomic status that are similar to those of monolingual children not only perform similarly to monolingual children on language tasks of grammatical knowledge and metalinguistic awareness, but also show a significant advantage on executive control tasks compared to monolingual children. Although bilingual children typically have lower receptive vocabulary than monolingual children, they outperform monolingual children in domains of cognitive function skill that require a high degree of attentional control ( Barac, Bialystok, Castro, & Sanchez, 2014 ). Another significant finding is that the benefits within the domain of executive control have been found across levels of socioeconomic status ( Engel de Abreu, Cruz-Santos, Touringo, Martin, & Bialystok, 2012 ). In this respect, bilingual language skill is relevant to academic success in children from dual-language homes because bilingualism is associated with an advantage in linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks ( Bialystok & Barac, 2012 ; Costa, Hernández, Costa-Faidella, & Sebastian-Gallés, 2009 ).

Interestingly, the advantages that are conferred by bilingualism have been reported for bilingual children even in the earliest months of life. When adults speak, bilingual infants look at adults’ mouths at an earlier age than do monolingual infants and for a longer period of time, providing the first evidence that bilingual babies “figure out” how to learn two dif-ferent languages as easily as monolingual infants learn one ( Pons, Bosch, & Lewkowicz, 2015 ). Furthermore, six-month-old babies growing up in a bilingual environment are better than monolingual babies at rapidly forming internal memory representations of novel visual stimuli ( Singh et al., 2014 ). By 11 months, the brains of bilingually exposed babies are not only sensitive to both languages but also show evidence of enhanced neural activity in those areas of the brain that are involved in executive function ( Ferjan Ramírez, Ramírez, Clarke, Taulu, & Kuhl, 2017 ), perhaps because learning two languages requires enhanced information processing efficiency compared to learning one language only, making it necessary for infants to develop enhanced skills to cope with the task of dual language acquisition.

One exciting result from the work exploring the effects of bilingualism in children growing up in poverty is that bilingual children from low-income families are better than monolingual matched controls on a number of verbal and nonverbal tasks (see Bialystok & Barac, 2012 ). Given that children in the United States who are born to the lowest-income families have a 43% chance of remaining in that income bracket ( Autor, Katz, & Kearney, 2008 ; Greenstone, Looney, Patashnik, & Yu, 2013 , p. 6), the development of bilingual language acquisition in children from language minority homes seems to provide a way to mitigate the academic risks that are associated with low socioeconomic status and to maximize school readiness. Like children who grow up in multilingual settings, monolingual children will also benefit from bilingual immersion programs because they too will experience the cognitive and linguistic advantages that are associated with growing up bilingual. Although the state of scientific knowledge is incomplete, a new and growing body of evidence strongly supports the benefits of maintaining the home languages and extending the transformative benefits of multilingualism to all learners.

Speaking Two or More Languages Protects Older Adults Against Cognitive Decline

Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich (R-GA) published an Op-Ed column in the New York Times on April 22, 2015, in which he urged the U.S. Congress to double the National Institutes of Health budget and specifically pointed out that a breakthrough discovery that might delay the onset of Alzheimer’s by five years would create a dramatic reduction in the number of afflicted Americans, with a corresponding reduction in health care costs and stress to family members ( Gingrich, 2015 ). What he failed to mention is that research on bilingualism has already documented a delay of four to five years in the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms for bilinguals relative to age and education matched monolinguals ( Bialystok, Craik, & Freedman, 2007 ; Perani et al., 2017 ). No known pharmaceutical agent has any effect that comes close to bilingualism. While bilingualism does not affect Alzheimer’s directly, research has shown that it does have an impact on the symptoms of the disease: Life as a bilingual seems to provide protection to the cognitive mechanisms that enable someone to negotiate the deleterious consequences of the disease, perhaps in the same way that previous, sustained physical exercise may help a person deal with an injury. When cognitive resources are stressed by the presence of pathology, a life of bilingualism may provide the same sort of protection.

As with the research with young children, some have questioned whether the finding that bilingualism delays the onset of dementia symptoms in those who will develop Alzheimer’s is seen only in adults who are relatively affluent and well educated. A recent study in India on a very large sample of patients who were diagnosed with dementia reported that there was a 4.5-year delay in the onset of symptoms for bilinguals relative to monolinguals. Most critically, the observed delay was independent of education, literacy, and other socioeconomic factors ( Alladi et al., 2013 , p. 1939). Other similar investigations have replicated the four- to five-year delay of dementia symptoms for bilinguals in different language contexts and for different language pairings ( Woumans et al., 2015 ).

Others have wondered about the extent to which bilingualism benefits older adults who are healthy and free of signs of cognitive pathology but who are undergoing normal cognitive aging, such as those who report gradually increasing word-finding difficulties in spoken language and increasing disruption to executive control ( Burke & Shafto, 2008 ; Campbell, Grady, Ng, & Hasher, 2012 ). Notably, the aspects of cognition that naturally decline in aging coincide with many of the features of executive function that have been reported to be influenced by bilingualism, such as the ability to ignore irrelevant information, resolve competition or conflict across alternative responses, and switch between tasks. Studies that have examined the performance of healthy older adults have shown that bilinguals often outperform monolinguals on these measures of executive function ( Bialystok, Craik, Green, & Gollan, 2009 ). While the evidence on behavioral indexes of executive control is sometimes mixed, the findings from studies of structural and functional brain imaging provide compelling support for a difference in the brains of older bilinguals relative to monolinguals ( Gold, Kim, Johnson, Kryscio, & Smith, 2013 ; Li, Legault, & Litcofsky, 2014 ). When bilinguals and monolinguals solve a problem, they may recruit the same brain areas, but bilinguals appear to use them more efficiently.

Given the growing body of evidence that multilingualism has benefits for both normally aging and more challenged older adults, and since studies on young adult bilinguals have suggested that many of the same cognitive benefits can be seen for late bilinguals as for early bilinguals ( Bak, Vega-Mendoza, & Sorace, 2014 ), other studies have investigated whether a person needs to be bilingual from birth or whether late bilingualism can confer some of the same advantages as early bilingualism. Because age of acquisition and language proficiency are confounded—the longer a person has used a language, the more likely he or she is to be proficient, and proficiency seems to be more critical to these consequences of bilingualism than age of exposure per se—research has not yet provided a definitive answer. In addition, despite attempts to control or match as many factors as possible when comparing groups of people—for example, to examine the impact of bilingual or multilingual language experience apart from overall life experience—it is difficult to do this perfectly. Some individuals acquire a second or third language by choice and others as a consequence of the demands of immigration. Some live in an environment where everyone else speaks two or three languages, and others live in an environment that is strongly monolingual, like many locations in the United States. Thus, understanding how these different forms of language experience influence the observed consequences for the mind and the brain is a topic of ongoing research ( Green & Abutalebi, 2013 ). In theory, a solution to the problem of between-group variability is to conduct longitudinal research with the same individuals, although this is both expensive and difficult because attrition over time requires very large samples to come to clear conclusions. In one such recent study, researchers exploited a unique database in Scotland, the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936, in which more than 1,000 individuals were given an intelligence test when they were 11 years old in 1947, and then tested again when they were in their 70s. A clear advantage was reported for bilinguals regardless of the age at which they became bilingual, supporting the findings from studies comparing bilingual and monolingual groups ( Bak, Nissan, Allerhand, & Deary, 2014 ).

What Conclusions Can Be Drawn for Language Learning?

The research cited above suggests that multilingualism provides exceptional consequences across the lifespan that reach far beyond the benefits of having two languages available for communicative purposes. Having two languages will of course enhance opportunities for social interaction, for economic advancement, and for increasing intercultural understanding. However, being bilingual or multilingual also changes the mind and the brain in ways that create resilience under conditions of stress and that counter some of the deleterious effects of poverty and disease. This new body of work on multilingualism has a number of implications for approaches to language learning.

Many years ago, François Grosjean published a paper with a title that garnered great attention, noting that the bilingual was not two monolinguals in one ( Grosjean, 1989 ). His comments were addressed to neurolinguists who interpreted mixed-language speech in bilingual patients as a sign of pathology. His point, reiterating what we have noted earlier in this article, was that language mixing and code-switching are typical features in bilingual speech and, for many bilinguals, mixing is neither rare nor pathological. However, the claim that bilinguals are not simply the addition of two separate monolingual language systems has implications that go beyond the observation of language mixing. Speaking two or more languages changes all languages that an individual knows and uses: There are bidirectional influences that have been demonstrated within a highly interactive language system. The features of the languages in play are likely to influence one another, and the neural plasticity that has been shown to characterize learners at all ages suggests that these changes can sometimes occur quickly during the earliest stages of new language learning. The bottom line is that the two or more languages that are spoken by a bilingual or multilingual individual are not like the native language spoken by a monolingual speaker. The model in past research on second language learning has focused on the goal of attaining native speaker–like abilities in processing the second language. That model assumes, for the most part, that the two languages are independent of one another, an assumption that researchers now know to be incorrect. If proficient multilinguals are not like monolingual native speakers, then the classic native language model is the wrong model for language learning.

A problem in adopting a multilingual model for new language learning is that for adult learners who are already proficient speakers of their native language, there are some features of the native language and indeed of their native language skill that may need to suffer interference, at least briefly, to enable the second language to become established. Research on memory and learning has suggested that what Robert Bjork and Elizabeth Bjork at UCLA have called “desirable difficulties” may be essential to learning ( E. Bjork & R. Bjork, 2011 ): Conditions of learning that give rise to difficulties increase the contextual salience of new material, those that produce errors that provide meaningful feedback, and those that encourage elaboration may ultimately produce better learning and better memory for what has been learned. Desirable difficulties can be imposed externally during learning, e.g., by having learners acquire information under conditions that are costly or slow, or by mentally imposing those conditions on themselves, by self-regulation ( R. Bjork, Dunlosky, & Kornell, 2013 ). In the realm of language learning, the results of a few studies can be understood within this framework, but the implications for language learning more generally have yet to be developed ( R. Bjork & Kroll, 2015 ). This suggests, however, that learning new material quickly may produce a level of satisfaction for the learner but may not necessarily produce enduring memory for what has been learned. The lessons about multilingualism and desirable difficulties come together when one considers what is known about mixing languages. As noted earlier, code-switching, even within a single utterance, is a common occurrence in bilingual speech. Not all bilinguals code-switch, but those who do appear to move seamlessly from one language to the other with little disruption on the part of either the bilingual speaker or the bilingual listener. Likewise, studies of memory and learning have suggested that learning under mixed conditions may produce more stable outcomes than learning under blocked conditions (Birnbaum, Kornell, E. Bjork, & R. Bjork). In the field of education, the idea of “translanguaging” proposes a related concept about having learners exploit all known languages within the context of a given lesson ( García & Wei, 2013 ). Mixing information may not simplify learning, but creating learning environments that simultaneously create desirable difficulties and move new language learners in a direction that more closely resembles the experience of proficient bilinguals may be likely to enhance productive outcomes.

In addition, studies on infant learners have suggested that tremendous gains result when babies are exposed to language variation early in life. This body of work, which shows that bilinguals are better language learners than monolinguals, is not a surprise of course because bilinguals have learned something important about learning itself. One hypothesis about this finding is that the language learning benefit for bilinguals arises from enhancement to self-regulated processes. Bilinguals learn to control the languages not in use, and that control may produce benefits not only to executive function but also to learning mechanisms more generally. A recent proposal is that the very conditions that are available naturally during infancy may also give rise to learning strategies that may be applied to adult learners for whom entrenchment in existing knowledge may be an impediment to new learning ( Cochran, McDonald, & Parault, 1999 ; Wu, 2013 ). A number of investigators are now pursuing a program of research to ask whether new language learning training for older adults will produce benefits to counter age-related cognitive decline ( Antoniou, Gunasekera, & Wong, 2013 ). It will remain to be seen how effectively the lessons from each of these diverse areas of research will come together to provide concrete proposals for how new language learning might be implemented. The lessons from the field are clear in suggesting a new emphasis on exploiting a model that enables the learner to encounter complexity from the start and to then focus on the strategies that may encourage optimal self-regulation.

Addressing the Challenges to Multilingualism in the United States

As noted at the beginning of this article, the greatest challenges to multilingualism in the United States are characterized by the mythology about multilingualism. Learning a second or third language is not a cognitively unnatural task, nor does it create deleterious consequences at any point in the lifespan. The new research, especially work that has been made possible by the revolution in the neurosciences, shows that all the languages that an individual knows and uses are processed in an integrated language system in which there is extensive interaction ( Sigman, Peña, Goldin, & Ribeiro, 2014 ). That interaction across languages gives rise to competition across the known languages, which requires regulation. Although that requirement may impose an initial cost during learning, it appears to be the other side of a process that produces significant benefits for the development of cognitive control. The evidence on multilingualism leads researchers to think that new approaches to language learning that allow learners to experience the variation across the two or more languages, and that may produce language mixing and initial effortful processing, may be beneficial to long-term outcomes.

There is an inspiring message in a film called “Speaking in Tongues” that documents the experiences of children in dual-language classrooms who come from very different backgrounds, including both heritage speakers and monolingual English-speaking learners who have no exposure to other languages at home.3 2 The spirit of that documentary meshes well with the scientific evidence that has been reviewed here. Encouraging others to embrace this view will require social action that draws on cross-disciplinary sciences and engages a larger community in working toward that goal.

1 See http://www.bilingualism-matters.ppls.ed.ac.uk/ , the home of “Bilingualism Matters” at the University of Edinburgh, for additional background.

2 We note for the purpose of this discussion that we take a broad view of bilingualism and multilingualism, considering anyone who uses two or more languages actively to be bilingual or multilingual. The form of language experience will differ across individuals and in different language and cultural contexts. Those distinctions, the trajectory of language learning, and the resulting proficiency in each language will be critically important factors, but our interpretation of the available research is that bilingualism and multilingualism are more similar than different. The critical distinction will be between individuals who are monolingual and individuals who speak two or more languages.

3 See http://speakingintonguesfilm.info/ .

Contributor Information

Judith F. Kroll, University of California, Riverside.

Paola E. Dussias, Pennsylvania State University.

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