MOOC: Multilingual Education

2.2 Different kinds of bilingualism

Week 2 Part 2 will help you to:

grasp the different facets of bilingualism,
become familiar with the different types of bilingualism and the factors shaping them.

To reach these goals you are expected to:

watch the introductory video,
read the text below to understand the various forms of bilingualism and the factors which generate them.
Reflect on your understanding of bilingualism by looking at several mini case studies.

Video

Reading

Early and late / Simultaneous and successive bilingualism

The age at which one acquires a second language plays an important role – we thus distinguish between early and late bilingualism. Early bilingualism covers infant bilingualism (roughly up to the age of three) and child bilingualism reaching approximately to the age of puberty, which is seen as the onset of adult or late bilingualism. If both languages are acquired by the child at the same time (as in the case when a child is born in a family where the parents speak different languages), we speak of simultaneous bilingualism, and if the second language is acquired after the child (or adult) has already acquired his/her first language (e.g. a child of immigrant parents who meets the second language only on entering compulsory education), the process is referred to as successive or sequential bilingualism.. Simultaneous acquisition of two languages always happens in a natural setting (usually the family), whereas successive bilingualism develops in a tutored environments, such as a kindergarten, a school or any institution systematically providing or supporting education in the second language.

Additive vs. subtractive bilingualism

Balanced bilingualism represents an ideal which is very difficult to achieve and uphold. In general, most bilinguals tend to be more fluent and generally proficient in one language, or even in some uses of it, i.e. they have a dominant language and a weaker one (e.g. a bilingual engineer with a Bosnian father and a Slovene mother, born and educated in Slovenia and working in a Slovene company, will use Bosnian at home with his father and during the holidays with his paternal family, and Slovene with his mother, his maternal family and at work, and will consider Slovene as his dominant language). The language they feel most at home in is their preferred language, which in most of the cases coincides with their dominant language. However, these language roles may change in a bilingual’s life for different reasons, very often as a result of the status awarded to a language in a community (e.g. if the Bosnian engineer’s company opens a branch-office in Sarajevo and he moves to Bosnia to work there, marries a Bosnian and decides to live there, Slovenian might lose its importance and become his weaker language in time).

The situation in which languages are acquired in a balanced way, with no status differences attributed to them, is termed additive bilingualism (implying a language “gain”). When a second language is learned to the detriment of the first language (especially if it is a minority language), we speak of subtractive bilingualism (implying a loss), which usually results in the proficiency of the second language increasing as the mastery of the first language decreases (Lambert 1974). Subtractive bilingualism may also lead to semilingualism which mean a person is unable to function properly in either of his/her languages, which is also one of the most frequently voiced criticisms of bilingualism and plurilingualism. The extent to which subtractive bilingualism will take place largely depends on the status of each language, i.e. whether it is the majority or a minority language is a community. This is very often the case with children of immigrant families, who, when they enter the educational system, are not encouraged or given opportunities to uphold their first language, while the family environment is not able to systematically provide support and motivation in this sense.

Functional bilingualism/plurilingualism

The definitions of bilingualism (or plurilingualism) which focus on the bilingual’s proficiency in each of his/her languages fail to recognize the importance of the functionality of these languages, i.e. how they can be used to communicate effectively. Oksaar (1983:9) suggests combing the criteria of competence and function in her definition of bilingualism (which perfectly applies to plurilingualism) as ”the ability of a person to use here and now two or more language as a means of communication in most situations and to switch from one language to the other if necessary”. And in her cultureme-theory Oksaar (1988) also stresses that communication not only involves verbal means, but para-verbal, non-verbal and extra-verbal elements as well, which all can be used to compensate for the lack of verbal elements. For instance, when we lack the adequate, culture-specific verbal means to express politeness and respect, we can try to convey these aspects by using a limited number of words, but a meaningful intonation and extensive body language.

As to the functions which languages fulfil, House (2001) distinguishes between languages for communication (such as English used as lingua franca) and languages for identification, which are used for interpersonal exchange across cultures and for expressing one’s identity as a member of a particular cultural community. In international conferences, for example, English is generally regarded as the most appropriate language for communication, lectures are delivered, papers presented, negotiations conducted and the corresponding documents drawn-up in English, whereas the less formal contacts between the participants, in which their cultural identities are expressed, social contacts created, often occur by using other languages shared by the interactants in the communication, in which they might be less proficient when discussing professional topics.

Sources:

House, J. 2001. English as a lingua franca for Europe. In IATEFL 2001: Brighton conference selections, ed. A. Pulverness, 82–4. Whitstable: IATEFL.

Lambert, Wallace E. “Culture and language as factors in learning and education.” (1973) https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED096820.pdf

Oksaar, Els. 1983. Language acquisition in the early years: an introduction to paedolinguistics. BT Batsford Limited, 1983.

Oksaar, Els. 1988. Kulturemtheorie.: Ein Beitrag zur Sprachverwendungsforschung. Joachim Jungius-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften in Kommission beim Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen,

Activity

Types of bilingualism

Look at the mini case studies below and do the activities.