Misconceptions about bilingualism

From what has been said so far, it is clear that bilingualism is a characteristic of individuals, groups and societies, and studies of it can focus on various elements and implications. Let us look now at some commonly held ideas about bilinguals and see what researchers have con-firmed or refuted.

• Misconception 1. True bilinguals never mix their languages; people who mix their lan-guages can be considered only ‘semi-lingual’ since they can speak neither language like a native speaker.

• Misconception 2. A child needs to be fluent in one language before it should be taught a second language. But only very young children can become maximally bilingual (i.e.

close to native speaker proficiency in both languages), after a certain age this is no longer possible.

• Misconception 3. Two languages confuse a child and growing up bilingual leads to lower intelligence: bilingualism always implies loss, a splitting of finite cognitive potential.

• Misconception 4. There is no need to teach immigrant children their “new” language, they will pick it up easily on the playground.

Before we go on, think about these statements and decide what you think. Most of them could have been said differently, for example, “At school older children learn languages better and faster than younger schoolchildren”, or “Even adults can learn a second language so well that no-one can tell that they are not native speakers”. There are many beliefs about bilin-gualism and bilinguals and the interesting thing is that studies of bilinbilin-gualism often show contradictory results. Let us look at these misconceptions in turn.

16.4. Misconceptions about bilingualism

16.4.1. Misconception 1. Code-switching

If you have ever observed a bilingual family in action, you may have been surprised by the number of times the members mixed their languages. This is called CODE-SWITCHINGand it used to be assumed that it reflected some deficiency in the language competence of the speaker. You may recognise it as a technique used in language learning to overcome a com-municative stumbling block caused by limited lexical resources. In this case it is often accom-panied by hesitation. Research has, however, found that code-switching can be used to achieve multiple communicative purposes. In many bilingual communities it is seen as normal. The speakers communicate fluently, without hesitation, pauses or changes in rhythm, pitch or in-tonation. Such a bilingual mode of communication is rule-governed, and can serve many purposes, including the demonstration of solidarity. Investigating the kinds of rules that gov-ern code-switching can help us to learn about the nature of language in a general sense, pro-viding evidence of both its flexibility and inflexibility.

Bilinguals learn to separate their languages but may choose not to do so. A bilingual has the choice of activating or deactivating a language, depending on the context. However, there is never total deactivation of one language: the bilingual chooses a base or MATRIX LANGUAGE

but keeps the other language ‘active’, allowing words, phrases, clauses and sentences to be in-cluded from that language as well. From a psycholinguistic perspective, the interaction pro-cedure is still unclear and the challenge is to explain how all this can happen so fast and so efficiently. It is clear that bilingualism in the individual is not simply a form of monolingual-ism doubled, nor can it be studied in isolation, without its social and cognitive correlates.

16.4.2. Misconception 2. Critical period and order of acquisition.

This is an important question for the study of language acquisition in general, as current theories based on monolingual children will at some point have to include the phenomenon of bilingual language acquisition. SUCCESSIVE, or CONSECUTIVE, BILINGUALISMis common, but so too is becoming bilingual simultaneously. Recognising this can be important for fam-ilies where bilingualism is not a necessity but a choice. In today’s globalising world, knowing several languages can be an advantage and in many educated families it is assumed that their children will become fluent in at least one foreign language in the course of their education, a phenomenon known as ELITE BILINGUALISM.

Weinreich (1953) made a distinction between compound and co-ordinate bilinguals, and the testing of this distinction is still continuing. COMPOUND BILINGUALSsupposedly have one se-mantic system and two language codes, while CO-ORDINATE BILINGUALShave two semantic systems and two codes. Compound bilinguals acquire their languages in the same context, at the same time, while co-ordinate bilinguals acquire their languages in different contexts, at different times. For example, a child may grow up learning two languages from infancy, while another may acquire one language as an infant and the second language later – with pu-berty possibly marking a decisive point for difference in brain activity pattern.

Modern techniques in neuroscience make it possible to map brain activity using neuroim-agery, with implications for understanding the representation of language/s in the cortex.

One of the questions that comes up again and again in research on bilingualism is whether bilinguals store language in the same way as monolinguals do. Do children who grow up bilingual from the beginning have a different mental lexicon from children who acquire a sec-ond language a few years later? Neurolinguistics can help us test the various ideas about this subject. Findings so far have been contradictory, indicating both shared and divergent representations of languages in the bilingual brain.

One question of great interest is whether such research can help us gain clarity on whether or not there is a critical period for language learning. Recent findings suggest that early bilin-guals show similar activity in certain areas in the brain while late bilinbilin-guals show a different pattern of activation. Such research can be supported or refuted by looking at aphasiacs – people who have suffered damage to portions of their brain that are responsible for language.

While patterns of damage vary, individuals with Broca’s aphasia are non-fluent, speaking in short, meaningful phrases that are produced with great effort, while individuals with Wer-nicke’s aphasia are fluent, but speak in long, meaningless sentences. Permanence of damage or patterns of recovery can help us test hypotheses about the anatomical representation of language. Bilingual aphasiacs need to be assessed in all their languages. The recent develop-ment of a Bilingual Aphasia Test consists of an evaluation of the patient’s multilingual his-tory, the assessment of language disorders in the various languages, and an assessment of translation abilities and interference detection in each language pair. It is available in many languages, and its use will have the added advantage of making future studies comparable.

16.4.3. Misconception 3. Cognitive disadvantage

Perhaps you disagree, thinking that bilingualism is a good thing, that children growing up bilingual are fortunate and even that being bilingual may make a person more intelligent. Yet for many years studies published in America supported the connection between bilingualism and lower intelligence. The researchers who undertook these studies ignored biographies published at the time, which reported no negative consequences of bilingualism. The turning point came with a publication of a study by Peal and Lambert (1962) that questioned the pre-vious findings. By looking closely at the studies, they were able to identify problems in methodology and research design that explained their results. The children examined gener-ally came from immigrant families, in difficult socio-economic circumstances; they were as-sumed to be ‘bilingual’ without that being clearly defined or tested; and the tests were often administered in their weaker language. To test the hypothesis that bilingualism was the cause of cognitive deficit the ‘control’ group should have been as similar as possible in all ways, with the single exception of being monolingual. Peal and Lambert tried to do this in their study and came to the opposite conclusion: bilingualism was linked to some cognitive advantage.

Specifically, the bilinguals scored significantly higher on most measures of verbal and non-verbal intelligence.

16.4.3. Misconception 3. Cognitive disadvantage

Research now seems to show positive effects of bilingualism on the linguistic and educational development of children. Studies suggest that bilingual children who have developed both their languages have a better understanding of language, increased language awareness, and are able to use language more effectively. Bialystok, for example, investigated preschool bilin-guals and found evidence for a cognitive advantage due to their ability to selectively attend to relevant information.

Peal and Lambert’s conclusions have therefore been cautiously borne out. I say ‘cautiously’

because these newer studies are careful to define exactly what they are studying and to make only justified claims. It is clear, however, that the number of studies showing positive effects for bilingualism far outweigh the ones that point to negative effects. These positive effects are related to mental flexibility and concept formation, memory, language awareness, and cre-ativity. It seems that bilinguals transfer skills and knowledge across languages.

16.4.4. Misconception 4. Natural acquisition needs no support

Education is an area in which most attention is paid to ‘normal’ children. It is only recently the educational systems in our western civilization have recognised bilingualism as a normal condition. Yet it seems that bilingual children still often struggle to achieve their full poten-tial in school. Despite the potenpoten-tially positive effects of bilingualism, there are still studies that show children scoring lower on various measures. One explanation for this is that chil-dren seem to ‘pick up’ basic conversational skills with ease and this can be mistakenly inter-preted by teachers and parents as native-like language skills appropriate for their age group.

Numerous studies have confirmed that learning academic language skills takes significantly longer. This is an area where applying insights from research can have immediate benefits.

These issues need to be addressed in curriculum design and teaching practice.

While there seems to be little proof that children need to acquire one language before starting to acquire a second, it does seem to be the case that school children who achieve not only a high level of language proficiency in their mother tongue but also develop cognitive academic skills in that language, succeed better in school. What they have learnt in one language can be transferred to the other, thereby counteracting the negative effects of having to study in a second language. From this we can hypothesize that there is a common cognitive ability underlying behaviour in both languages.