HISTORICAL FACTORS OF BILINGUAL AND MULTILINGUAL DEVELOPMENT

Siguan and Mackey identified 5 historical factors that may have influenced the development of bilingualism. According to
them, the 5 historical factors are:
 Expansion: series of actions done to expand territories where a different language is spoken.
 Unification: political actions done to centralize or unify minor territories to create wider territories. Usually, more
powerful groups try to spread and impose their linguistic habits groups with more power disseminate and impose
their linguistic habits. However, when the minor group resist unification, a linguistic conflict may appear.
 Post-colonial situations: independent territories or countries with a linguistically varied population. Before,
 Immigration: cities or countries that receive large numbers of people who speak a different language than that of
their host. It is normal that immigrants need to learn their host language to survive. However, they try to keep their
mother language to preserve their roots. It is quite possible that second or third generation may see their parents'
language as one of ''minor status'' and a situation of subtractive bilingualism occurs.
 Cosmopolitanism: places where international contacts take place, especially for commercial and political purposes.
Iván Ricardo Miranda Montenegro, 2012. INSIGHTS ON BILINGUALISM AND BILINGUAL EDUCATION: A
SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE

SOCIAL FACTORS OF BILINGUAL AND MULTILINGUAL DEVELOPMENT IN SOCIETY AND INDIVIDUAL

(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.)

 Society
 Social bilingualism refers to the interrelationship between linguistic and non-linguistic factors such as social
evaluation/value judgements of bilingualism.
- 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.
- 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.
o (elitist bilingualism - trademark of upper-class intellectuals and educated people in many societies
and which is a matter of choice.)
o (folk bilingualism - is the result of the contact of ethnic groups who have to become bilingual
involuntarily in order to survive; here they do not have a choice, they just have to learn the language of
the setting where they live.)
- 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
- One of the outcomes of a stable elite and folk bilingualism is diglossia 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)
 Political bilingualism refers to the language policies of a country.
- 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.)
- 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.
- The Territorial principle ensures bilingualism or multilingual within a particular area to a variable degree.
 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.
 other two salient characteristics of bilingual verbal behavior:
 - bilinguals’ balanced competence
- capacity to separate the two linguistic systems and to integrate them within a sentence or a speech event.
 Language mixing - far more complex cognitive ability than language separation but is also very natural to
bilinguals. Example: Taglish, Hinglish, Spanglish, Germlish etc.
- Such a two-faceted phenomenon is termed as code-mixing and code-switching.
- 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.
 Understanding the universal and scientific basis for the linguistic creativity of bilinguals.
- I. Language mixing as a systematic phenomenon Earlier research (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). Recent research shows that CM/CS is
subject to formal, functional, and attitudinal factors. CM language structure and use has taken two distinct
forms:
- 1. An approach is formulated in terms of the theory of linguistic competence within the framework of
Chomsky’s Minimalist Program (MacSwan, 2009).
- 2. An 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).
- II. Motivations for language mixing 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. 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.
- III. Social evaluation 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 and are
“lazy” and “careless”. 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.
- Even governments get on the bandwagon of having the backlash to language mixing. 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. 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.
- IV. Language mixing and other related phenomena Linguistic borrowing ( 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. 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. The distinction between code-mixing and code-
switching is controversial for a number of reasons, particularly the integration of the participating grammar’s
intrasententially.
 Individual

 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)
 Ambilinguals or true bilinguals - an absolute clone of two monolinguals without a trace of accent from
either language
- 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)
- 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)
 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.
 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.
 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. 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). 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. 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.
 Adult Bilingualism: UG and Native Language Dominance
- The task of learning a second language by adults more difficult and time consuming than by children.
Critical Period Hypothesis by 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. Adults 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). "Fossilization" stage is a time when their ultimate attainment of L2 falls
short of the native language target, termed. 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 (Siegel,
2003). 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. The differential
competencies, as evident from the different types of adult bilinguals, can be accounted for primarily on
sociolinguistic grounds. 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).

ADDITIONAL INFO:

Effects of Bilingualism

Until the middle of the 20th century in the United States, researchers engaged in examining the relationship
betweenintelligence 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. 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. 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).

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).
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).

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. Linguist Roman Jacobson’s “bilingualism is for me a fundamental
problem of linguistics” (Chomsky, 1986). 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).

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.

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.
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 methodologiescontinues to pose new challenges and promises to the field of bilingualism (Long,
2016).