Towards multilingualism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jmtp.16682Keywords:
monolingualism, bilingualism, multilingualism, cognitive capacities, bilingual education, standard and nonstandard dialectsAbstract
There has been a development in both scholarly and popular attention to language capabilities and their alleged cognitive consequences. Emphasis, both theoretical and applied, was initially given to monolingual fluencies. Indeed, the sense that monolingualism is still somehow the default norm remains in some ‘large-language’ contexts. A second stage, as it were, arose when serious consideration began to be given to bilingualism—a phase surely long overdue, given the real-life circumstances that have always prevailed around the world. One of the most interesting aspects of this phase has been the apparent empirical demonstration that bilingualism correlates with cognitive advantage. Although this seems a welcome corrective to earlier and quite opposite views, the evidence turns out to be far from unequivocal. It now appears likely that, while expanded linguistic repertoires are of course beneficial, there are no simple correspondences between languages known and cognitive capacities. Research on bilingualism and multilingualism, at both individual and social levels, is now routine.
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