Lesson 2

Types of Bilingualism Part 2

Elite and Folk Bilingualism
• Elite bilingualism: L2 acquired through formal education with some
opportunity to use the language naturally.
• Example: middle class Anglophone parents in Canada who send their
children to a French school.
• Folk bilingualism: L2 acquired through practical contact with speakers
of that language.
Elite Bilingualism
• Elite bilinguals typically become bilingual through a free choice to
learn a language.
• Elite bilingualism has always been highly valued and considered a
form of cultural enrichment and a mark of learning and intelligence.
• The risk associated with failing to learn L2 is small and is equal to the
consequences of failing in any other area of curriculum.
• Students who do not excel in language studies are usually able to
discontinue the area of study and concentrate their attention on other
subject areas.
Folk Bilingualism
• Folk bilinguals are typically members of linguistic minority groups and are
subject to strong external pressure to learn the dominant language.
• Their home language is often unvalued in the wider community and usually
has limited or no official status.
• Failure to acquire the dominant language adequately can have drastic
repercussions for these children.
• A child whose L2 skills are limited is usually excluded from further
educational opportunities and will be unable to compete in the labour
market with children who are fluent in the dominant language.
• Such a child will face restrictions on his/her access to the life of the larger
community.
Folk Bilingualism
• Folk bilinguals may also suffer difficulties due to the education system’s
lack of support for speakers of non-dominant language.
• These children frequently enter classes taught in a language they do not
speak, and often find themselves in the same class as native speakers of the
dominant language.
• Moreover, for many speakers of minority languages, general educational
prospects for successful learning and for their acquisition of the dominant
language are dependent to some extent on the continued development of
their L1 and of the conceptual basis they have already gained.
• If the educational system does not assist children in this development, the
result can be sever educational difficulties for these children.
Elite and Folk Bilinguals
Elite Folk
Bilingual by choice Not bilingual by choice
Living abroad for Feel the need to be bilingual (in
business/education order to survive)
Well-educated Difficult socio-economic &
cultural environment
Access to good jobs Guest workers / Refugees/ Asylum
seekers
Languages of established power & Languages with no prestige or not
prestige officially recognised
Balanced Bilingualism
• Haugen (1973): a balanced bilingual is an individual who has native-
like competence in both languages
• More frequently, however, the term is used to refer to an individual
who has roughly equal ability in both languages.
• Example: someone whose performance was imperfect in both
languages would still be a balanced bilingual if his/her skills in each
language were about the same
• Example: A child who can understand the delivery of the curriculum in
school in either language, and operate in classroom activity in either
language
Balanced Bilingualism
• Though it is possible to come across bilinguals who are highly
proficient in both languages, Baetens Beardsmore (1982) argued that
balanced bilingualism is close to impossible to achieve, and is
therefore very rare.
• Even high-level conference interpreters tend to have a preference for
one of their languages, and will often specialise in interpreting into
their dominant language despite the fact that they are highly fluent in
both languages.
Balanced Bilingualism
• Fishman (1972): bilinguals are rarely equally fluent in both languages in all
topics.
• He argued: sociolinguistic forces demand that bilinguals organise their
languages in functionally complementary spheres.
• Example, a German–French bilingual may be able to speak both languages
fluently, but is likely to use German exclusively in certain situations or
when discussing specific topics.
• Fishman: this complementary nature of language functions assures the
continued existence of bilingualism
• Any society which produces bilinguals who use both languages with equal
competence in all contexts will stop being bilingual, as no society needs two
languages to perform the same set of functions.
• Balanced bilingualism necessarily entails the death of bilingualism.
Dominant Bilingualism
• Most bilinguals are usually
dominant in one language or the
other.
• They may also not be dominant
in the same language in all areas.
• Example: a Vietnamese speaking
child educated in English may
have a better command of written
English than of written
Vietnamese.
Dominant Bilingualism
• There are domains of language use in which people use only one of
their two languages.
• Example: an Arabic-English bilingual in Australia may use only
English at work or at school, but would normally use Arabic at home
or with friends.
• As a result, this person would have a more developed vocabulary for
work and school in English and a more developed vocabulary for
domestic activities in Arabic.
• This person could be better able to talk about work in English and
better able to talk about cooking in Arabic,
Dominant Bilingualism
• Other examples:
• A French–German computer scientist may speak French most of time
except when he is discussing computer science-related topics as he did
his training in computer science in German.
• An Italian–German teacher may be fluent in both Italian and German,
but always discusses soccer in Italian as he mainly plays soccer with
his Italian-speaking friends and talks ‘soccer’ in Italian and not in
German.
• A Chinese engineer who was trained in London may prefer to discuss
engineering research in English despite the fact that her mother tongue
is Mandarin Chinese.
Balanced and Dominant Bilinguals
Two Views of Bilinguals
• An argument advanced by François Grosjean (1985, 1994) is that there
are two contrasting views of individual bilinguals.
• First, there is a fractional view of bilinguals, which evaluates the
bilingual as ‘two monolinguals in one person’.
• There is a second, holistic view which argues that the bilingual is not
the sum of two complete or incomplete monolinguals, but that he/she
has a unique linguistic profile.
The Monolingual or Fractional View of
Bilingualism
• Many teachers, administrators, politicians and researchers look at the
bilingual as two monolinguals in one person.
• For example, if English is a bilingual’s L2, scores on an English
reading or English attainment test will normally be compared against
monolingual scores and averages.
• A bilingual’s English language competence is often measured against
that of a native monolingual English speaker (e.g. in the US & the
UK).
The Monolingual or Fractional View of
Bilingualism
• This is unfair because it derives from a myopic monolingual view of
people.
• It is also unfair because bilinguals will typically use their two
languages in different situations and with different people.
• Thus bilinguals may be stronger in each language in different
domains.
The Monolingual or Fractional View of
Bilingualism
• One expectation from this fractional viewpoint will be for bilinguals to
show a proficiency comparable to that of a monolingual in both their
two languages.
• If that proficiency does not exist in both languages, especially in the
majority language, then bilinguals may be denigrated and classified as
inferior.
• In the United States, for example, children of immigrant families, or of
other language minority families, are often officially federally
categorised as LEP (Limited English Proficient).
• In northern Europe, bilinguals who appear to exhibit a lack of
proficiency in both languages may be described as ‘semilingual’.
The Monolingual or Fractional View of
Bilingualism
• While areas such as Africa, India, Scandinavia and parts of Asia see
bilingualism as the norm, in countries such as the United States and
England, the dominant view of the world is monolingual.
• Although between a half and two-thirds of the world’s population is
bilingual to some degree, the monolingual is often seen as normal in
these two countries, and the bilingual as an exception, if not an oddity.
The Holistic View of Bilingualism
• François Grosjean (1985, 1994) presents a more positive alternative
view of bilinguals.
• Comparing the language proficiency of a monolingual with a
bilingual’s dual language or multilingual proficiency is unjust.
• However, this raises the question, should bilinguals only be measured
and compared by reference to other bilinguals?
• When for example, someone learns English as a second language,
should that competency in English-only be measured against other
bilinguals?
The Holistic View of Bilingualism
• In countries like Wales for instance, where first-language Welsh-speaking
children compete in a largely English-language job market against
monolingual English speakers, the dominant view is that they should be
given the same English assessments at school.
• However, Grosjean (1985, 1994) stresses that any assessment of a
bilingual’s language proficiency should ideally move away from the
traditional language tests with their emphasis on form and correctness, and
to an evaluation of the bilingual’s general communicative competence.
• This appraisal would be based on a totality of the bilingual’s language usage
in all domains, whether this involves the choice of one language in a
particular domain, or a mixing of the two languages.
Study Activity
• Do you consider yourself and/or people known to you as ‘bilingual’?
• Would you describe yourself, or someone known to you, as ‘balanced’
in their languages?
• Which language(s) do you think in?
• Does this change in different contexts?
• In which language or languages do you dream, count numbers, pray
and think aloud?
Receptive and Productive Bilingualism
• Receptive Bilingual: understand but not produce L2
either in oral and/or written domains
• Productive Bilingual: understand & produce L2
Receptive Bilingualism
• Scandinavian languages: Swedish, Norwegian, Danish.
• Even though these three varieties are clearly closely related & speakers of
any one of these languages can more or less understand speakers of the two
other languages,
• For historical reasons & because of present political boundaries, they are
called three different languages.
• When Scandinavians who are speakers of these languages meet, each
participant speaks his/her own language in many conversations.
• This form of limited bilingualism is called receptive bilingualism; that is,
the addressee only develops a receptive ability in the other speaker’s
language (meaning he/she can understand, but not speak the language).
Receptive Bilingualism
• It has also been noted in the last stages of language survival when the
typical third or fourth generation understands the questions in the
immigrant language of the grandparents but replies to them in English
(Dorian, 1989).
• Example: Rami Malek
Elective & Circumstantial Bilingualism
Elective Bilinguals Circumstantial Bilinguals
Characteristic of individuals Characteristic of groups
Choose to learn another language L2 required to meet needs of new
circumstances
Communicative opportunities usually Communicative needs may relate to
sought artificially (e.g. in classroom) survival or success
L1 will usually remain the dominant Two languages will play a
language complementary role & the stronger
language may vary depending on the
domain
Examples of Elective & Circumstantial
Bilingualism
Elective Bilinguals Circumstantial Bilinguals
A child raised with a French-speaking Children raised in families where two
mother & Italian-speaking father in an languages are spoken both inside & outside
English-speaking environment the home
A Japanese student who has learned English Immigrant groups who have moved to a
in order to study for an MA degree in country where another language is spoken
Australia
An American man who learns Russian Indigenous groups living in countries which
because he has married a Russian woman have been colonised
and moved to Russia
A diplomat who learns Mandarin Chinese for Groups whose L1 is different from the
her job prestige language of the surrounding
community.
Task
• Try to think of some examples of people who are ‘elective’ bilinguals
and people who are ‘circumstantial’ bilinguals.
• Can an individual move from one group to the other?
• Can you be a member of both groups at the same time? How?
• Try to give an example of a person who would be considered to be
both an elective bilingual and a circumstantial bilingual (assuming that
this person is at least trilingual!).
• Would you yourself qualify for membership of one of the groups?
Which one?
Summary
• Different classifications have been proposed focusing on different
dimensions of bilingualism.
• Such dimensions include:
-relationship between language proficiencies in two languages (balanced &
dominant bilinguals);
-the functional ability (receptive & productive bilinguals);
-the age of acquisition (simultaneous & sequential bilinguals);
-the organisation of linguistic codes & meaning units (compound &
coordinate bilinguals);
-language status and learning environments (elite/elective and
folk/circumstantial bilinguals);
-the effect of L2 learning on the retention of L1 (additive & subtractive
bilinguals)