Why A Bilingual Is Not The Sum Of Two Monolinguals by Prof Antonella Sorace
Channel: Ragged University
Date: 2023-11-07

How people learn languages at different ages; the linguistic and cognitive effects of knowing more than one language. The concept of 'native monolingual speaker' has traditionally shaped both the scientific and the public understanding of bilingualism. Developmental stages and features of bilinguals are still often defined in terms of distance (“non-native”, “near-native”, “native-like”) or differences (‘advantages’ or ‘disadvantages’) with respect to native monolingual norms.

Bilinguals at all ages, at least in Western societies, are often tested with educational and diagnostic metrics originally based on monolingual standards. I will show how recent interdisciplinary research that combines the strengths of linguistic, cognitive and social models questions the notion of the ‘monolingual speaker’ as a default point of reference, and the expectation that bilinguals should behave like monolinguals in each of their languages. This, in turn, opens up new ways of understanding, valuing and promoting bilingualism in any languages.

Prof Antonella Sorace does research on multilingualism over the lifespan from a linguistic and cognitive perspective. She is active in public engagement of research through the centre she founded, Bilingualism Matters, which has a wide international network of 33 branches in four continents. Antonella Sorace is Professor of Developmental Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.

She is internationally known for her interdisciplinary research on bilingualism across the lifespan, and for her commitment to building bridges between research and society. She is the founding director of the non-profit organisation Bilingualism Matters, which currently has 33 branches in four different continents. For more information and learning resources visit my website below.


The Bilingualism Matters website has a number of free resources:

https://www.bilingualism-matters.org



Produced for Ragged University (www.raggeduniversity.co.uk), a community based free education project inspired by the Ragged Schools.