Bilingualism and multilingualism are ubiquitous in today’s world, with traditionally monolingual populations becoming restricted to some geographic locations and social groups. There are also multiple ways in which people become bilingual or multilingual. While bilingualism and multilingualism are well-attested in historical records, the history of research on bilingualism spans less than a century, with the last couple of decades witnessing a mounting number of studies by researchers from different backgrounds.
While bilingualism research has always been interdisciplinary, this course aims to provide an overview of representative bilingualism research from linguistics, psychology and education studies. The course will consist of three parts. First, we will look at theoretical ramifications and social characteristics of bilingualism. This part of the course will address questions such as: who is bilingual or multilingual? how do bilinguals differ? how do background characteristics influence bilingual outcomes? In the second part of the course we will focus on bilingualism and cognitive processing to discuss specific issues such as: crosslinguistic influence, the age question, bilingualism and intelligence, lexical processing, as well as the current executive advantage debate. In short, this part will centre around bilingual advantages and challenges. In the last part, we will focus on bilingual language and thought, starting with the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and moving on to discuss contemporary research on conceptual categorization.
To sum up, the course provides a comprehensive overview of research on bilingual language and cognition, ensuring a balanced mix of fundamental theory and state-of-the-art empirical research, fun issues, persistent myths debunked as well as current controversies presented.
- Teacher: Anna Ewert