Bilingualism and multilingualism are more and more common in today’s
world, with traditionally monolingual populations becoming restricted to
some geographic locations. There are also multiple ways in which people
become bilingual or multilingual.
This course aims to provide an introduction to bilingualism research,
with a focus on bilingual language, processing and cognition. The
argument made throughout the course will be that
bilingualism/multilingualism changes the way people use and perceive
language, the way they communicate, the way they perceive the world and
their reasoning, affects their linguistic and cognitive processing.
Throughout the course we will read and analyse a number of
representative research reports providing evidence of bilingual
differences. First, we will look into how bilinguals differ from
monolinguals in their use of both the L2 and the L1, as well as in their
metalinguistic awareness. Then, we will have a look at the bilingual
mental lexicon and the ways bilinguals access words in their two
languages. This will provide us with a foundation to see if there is a
link between bilingual lexical processing and an executive function
advantage, or a general cognitive processing advantage. From there, we
will move on to bilingual conceptual representation and processing, i.e.
to how bilinguals represent the world and how it affects their
perception, understanding of the world and reasoning.
As throughout the course we will read a number of original research
reports, this course is mainly for students interested in
psycholinguistic research and thinking about conducting their own
empirical study in the future. The course aims to provide participants
with hands-on practice at reading and understanding empirical research
reports.
Course credit requirements include participation in class discussions of
published research, in-class presentations of published research
reports and a short end of the semester quiz.
- Teacher: Anna Ewert