ID: 1636572 - ET324 Multilingualism and Culture

‘The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person’

Please a vostre tresgraciouse Seignourie entendre que a-jourduy apres noone…qu’ils furent
venuz deinz nostre countie pluis de .cccc. des les rebelz de Owyne, Glyn, Talgard, et
pluseours autres rebelz des voz marches de Galys … Warfore, for goddesake, thinketh on
your beste frende, god, and thanke hym as he hath deserved to yowe![...] (Letter from R.
Kingston to King Henry IV,1403)

The simultaneous use of two or more foreign languages inter- or intra- sententially made by
bilinguals is not an activity only recently adopted. Since the Middle Ages and beyond, there have
been many sources which record blends of multilingual utterances. Moreover, experts very often
deal with official documents exchanged among people of high rank in the distant past, as this case
shows. Therefore, this way of speaking represented a common practice in Britain during the 15 th
century due to the Norman invasion in 1066 and leading to a concurrent use of English, Latin and
French. Schendl (2002), analysing mixed-language medieval texts, highlights though that several
researchers before him regarded these documents “as instances of artificial, sometimes highly
artistic language-play or as exercises of clerics and students, while the non-literary mixed-language
texts were predominantly seen as reflecting the insufficient language competence of some
medieval writer or scribe”(p.51). For this reason, only recently research has begun to focus on
multilingualism and the early use of multiple languages in the past. Furthermore, unfortunately,
the consequences of this late study are less information about the above-mentioned period and
clear difficulties in analysing these works. “This negative attitude towards mixed-language texts
mirrors 19th century views that languages are distinct, clearly separate and separable entities, and
that any mixing of languages leads to corrupt texts.”, states Schendl (2002), naming R. W.
Chambers as one of the supporters of this idea and reporting statements of him dating back to the
1932.

R. W. Chambers was not the only one to consider the mixed use of two or more languages in the
same sentence a symptom of a simple lack of vocabulary, due to the scarce competencies in both
languages. Just a year later, in 1933, Bloomfield claims that to be a “true” bilingual is necessary “a

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native-like control of two languages”(Bloomfield, 1933). In this way, integrating Chambers’s

opinion, Bloomfield admits that to speak correctly two or more languages the bilingual has to
utter them as a pure monolingual does, therefore flawlessly and separately, one at a time.
Otherwise, the utterances turn out to be linguistically incorrect, meaningless and above all
different from the language spoken by the “ideal” monolingual. As V. Cook (2016) affirms, even
now people use Bloomfield’s “maximal” idea of bilingualism instead of Haugen’s “minimal” one
(p.5), i.e. “the point where a speaker can first produce complete meaningful utterances in the
other language”(Haugen, 1953). Moreover, regarding the first assumption as the only truth, over
time there have been many studies which have used as a yardstick and model the monolingual,
causing bilinguals to become figures unattainable. Indeed, this impossibility due to the difficulty in
achieving high proficiency in both languages has brought bilinguals “to criticize their own language
competence” together with many “other bilinguals [who] strive to reach monolingual norms and
still others [who] hide their knowledge of their “weaker” language”(Grosjean, 1989). Hence,
bilingualism became an exception in the society and only a few multilingual speakers were
regarded as “real” bilinguals. Grosjean was one of those linguists in the 90s who overturned this
close-minded view of bilingualism, contrasting the “fractional” or monolingual perspective of
multilingualism with what he calls “wholistic” view thereof. He discussed and showed the effects
of choosing the monolingual view of bilingualism and criticised their idea of considering a bilingual
“two monolinguals in one person”(Grosjean, 1989). In fact, the goals linked to the achievement of
a high level in two or more languages are feasible but “L2 users are unique users of multiple
languages, not pale imitations of native speakers”(Cook, 2016).

Although some linguists idealise monolingualism to be the aim of second language acquisition
such as Kasper and Kellerman’s claim about “native speaker’s linguistic competence” judging
“learners’ interlanguage” to be “deficient by definition”(Kasper and Kellerman, 1997, p.5),
Grosjean’s wholistic view has received broad support. Indeed, factors such as the context and the
domain of use influence the way in which two or more languages are learned by the speaker and
most of the time they have been factored out from the research carried out by the “fractional”
faction. By doing so, and considering the languages of bilinguals two separate entities, bilingual
speakers compared with monolinguals has been downgraded as inferior. Effectively, these

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researchers have been claimed “that in terms of vocabulary acquisition, bilingual [children] lag
behind monolinguals”(Ng and Wigglesworth, 2007, p.55) without bearing in mind that they find
themselves in a stage of interlanguage and that studying two languages in two different
environments has “brought about” the acquisition of fewer words than monolinguals considering
the two languages separately. However, under a wholistic view, if they take into account bilinguals
as bearers of a mixed-language system, the result is the acquisition of the same vocabulary
nothing less and nothing more than a monolingual child. Indeed, Bialystok(2010) testing 1,738
children from 3 to 10 years old, 772 English monolinguals and 966 bilingual speakers who use
English for academic purposes, on receptive vocabulary, discovered that despite the results
underlining “lower vocabulary scores for bilingual children than for monolinguals”, this “difference
was largely confined to words that are part of home life” a reasonable finding due to the fact that
“English is not used as extensively in bilingual homes as it is in those of monolinguals”(Bialystok et
al., 2010). Therefore, “a rather different picture emerges if the vocabulary acquisition in both
languages together is considered”, namely it will be found out that “bilingual children’s total
vocabulary is comparable in size to that of monolingual children”(Ng and Wigglesworth, 2007,
p.46).

Pursuing the concept of mixed-language utterances, it needs to be said that in considering the
perfect bilingual as balanced and equal to the figure of the monolingual speaker, the “fractional”
researcher encounters the idea that the contact between the two languages is “abnormal” and
anomalous. As Grosjean(1989) points out, if “bilinguals are (or should be) two separate
monolinguals in one person, covert or overt contact between their two languages should be
rare”(p.5). Nevertheless, the mixed-language utterance well known as code-switching is a natural
practice which every bilingual owns and it even requires control, depending on the situations. The
activity of code-switching represents the everyday life especially for bilinguals found in
multilingual environments which require it, thus, instead of being overshadowed by the
monolingual view of bilingualism and being filed as a cause of low proficiency, it should be re-
evaluated. The afore-mentioned medieval text is an example, revealing a language anything but
pure and balanced and it shows that code-switching is a practice always existed, which has even
allowed the evolution of languages in the world. This is the case of Old English, which in contact

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with Norman French, evolved into Middle English, covering a unidirectional process started from
code-switching and resulted in fused lects (Gardner-Chloros, 2009, p.26). However, a
transformation does not always arise during the contact of two or more languages. It could occur,
for instance, that two languages cohabit the mind of a bilingual and sometimes they even collide.
In fact, when a bilingual has to face one-language contexts it could seem that s/he is capable of
keeping the two languages apart. However it is not always true, indeed bilinguals, in these
occasions, focus on controlling the other language in order not to be involved and included
throughout the conversation. This “mechanism for controlling attention to the target language”
needs exercise and “used constantly in an ordinary and frequent context will have the
consequence of transforming processes [like control, attention, and switching], making them more
efficient and more available for a variety of applications”(Bialystok, 2009). Hence, what is called
their “executive control system” is enhanced and becomes more “robust for other
functions”(Bialystok, 2009). Early studies carried on by Bialystok showed that “bilingual children
performed better than monolingual children on tasks that required controlled attention and
inhibition”, for example, “bilingual children were more successful than monolinguals in accepting
that anomalous sentences like “Apples grow on noses” were grammatically correct(Bialystok,
1986; Cromdal, 1999). This judgement of grammaticality requires effortful attention to ignore the
misleading distraction from meaning that seduces the child to say that the sentence is not
correct”(Bialystok, 2009). Researches such as the one previously mentioned highlight that new
abilities grow up in the bilingual mind, also during the practised task of monitoring the possible
contamination between the two languages under a required monolingual context. Furthermore,
the presence of higher capacities in comparison to monolinguals admit the importance of
encounter-clash among languages for a multilingual subject, since two languages cannot be
thought separately. Moreover, a bilingual cannot ever be considered “two monolinguals in one
person”, for activities like code-switching, and also translating and interpreting, as well as the
owning of an advanced executive control system do not belong normally to the individuality of the
monolingual speaker.

The enhanced skills owned by bilinguals are not only circumscribed to the act of monitoring
though, indeed the demands required during their life span lead to various positive cognitive

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effects. In this way, the distance between bilinguals and monolinguals turn out to expand
increasingly showing such differences which cannot be easily ignored. For instance, in accepting
the sentence “Apples grow on noses”, bilinguals appear to have also a metalinguistic awareness
connected to the arbitrariness of the language. They prove to be inclined “to reject the notion that
one object can only have one name”(Ng and Wigglesworth, 2007) more likely than monolinguals.
Furthermore, it has been showed that they also develop word, phonological, sentence and
semantic awareness. An example could be represented by the studies regarding word awareness
conducted by Bialystok(1986a, 1986b, 1987a, 1987b, 1988) on English monolinguals and French-
English bilinguals, revealing a consistent outperformance of bilinguals. In regards to phonological
awareness Davine et al.(1971) found out that bilingual children in elementary school in Canada
outperformed monolinguals in recognizing phonological differences. Besides, as for sentence
awareness, Galambos and Goldin-Meadow(1983) found that Spanish-English bilingual children
were better than monolingual children in distinguishing errors, with the latters focusing on “the
message conveyed”(Ng and Wigglesworth, 2007). Moreover, studies such as the one of Cummins
in 1978 showed that bilinguals could have even advantages in mental semantic organization.

The effects described above are just a few of the many attributed to bilingual speakers. Alongside
linguistic cognitive abilities, other effects have been discovered. After years of study, still not
concluded due to the greatness and peculiarity of it, researchers have been noticing a connection
between bilingualism and creativity. The experienced difficulties are mainly caused by the use of
monolinguals and their language as yardsticks, above all before 1960s, leading to results which
marked detrimental effects of bilingualism on mental functioning. Apart from the erroneous use of
just one language in the tests for the early researches, another raised issue was the socio-
economic status (SES) of the participants. Particularly, they compared two different social classes,
placing bilingual children in a disadvantageous position. The dismantlement of this variable
occurred only after the 60s when a few researchers (e.g. McCarthy, 1930; Jones and Stewart,
1951; James, 1960) noticed “the importance of SES in underscoring performance results” (Ng and
Wigglesworth, 2007). In the meantime, another concern increased, pertaining to the IQ tests used
to assess bilinguals and monolinguals, indeed they do not “measure innate abilities; instead, they
contain inherent cultural bias” (Ng and Wigglesworth, 2007) which position bilinguals beneath

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monolingual speakers. For all these reasons, the field of research engaged in finding a concrete
relationship between bilinguals and creativity slowed down. Anyway, in 1970s various studies are
carried out, such as the one led by Scott in 1973, which demanded participants to readjust paper
clips for other purposes and uses, or the researches of Landry (1974) and Cummins (1977) in which
children were subjected to tasks aimed at detecting hidden objects within larger pictures; by
means of these experiments are finally shown examples of better performance fulfilled by
bilinguals compared to their monolingual counterparts.

To conclude a paper with prevailing issues converging into the concept that over time many
opposing aspects have impeded the figure of the bilingual from emerging and standing out of the
monolingual view; it can be argued that at last these creative speakers, always seen as carriers of
harmful qualities evolved to turn against themselves, self-destroyers and detrimental beings,
thanks to the update research in the field, they have begun to be reassessed and through them
the whole concept of multilingualism. The tests built to measure convergent thoughts are
gradually abandoned, in order to make way for new developed techniques aimed at analysing
bilingualism in all its facets, by not neglecting aspects excluded earlier, all sides lined up and
oriented towards the new spheric concept of divergent thinking. Since “human beings have a
potential, not for acquiring one language as in Chomskyan discourse, but for acquiring more than
one language”(Cook,2016); and if “most human beings” are considered “multi-competent,
monocompetence” finally becomes the “misleading representation of the human species rather
than a convenient idealisation”(Cook,1991).

References

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Bialystok, E. (1986a). Children's concept of word. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 15, 13-31.

Bialystok, E. (1986b). Factors in the growth of linguistic awareness. Child Development, 57, 489-510.

Bialystok, E. (1987a). Influences of bilingualism on metalinguistic development. Second Language Research, 3(2),
112-125.

Bialystok, E. (1987b). Words as things: development of word concept by bilingual children. Second Language

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Learning, 9, 133-140.

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Cromdal, J. (1999). Childhood bilingualism and metalinguistic skills: Analysis and control in young Swedish–
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