Reynaldo F. Macias’ article ‘Bilingualism, Multilingualism and Multiculturalism’
R.F. Macias. 1992. “Bilingualism, Multilingualism, and Multiculturalism”. In Grabe, W. and R.B. Kaplan (eds.). Introduction to Applied Linguistics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Bilingualism, Multilingualism, and Multiculturalism
Reynaldo F. Macias
University of Southern California
1. INTRODUCTION
In order to discuss the relationship of Applied Linguistics to bilingualism, it is necessary to formulate an ‘operational definition’ of applied linguistics more generally. Although others have spent much time discussing and defining applied linguistics (Kaplan 1980), this paper assumes that applied linguistics refers to applied research and applying research related to language. It begins with a question that derives from real-world concerns related to language, but not necessarily circumscribed by language, and ends by generating knowledge that answers that question, or attempts to address the circumstances that generated the question in the first place. This broad approach calls attention to many issues as it is applied to bilingualism and multiculturalism.
The organization of this field called bilingualism (language contact, multilingualism, language diversity) has drawn particular modern attention since Weinreich published his Language in Contact monograph through the New York Circle of Linguistics in 1953 (c.f. Haugen 1956; Mackey 1972). More recent publications have extended this earlier research with new questions, new data, and new research methods (c.f. Appel and Muyskens 1987; Cooper 1982; Fasold 1984; LaPonce 1987; Lehiste 1988; Paulston 1988; Wardhaugh 1987). This essay reviews some of those attempts to bring order to the field of bilingual studies and the research dealing with bilingualism and social issues, psychological issues, educational issues, political issues, and economic issues.
2. DEFINING THE TERMS
There are three levels at which bilingualism has been described if not defined: the individual, the group, and the nation (or, more specifically, the territorial basis). Much of the literature and research on bilingualism over the past 40 years has concentrated on defining and delimiting the ‘bilingual’ individual. Definitions range from "being able to utter a meaningful phrase" in two languages to “native-like ability in two languages, including reading, writing, speaking, and understanding at a highly educated level.” Suffice it to say that psychologists in particular have been obsessed with definitional measurement, conceptualization of language proficiency, and related notions. Whether one is concerned with second- or foreign-language teaching, bilingual education, or delivery of services to communities or individuals speaking a nonstandard or nondominant language, the popular understanding of a bilingual person takes in persons with a wide range of abilities in the two (or more) languages of concern. It also very often includes individuals with varying abilities in more than two languages (multilingualism). The research on social aspects of individual bilingualism has tended to focus on language use, while research on group bilingualism has paid greater attention to life-cycle and intergenerational changes in language abilities and use (such as in studies of language maintenance and shift, acquisition, and loss). National bilingualism (or multilingualism) has generated issues of language policies, planning, and politics.
In addition to the concern for multiple languages, there has been a concern for the cultural embedding of the individuals and groups who use those languages. The relationship between language and culture has a long history of debate (Carroll 1956; Fishman 1985) and is a key conceptual linchpin in understanding ourselves as human beings (cf. Kaplan 1980a).1
The term linguistic minority has been used more recently to refer to a number of groups variously identified as minority-language groups, nationality groups, immigrant groups, and ethnic groups. It is currently in vogue in the United States as a name for those groups of individuals who do not speak English well, or at all, and who rely on another common language. It sometimes includes all members of a racial, ethnic, or nationality group who live as a bilingual community, whether or not all of the individuals in the group speak English or are bilingual (e.g., Chicanos, Navajos, Vietnamese, Blacks). Its use very often tends to de-emphasize the social/cultural embedding or racial characteristics of the group in favor of the distinguishing language characteristic. Internationally, the notion of linguistic minorities is becoming more popular as the movement grows for more firmly establishing the ‘language rights’ (as one of the basic human rights) on nondominant groups throughout the world.
3. THE SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE OF BILINGUALISM
The general delimitation between social issues and psychological issues of bilingualism is whether they are related to an individual (psychological) or group (social) level of concern and analysis. The social aspects of bilingualism (as the study of group-language attitudes, choices, and uses) generate a great variety of issues for applied linguistics. It is the nexus between social structure and process, and language. Some of the more salient issues addressed in this area include: (1) The social valuation of specific languages, specific language varieties, and their speakers (language status, language attitude); (2) the distribution of language abilities within a population (language demography, diglossia, domain analysis); (3) group processes of language change over time (measured as life-cycles and generations; language spread, maintenance, and shift); and (4) communication between and among groups with different languages (languages in contact, language choice, intercultural communication, translation, code switching).
Language attitudes have been studied from both the social and psychological perspectives, and particularly by the interdisciplinary field of social psychology.2 The study of language attitudes and of the social evaluation of specific languages in social interactions has contributed to knowledge of the role of language as a mediator or symbol of social-group relationships. It has also provided useful evidence for evaluating the nature of miscommunication between members of different speech communities (Fasold 1984; Shuy 1977). Further, it has helped to explain the influence of language on social relations (Leibowitz 1969; cf. Hymes 1971, especially the introduction to Part 3).
The study of language maintenance and shift has benefited greatly from the application of sociological and demographic research methods to language data, particularly language-census data, allowing wide-scale analyses of group maintenance or loss of languages. National language-census data increased dramatically after 1950, partly as a result of the emergence of new multilingual nations in the Third World from the breakup of European colonial jurisdictions. National language profiles and formulas for national multilingualism were created and promoted through the 1950s and 1960s to describe and understand the multilingualism of populations. Language loyalty was the term one group of researches (Fishman et al. 1966) used in discussions of the maintenance of non-English languages in the United States, while anglification was used to describe the adoption (spread) of English in the United States and Canada (Veltman 1983). Language renewal and language spread were two terms other scholars used to refer to the increase in the number of speakers, or the spread of speakers of a specific language over a territory and over time (Cooper 1982; St. Clair and Leap 1982). Much of this demographic/census data allowed analyses of national (or territorial) multilingualism, but it sometimes only collected data about current language abilities and individual bilingualism (Fishman 1985; Veltman 1983). Very often, the presentation and use of these data fueled discussions on language policies (Ohannessian et al. 1975).
Language change and variation have been of interest to linguists for a long time. Initially, the field was seen as historical linguistics (the diachronic change in language) and as dialectology (the synchronic changes or variation in language). Twentieth-century linguistics generated new frameworks for looking at language change (cf. Carroll 1956). With the breakthroughs in research methodology and analyses of sociolinguistic data of the 1960s, variation theory addressed language change in progress and associated it with social structure (patterned variability). The initial analyses using variation theory focused on vernacular black English in urban centers (Labov 1966, 1972b, Shuy et al. 1968).
The bulk of work done in bilingual communities focused on code switching (the alternating use of two languages within the same discourse event) and on the bilingual abilities of members of an ethnolinguistic group, as those abilities related to their position in the social structure.3 One major longitudinal study of Puerto Rican Harlem in New York City concluded that those adults who switched codes the most were the most skillful at code switching (e.g., they did not violate the grammatical rules of either language when they switched) and were the most proficient in each of the languages (Center for Puerto Rican Studies 1984). One of the only studies on the acquisition of code-switching behavior also suggested that there was a sequence and age-devel-opmental pattern for the acquisition of specific code-switches (McClure 1977).
The need for communication across interacting language groups should be self-evident. Very often this is done by and through bilinguals serving as interpreters or translators. Unfortunately, there has been very little systematic research attention paid to this area. Laws providing for bilingual education, court interpreters, and bilingual electoral and governmental services in the United States and other countries have sometimes called for criteria and standards are absent (or at best vague), and so translation and other related services and activities are weakened. Although issues of document design, plain language, and readability have been raised for English in the United States and Britain, especially in connection with governmental and legal documents, there has been little generalization to translated documents or bilingual documents for linguistic minorities, and only slight attention has been given to these issues for diplomatic purposes (i.e., comparability of dual-language documents such as treaties).
4. PSYCHOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES ON BILINGUALISM
The psycholinguistic issues addressed by applied linguistics have been dominated by second-language acquisition and learning, particularly as it relates to second-language teaching and to the teaching of English (cf. Homel et al. 1987). The area of second-language acquisition has been followed by studies of language-proficiency assessment, usually of proficiency in English, sometimes of a second/foreign language, and only rarely of bilingual or relative language proficiency (cf. McLaughlin 1984, 1985; Vaid 1986; Verhoeven 1987).
Second-language acquisition studies have been very important to the field of applied linguistics, especially as a reflection of the need to develop and understand better language-teaching methods. In a number of different ways, this area of research has provided the space for competing theories, providing an indicator of the academic and ‘intellectual’ maturity of the field (Krashen 1981, 1982; McLaughlin 1987). Unfortunately, it has also been fragmented, reflecting the different political and practitioner traditions of programs for English as a second language and of bilingual education in the United States. The bulk of second-language acquisition studies have been concerned with English and with adults. They have tended to ignore the relationship between the native language and the target language (partly in reaction to earlier contrastive linguistic studies), as well as the different language-acquisition patterns at earlier ages (cf. Edelsky 1986).
It is important to attend to the different language-acquisition patterns: monolingual language acquisition and bilingual language acquisition, which can be subdivided into dual or simultaneous language acquisition, and sequential language acquisition. This last category can further be subdivided into early sequential bilingual acquisition (roughly between the ages of five years and puberty) and late sequential bilingual acquisition (roughly after puberty). ‘Second languages’ are often spoken and used in the learning/teaching location or environment (e.g., in a multilingual nation), while ‘foreign languages’ are generally absent from the teaching/learning environment. It is important also to remember that acquiring a second language results in a bilingual person.4
Bilingual acquisition and cognition studies have continued to contribute to the knowledge of language acquisition and development, academic achievement, and cognitive ‘strategies’ (Cummins 1981; Cummins and Swain 1983). The development of the threshold hypothesis (positing a minimum level of proficiency in a language needed to take advantage of the cognitive benefits of bilingualism), and the interdependence hypothesis (positing a positive relationship between L1 and L2 transfer, and memory), has also spurred the development of a broader framework for child bilingualism and its implications for teaching and learning (cf. California Department of Education 1986; Edelsky 1986; Wong-Fillmore 1986).
Research on the assessment of language proficiency has been motivated by the intellectual need for defining language and proficiency, on the one side, and on the other side by the practical concerns for measuring effectiveness or success in second, foreign, and bilingual instruction. There have been two broad approaches by applied linguists in this area: one concerned with assessment of proficiency in a single language (as in second and foreign languages); and one concerned with assessment of two languages (as in bilingual education). Bilingual assessment research distinguishes between dual language assessment (where the two languages may be assessed independently), and relative language proficiency assessment (that is, of the level of language proficiency in the one language relative to, or compared with, the same or similar measures of proficiency in another language). This latter type of assessment is necessary to construct the language dominance of the bilingual individual. Research issues have included the question of whether language proficiency is a unitary global ability or a collection of many subcomponents/subskills (Davies in this volume; Oller 1979); the comparability of measures of dual language proficiency assessment (Carrol 1980); and the relationship between language proficiency, achievement, and intelligence as measured by standardized tests (Rivera 1984a, 1984b, 1984c, 1984d).
The development of bilingual-education programs in the United States during the late 1970s and early 1980s gave a boost to the need for accurate and well-conceptualized assessment instruments for younger children and youth. Bilingual-education programs have also provided the motivation, if not the need, for the assessment of adult professional standards of non-English language and bilingual abilities, as well as of English-language proficiency (for ESL), as parts of teacher-certification procedures (especially, in the states with larger language-minority populations; e.g.; California, New Mexico, Texas). The U.S. Court Interpreters Act of 1978 provided a similar motivation for the development of criteria and procedures for assessing the bilingual proficiencies of translators. This act applies to interpreters and translators in Federal Court criminal proceedings involving defendants who are not sufficiently proficient in English to participate in the court proceedings, or who are profoundly or partially deaf.
5. EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON BILINGUALISM
There are many educational issues that can be addressed, and have been addressed by applied linguists. Three of the most frequently addressed issues are language teaching, literacy instruction and acquisition, and classroom interaction patterns and organization (especially those described through micro-ethnography). The three categories of language teaching (bilingual, second-language, and foreign-language instruction) are distinguished by whether or not they foster (additive) bilingualism as a goal or utilize two languages only as media of instruction. Foreign-language instruction has the longest history, although until the turn of the nineteenth century it could be seen as a form of bilingual education in which the goal was achieved through instruction in the second/target language. It was not uncommon in much of the world for the elite to be self-taught in another language, or to acquire the language through reading. As the “common school” movements in different countries succeeded in achieving universal free/public schooling, the organization of the curriculum for these schools involved making two critical decisions regarding language(s): what should be the language(s) of instruction? and what language(s) should be studied? These two questions have been addressed by applied linguists at different levels. As policy questions they have been tied to language demography, planning, and the status of the languages involved. In some instances, as with smaller language groups who have no standardized orthography for their languages, there are issues of implementation and development that must be addressed first, such as the development of a writing system in order to be able to teach literacy in the language. In multilingual areas, it is important to consider the sequencing of the languages as subjects of study as well as how many languages can be used effectively as media of instruction.
The United States provides an appropriate example of how these various factors can interact together. Until the turn of the nineteenth century, a number of school districts allowed or provided for the use of languages other than English (principally French, German, and Spanish) as the medium of instruction, sometimes exclusively, sometimes bilingually, and almost always with English as the subject of study. Around the turn of the century, most states adopted laws that mandated English as the medium of instruction in public (and sometimes private) schools, and restricted the teaching of non-English, ‘foreign’ languages to the middle grades or after 10-12 years of age.5 The teaching of English as a second language got its greatest boost through the Americanization and literacy programs of the early twentieth century. At first these programs concentrated on adults; later they were made available to children through the public schools.
Bilingual instruction was revived in the 1960s in response to the educational needs of Cubans in Miami and Amerindians and Chicano students in the Southwest. Bilingual-education programs were developed principally as transitional bilingual programs (subtractive bilingualism) rather than maintenance programs (additive bilingualism). The national Bilingual Education Act funded demonstration programs in bilingual education (monies were provided to school districts that applied voluntarily for them in competition against other school districts in order to experiment with bilingual-instruction programs), not as mandatory or service programs that have as a goal providing bilingual instruction for all students who ‘needed’ it (who were of limited English proficient–LEP). It has also been credited with encouraging states to remove their laws mandating English only as the medium of instruction in order to be eligible for these federal funds. Very quickly, several states developed bilingual-education laws that were more stringent than the federal law (particularly California, New York, and Texas). The educational principle upon which these laws were based is that a student has the right to understand the language of instruction, and the school district has an affirmative (minimal) responsibility to teach these students the English language.
With the enactment of federal civil-rights laws supporting this educational principle (Lau v. Nichols, 1974; Aspira v. NYC Board of Education, 1974), students in need of these ‘special language services’ were generally identified on the basis of their limited English proficiency (including orality and literacy), or by the fact that their dominant language was not English (relative language proficiency). Although instruction in English as a second language (ESL) became a defining characteristic of these public bilingual-education programs foreign-language instruction (and additive bilingualism) generally did not.
Schooling and literacy are very closely intertwined as issues for applied linguists (as well as for others). As the level of schooling achieved by national populations rose beyond the primary grades, reading and writing became more important. For bilinguals, literacy received uneven attention that was partly distorted by the national concerns regarding the question of what language should be used for initial literacy instruction. To understand this unevenness it is helpful to keep in mind three kinds of literacy-acquisition patterns: native-language literacy, second-language literacy (implying no literacy in the native language for a bilingual), and biliteracy (literacy in two languages).
Since the various reports issued by UNESCO in the 1950s bringing world attention to illiteracy and the need for native-language literacy for language minorities, much effort and many resources have been directed at teaching reading to adults and improving elementary schooling for children throughout the world (to assure early acquisition of literacy). Writing acquisition and instruction very often went hand in hand with reading instruction, but it was not given much explicit and direct attention. Research in these areas lagged behind practice. For many of the new nations of the Third World, literacy instruction and school development in the national language constituted a high priority.
Similar literacy efforts were only sometimes directed at native language literacy for language minorities. The Summer Institute of Linguistics and the Bible Translation Society have probably engaged in the greatest linguistic effort to date, describing languages of usually small groups of language minorities (many of them indigenous to their regions, and located throughout the Third World). These groups have engaged in basic descriptive-linguistic research for the purposes of developing (generally phonemically-based) writing systems for languages that did not have them. Subsequent to this initial work, basic literacy materials have been developed for instruction and general schooling.
Whereas the linguistic axiom is accepted that every normal child acquires a language pretty much in a similar fashion (similar sequence of structures and rates) throughout the world, regardless of the language, there has been no corollary for literacy. Literacy was and is generally taught formally through schooling and is not associated with age and social development in the same way as oral ability in a language. This difference allowed the development of a debate over which language in a bilingual community should be used for initial literacy instruction. This initial literacy very often was in the national language literacy. The effectiveness of these campaigns has been severely criticized. Their rationales have seen called political, their goal being the imposition of the national language rather than educational development.
More recent research indicates that greater school success and cognitive benefits are derived from initial native-language literacy instruction, and that there is a sequential transfer to literacy in a second language; the findings of their research argue for coherent programs of instruction in biliteracy (Baker 1988; Cummins 1989; Hakuta 1986).
Other areas of research in literacy have to do with the relationship of the writing system and information processing and memory. The acquisition of literacy across different writing systems (especially those that are phoneme/alphabet-based vs. syllable-based vs. ideogram- or logogram based) is of particular concern to applied linguistic researchers studying bilingualism (cf. Tzeng and Hung 1981). The transfer of the cultural-semantic-discourse patterns acquired in and associated with the native language (both sociolinguistic norms and literacy) to second-language literacy usage attracted great attention from applied linguistic researchers and practitioners (especially those concerned with English as a second/foreign language), particularly after the 1960s when methods and techniques of discourse-level analysis were developed and refined.
A third area that has begun to receive attention from applied linguists is the organization of the classroom for teaching and learning. Although different research methods have been used, the most frequent methodology is that of ethnography of communication. Researchers have described participant structures (Philips 1972), varieties of teacher talk (Heath 1978b), interaction patterns that facilitate language and literacy learning (Moll and Diaz 1985; Wong-Fillmore 1986), and other elements of the teaching/learning situation characterized as a series of linguistic and communicative interactions (Cazden 1998).
6. POLITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON BILINGUALISM
It is not always easy to distinguish political perspectives of bilingualism from social issues related to bilingualism. It may be easier to identify the political perspectives and issues that involve language use in the administration of government (embracing the executive, legislative, and judicial functions), as well as those issues generated when one studies how language is used for political purposes (the relationship between power and language).
Language and the administration of government has generally been identified as a matter having to do with language policy and planning. Policy issues usually focus on changes in the status of a language, including whether or not it has any official designation (official or national language), or on the functions of a language, including how it is to be used within the government and nation, for what purposes, and by whom (allocation of the language resources). They may also focus on corpus planning, or the forms and structures of the language itself, including the standardization of a language variety, creation of new words, or the development of a new or different writing system. Each of these types of language issues requires the application of different linguistic and language knowledge and resources.
Language-policy decisions are usually embedded within the sociopolitical structure of the nation. As such, they are part of the cultural politics and polemics of the country. Generally, those who make policies or implement them are referred to as language policy makers, while those who attempt to influence those policies and practices have been called language policy strategists (Weinstein 1983).6 The interaction between these two kinds of political participants can be called language politics. In most of the nearly 200 countries of the world, there are language politics, generally involving multilingual issues generated by indigenous language minorities, transnational migration of peoples, or the former colonial heritage of a new nation-state in which a number of different languages are spoken as well as the colonial language. An example of these issues and language politics can be seen in the United States.
In 1980 there were approximately 23 million persons in the United States who spoke a language other than English (out of a national population of 226 million). More than half of them (81 percent) also spoke English, while about 4,3 million were monolingual in a language other than English. About 11 million were Spanish speakers (48 percent) with 75 percent of these also speaking English. Some 2.8 million were monolingual Spanish speakers (cf. Wagonner 1988). The concentration of non-English monolinguals and bilinguals can be much greater at the local level (that is, they were not evenly distributed throughout the nation).
Language diversity, coupled with prior language-based discrimination, has been the basis for: (1) the development of governmental services in non-English languages; (2) the provision of bilingual and/or translator services (cf. the Court Interpreters Act of 1978); and (3) the provision of instruction in English as a second language. Prevention of language-based discrimination has taken the form of inconsistent attempts to protect the civil rights of members of language minorities by extending, or defining, discrimination on the basis of national origin to include discrimination because of language. The 1965 Voting Rights Act suspended the use of English-literacy tests as a basis for voting, while the 1975 amendments to the act provided that, in certain circumstances (where there had been prior schooling and language-based discrimination), English-only elections were a violation of the fundamental right of Spanish speakers, Asian-language speakers, and Amerindians as citizens to vote.
The language issues raised in the United States have been principally status issues when the language in question has been English. For many of the Amerindian languages, particularly Navajo (St. Clair and Leap 1982), they have been status and corpus issues.
The current attempts to make English the official language of the United States is primarily motivated by a view of what the national culture and racial fabric ought to be. English-language unity is promoted as the basis for political unity (Macias 1988). The arguments are squarely rooted in the English-language ideology of the country (Macias 1985). This call for language homogenization is in concert with the calls for ‘cultural literacy’; the identification and promotion of a common core of cultural knowledge that all ‘good Americans’ should and must know (Bloom 1987; Hirsch 1987). As with most national polemics, there is more than one side. The other part of this dialectic involves the promotion of bilingualism and celebrates the cultural diversity found within the United States. It is known as English-Plus. Still others have promoted a foreign-language and international-education policy (Simon 1980) that calls for the improvements of foreign-language instruction in the nation for diplomatic, international-commercial, and national-security reasons. These issues of Americanization, the melting pot, and cultural pluralism are not new and, in varying degrees, reflect the human drama played out through much of the world.
In international human-rights activity, a ‘principled approach’ to a national language policy is promoted through two standards; an individual’s right to be free from discrimination on the basis of language, and an individual’s right to learn his/her home language as well as the language(s) of the community, the state, and the nation.
At a different level, the relationship between language and power has been explored as it is manifested in forms of speech between interlocutors of different status–those associated with gender and perceptions of powerful and powerless speech (which is associated with authority, veracity, and accuracy). Although many of these small-group and individual speech studies have not focused on bilingualism, when they are placed within the studies of language status and politics, there are strong parallels. The linkages between levels of analysis in these studies become important for understanding sociolinguistic norms, membership in speech networks, and negotiated speech events as they draw on language ideologies of and across speech communities.
7. ECONOMIC ISSUES AND BILINGUALISM
The relationship between bilingualism and the economy has drawn attention from applied linguists in several ways: how does individual bilingualism affect the workplace; how do economic units (i.e., business) utilize bilingualism, and what is the relationship between national or group multilingualism and the economy of national development. It is difficult, if not impossible, to analyze sociolinguistic issues without a notion of ‘social structure.’ It is equally difficult to analyze economic issues and bilingualism without a notion of economic structures and how they operate to promote or restrict the use of non-English languages or bilingualism. Capitalist economies may very well approach bilingualism very differently from socialist economies. Both must be embedded in their historical and political frames in order for the researcher to understand how bilingualism is valued.
Applied linguists have looked at the value of individual bilingualism in international commerce, its role in selling vs. buying, and in international negotiation. In market economies, bilingual groups have also been studied for their market value and for developing the most effective advertising strategies and media. Language policies in the workplace as well as the union hall (especially as these might be officially regulated in the nonpublic or private sectors) have received attention in the legal systems and popular media of different countries, but little attention from applied linguistic researches. Other issues generated in this area include language training for representatives of international companies and for domestic workers (e.g., bilingual proficiencies for teachers, court interpreters, telephone-service employees) to improve job performance and productivity.
At a level above that of individual bilingualism, the relationship between national multilingualism and various types of economic indicators has been re-examined recently. Addressing an important issue in language planning and policy, researches have again asked whether national multilingualism hinders or helps national economic development; current answers suggest that there is little direct relationship between the two (Fishman and Solano 1989).
8. APPLIED LINGUISTICS PERSPECTIVES ON BILINGUALISM
Applied linguistics is and can be one of the most powerful of the social and behavioral sciences because it trades on the core of intellectual and human exchange: language, but it suffers from an identity crisis. Three steps help set up a an applied linguistics structure: (1) selection of a ‘real-world’ issue, problem, or question; (2) selection of a research or practitioner perspective; and (3) application of linguistic research and research on language done by other disciplines.
Any applied discipline must first, by definition, be empirical in nature–it must deal in worldly goods. This does not make it devoid of theory; rather, theory must explain the real world. What it puts in a secondary place is theory and research that are not empirical, that are abstract.7 To ‘do’ applied linguistics, then, one must begin by identifying a question, problem, or situation that involves empirical data and language.
The next step in applied linguistics is to select a research or practitioner perspective. Each perspective involves different procedures and standards. If the basic motivation for the work is to gain knowledge, then one is working from a research perspective that is constrained and guided by the canons and ethics of research work. If one is interested primarily in solving a problem using linguistic knowledge to carry out or improve work, then one is working from a practitioner perspective. In the overwhelming majority of cases, research on language instruction, literacy development, language assessment, language therapy and rehabilitation, and (particularly for this chapter) language maintenance all create issues and raise problems which must be addressed from a practitioner perspective.
The third step is to select the linguistic research and studies that are useful in guiding the research or in ‘problem solving.’ Research studies will normally generate their own data for ‘analysis, contributing to knowledge building (secondary-data analysis notwithstanding). Practitioner application of linguistic research and language studies, more often than not, are constrained to the particular situation of work and do not usually involve an independent generation of data for analysis, though it is capable of doing so (e.g., writing research and literacy development, language assessment and communicative competence).
9. CONCLUSION
The research field of bilingualism is still at an early stage. The discussion in this chapter would indicate the range of research issues and research questions that have yet to be resolved, though current work is producing some exciting and suggestive results. Given the wide range of individuals who might qualify as bilingual, depending on one’s definition, the most productive research will most likely be of a practical nature. Even here, however, there is considerable confusion and looseness in practical attempts to address the bilingual’s needs, whether the context is child education, adult-service assistance, legal support, etc. Perhaps the greatest gains in promoting bilingualism will emerge from the educational context, despite less-than-enthusiastic efforts by many educators to understand bilingualism and biculturalism. From a practical, applied linguistics perspective, the point to remember is that all language instruction–whether in a foreign or in a second language, whether employing conventional language or sign language–is at bottom intended to produce some sort of bilingualism. The problem is that those who are involved in language instruction–and in the range of related activities (i.e., syllabus design, materials development, assessment)–are not always terribly precise about what sort of bilingualism is to be produced, for what segment(s) of the population, to serve what ends, and at what cost. It will, therefore, remain an important goal of applied linguistic activity to assist in improving language instruction and in changing the attitudes that surround first- and second-language use and language learning in schools.
NOTES
1. If we define the culture construct as how human beings adapt to their environment and each other, then we can provide an operational definition such as the following: “Culture is a dynamic, creative, and continuous process including behaviors and values learned and shared by people that guides them in their struggle for survival and gives meaning to their lives” (Arvizu et al. 1978). As ‘meaning’ and ‘meaningful’ become more important in linguistic work, particularly in sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse studies, ethnography of communication, and communication-based instructional methods for second and foreign languages, then better descriptions and analyses of ‘culture’ and ‘multiculturalism’ must be developed.
2. The Journal of Language and Social Psychology began publishing in 1982.
3. Although taxonomies of code switching have been developed, suffice it to say that the literature makes at least the distinction between intrasentential and intersentential code switching.
4. An important distinction here is between a ‘subtractive’ bilingualism and an ‘additive’ bilingualism. The distinction is based on whether or not the native or first language is being maintained while one is acquiring the second language (additive bilingualism), or is not being developed and maintained, or is even being discouraged (subtractive bilingualism).
5. The rationale for much of this delay in second- and foreign-language instruction was rooted in nativist and xenophobic fears. The assumption that “foreign” ideologies were carried by these languages rationalized the delay in instruction. It allowed for “democracy to take hold in the student” before being introduced to possible foreign influences (Lelbowitz 1971).
6. I am broadening the term to include not only cultural elites who choose the language(s) of their work strategically for political ends, but also other organized efforts at influencing language policies.
7. As defined by The Random House Dictionary (1980:4): “Conceived apart from any concrete realities or specific objects.”