Nontheless to evaluate who can be called bilingual or not is not a simple task. We will be looking at diverse aspects of the progress of someone becoming bilingual, as well as the cultural implications associated with biligualism.
First, what does it mean to say somebody is bilingual? Different people use the term in different ways. For some, bilingualism means an equal ability to communicate in two languages. For others, this means the ability to communicate in two languages, however with the ability of greater skills in one language.
How do people become bilingual? People may become bilingual either by acquiring two languages at the same time in childhood or by learning a second language sometime after acquiring their first language.
Many bilingual childern grow up speaking two languages for various reasons. Often in America, or elsewhere such people are the children of immigrants; these children grow up speaking their parents' native language in their childhood home while speaking English at school. Many bilinguals, however, are not immigrants; it is not uncommon for people born to speak English at school or work and another language at home. Children can also become bilingual if they grow up in a houshold of mixed married parents, whereby each speak in their mother language to them, or if some other significant person in their life speaks to them consistently in another language. In such cases, the child may learn to speak to each parent in that parent's language. In short, a young child who is regularly confronted with two languages from an early age will most likely become a fluent native speaker of both languages. However the exposure must involve interaction; a child growing up in an English-speaking household but is exposed to Spanish only through Spanish-language television won't become a Spanish-English bilingual unless the child is regularly spoken to in both English and Spanish.
After someone has accuired a second language it is not said that this person can cope with the cultures of both languages. For example it might be possible that a person who lives in England can speak perfect French. Nevertehless if this person would live in France it would encounter a number of cultural differences between both countries. It might be unable to interact and feel equally as comfortable in both cultures.
For instance in the Saphir Whorf Hypothesis there was an experiment conducted which involved the questionning of a bilingual Japanese woman who was interviewed in both English and Japanese. When she was questionned in Japanese she laid more value and work and perfection on her profession. However when she was questionned in English her values depended more upon the importance of family, friends and social contacts. This shows us how the culture we live and speak in changes our perception. Being bilingual can actually have negative consequences, as the bilingual person might not know to which group it really belongs to. Therefore it can feel lost and constantly misplaced in the countries he or she lives in.
There is and hypothesis that believes ownership of two or more languages may increase fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration in thinking.
Leopold’s famous case study illustrates how bilingual children think different to monolingual ones. The concept was tested on a bilingual and a monolingual child. Both had to repeat four verses of a poem. While the monolingual child repeated the verses with little or no alteration, the bilingual child centered more on the meaning than just repeating the words.
Other research in this area - for example by Ben-Zeev - suggests that bilinguals have to separate two languages and avoiding code-mixing may give them increased analytical orientation to language. This linguistic awareness can be defined as the ability to treat language itself as an object of thought as opposed to simply using the language system.
What is more is that bilingual children may be more capable to adapt to changing environments, because of their experience of separate linguistic backgrounds and their wider social and cultural heritage.
Although there are indications to support that bilinguals have some cognitive advantages over monolinguals, the evidence however that currently exists does neither confirm this nor does it lead in this direction.
Consequently we can confidently say….
