![]() ![]() The view that bilinguals are nothing but the sum of two monolinguals has not gone unchallenged, however. The suggestion that bilinguals are basically the sum of two monolinguals and that there is thus no reason to view them as being qualitatively different from monolinguals may have contributed to the underinclusion of bilingualism in psycholinguistic research. Indeed, phenomena that would appear to mark bilinguals as distinct from monolinguals, such as their ability to move from one language to another, have been argued to have counterparts in monolingual usage, such as when a speaker shifts from a formal to an informal speech register. There is little room in this view for asking how language processing may be affected by exposure to and coordination of two linguistic systems. When included in mainstream research, bilinguals are cast as differing only quantitatively from monolinguals, and they are regarded as valuable for cross-linguistic comparisons (addressing how a particular variable is manifest in one language vs another). To the extent that bilinguals are viewed as being qualitatively different from monolinguals, they are not seen as being relevant to models addressing the monolingual-as-norm. ![]() ![]() However, psycholinguistic theorizing has, until recently, held monolingualism as the canonical form of language use to be problematized.Ī repercussion of this monolingual-as-norm assumption has been that research on bilingualism has either been neglected or marginalized. Viewed globally, far more individuals understand and use two, if not more, languages in their daily life than those who understand and use only a single language. Jyotsna Vaid, in Encyclopedia of the Human Brain, 2002 I. ![]()
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