Psycholinguistics 1

Bilingualism and its Effects on Language and Intelligence

*What is Bilingualism?

*A bilingual is as a person who is able to speak and understand two languages. Such
as speaking two speech-type-languages or someone who can understand and use both
speech-type-language and sign language.

*There are people who can read a second language fluently, even write it well, but
who cannot speak or understand its spoken form to any significant degree. These
people have not learned reading, but they have learned a language in the written
mode.

*Language in all its complexity can be acquired through a variety of modalities –

sound (speech), sight (writing), and visual motion (signs).

*A person is bilingual if he or she knows: (1) two languages in the same modality, for
example, two speech-based languages such as spoken English and spoken German, or,
two sign-based languages such as American Sign Language and Japanese Sign
Language, or (2) two languages based on different modalities, e.g. spoken German
and American Sign Language, or, spoken French and written Sanskrit.

Is Bilingualism Beneficial or Detrimental?

*Knowledge of another language enables people:

-To communicate with members of other cultures in their own language.

-Knowing another language is also important within countries where there is more
than one official language.

*The arguments offered against bilingualism are typically restricted to young children
learning a second language, some people believe that if a second language is learned
at an early age, it can be harmful in two main respects

-The learning of the second language would retard or negatively influence the
learning of the native language.
-it would intellectually retard the development of thinking and of such cognitive
capacities such as reading.

*It must be said that the criticism that has been raised against early bilingualism is
primarily of another era, the early half of the twentieth century.

-America during that era was following the isolationism policy, so does the scholars
and citizens. And that was projected on learning a foreign languages and cultures. Till
the arrival of the ethnic pride movements in the 60’s.

Effects of Early Bilingualism on First-Language Development and Intelligence

 Effects on First-Language Development:

Negative Reports

-There is the concern that bilingualism might somehow retard first- or even second-
language development (for example, a child raised with two languages might never
really learn either language as well as would monolingual speakers of those
languages).

-Smith concluded that bilingualism caused retardation in language development;

hawaiian young speakers use English and other second languages since they come
from different cultural backgrounds, in contrary to monolingual,young bilinguals had
errors in speaking English such as in pronunciation and the dialect itself ( most of the
time, it wasn’t standard English).

Positive Reports

-Young bilinguals who use two similar languages such as French and English
(especially in the written and reading form) found no hardship in learning the second
language ( though they didn’t show native-like use of this SL in the productive skills
that are speaking and writing, due to it being a classroom situation) and they kept their
using their mother tongue correctly . They also showed to be more creative than
monolinguals.

Positive Effects with Very Different Languages

*Being bilingual in two completely different languages (such as English and

Japanese), does not affect neither the mother tongue nor the second language
learning/acquisition.

Effects on Intelligence

Negative Reports

*Bilinguals’ thinking processes were confused by the use of two languages.

*Test items that required knowing language was not a fair measure of intelligence and
that the content of items in many widely used intelligence tests was culturally biased.

Positive Reports

*One of the first studies to find positive effects on intelligence for bilingualism was
that of Peal and Lambert, they concluded that bilingualism results in greater mental
flexibility and abstract thought, bilingualism improved thinking and cognitive
performance.
*If children have more than one language to analyze, they pay more attention to
structural patterns and functions of words, which, in turn, has a crucial effect on
further reading and academic success.
*It is unlikely that learning a second language negatively affects intelligence or first
language acquisition in a permanent or important way. In fact, some research suggests
there may even be beneficial effects. Given the advantages of knowing another
language and of young children’s tendency for speedy language acquisition, there is
good reason to favor early bilingualism.