Many Languages in One Mind

So far this course has treated each speaker as using one language, in different styles. Most of the world does not work that way. This chapter looks at people and communities who use more than one language: what that means, what they do with it mid-conversation, and how a community can give its languages different jobs.

How Common Is It?

• Multilingual speakers are believed to outnumber monolinguals worldwide (the page gives no figure).
• More than half of Europeans say they speak at least one language other than their mother tongue.
• Linguist Ekkehard Wolff estimates 50% of Africa's population is multilingual.
• Switzerland's federal administration uses four national languages; India's railway signs commonly use three or more; Singapore has four official languages, with bilingualism part of its education system; Finland's children must learn three languages.

Types of bilingualism

The page also covers positive and negative transfer between languages, and language attrition (loss of a first language).

Societal multilingualism

English is described as a global lingua franca: in lingua franca situations, most speakers of the common language are functionally multilingual.

Code-Switching

Code-switching is "shifting from one linguistic code (a language or dialect) to another," depending on social context. It differs from plurilingualism, which refers to an individual's ability to use multiple languages.

Why people do it

• A topic better expressed in one language.
• Quoting someone.
• Expressing solidarity or gratitude.
• Clarifying something a listener has trouble understanding.
• Signalling group identity.
• Softening or strengthening a command.
• Filling a lexical gap.
• Fitting in, or getting better treatment when buying something.
• Speaking in a way others nearby cannot understand.

Two models

• Domain model. Fishman proposed a domain-specific model, later refined by Blom and Gumperz. Bilinguals choose a language by location and topic: a child might speak Spanish at home, English in class, and Spanish at recess.
• Markedness model (Myers-Scotton). Speakers choose the language that clearly marks their rights and obligations in the conversation. When no clear, unmarked choice exists, they code-switch to explore options. Many sociolinguists object that language choice is entirely rational.

Is it a deficiency?

In the 1950s, many scholars viewed code-switching as substandard. Since the 1980s, most have regarded it as a normal, natural product of bilingual use. The page reports that code-switching shows grammatical proficiency comparable to a monolingual's competence, not incompetence, and John Gutiérrez notes it is most common among bilinguals highly skilled in both languages. Relatively stable informal mixtures of two languages exist, such as Spanglish, Taglish and Hinglish; the page also cites Sarah Geronimo switching between English and Filipino, which it says is widespread in the Philippines, and Maya Diab switching between English and Lebanese Arabic mid-sentence.

Diglossia

Diglossia is a situation in which a single language community uses two varieties of a language, or two distinct languages, in strictly separated settings. Ferguson (1959) described a "relatively stable language situation" with a divergent, highly codified "superposed variety" used for written and formal purposes; the High form is "not used by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation". Fishman extended the idea so that the H and L varieties can be unrelated languages, not just closely related dialects.

L varieties are not mere simplifications of H; they can have sounds or grammar that H lacks, and vice versa. Thomas Ricento describes a "socially constructed hierarchy, indexed from low to high," often imposed by political figures or media.

• Prestige changes. Dimotiki became Greece's sole standard language in 1976, and Creole is now recognised as a standard language in Haiti. This links to Chapter 5: prestige is a social fact that can move.
• Mixing. Speakers often mix varieties, especially in the Arab world, which challenges Ferguson's model of strictly separate domains.

Try It Yourself