ASSIGNMENT:

Topic # 01 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND THOUGHT

Topic # 02 BILINGUALISM AND MUTILINGUALISM

Subject: Sociolinguistics

M.A English IV
Topic # 01 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND THOUGHT

Language: a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by

means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture,
express themselves. The functions of language include communication, the expression
of identity, play, imaginative expression, and emotional release.
Chomsky said “a language associates sound and meaning in a particular way; to have command of a
language is to be able, in principle, to understand what is said and to produce a signal with an intended
semantic interpretation” (Chomsky: 2006). He stated “language is an extra-human object, the standard
view within major currents of philosophy of mind and language, and also put forth recently by
prominent figures in neuroscience and ethology” (Chomsky: 2002). Language is not only such a symbol
or sign that have meaning but it is more to how to interpret semantically. An interpretation is needed to
conceptualize what a speaker utters in his or her own concept so as to understand or get the meaning.
Cooper said “language is the most complex and sophisticated of our possession” (Cooper: 1973).

CULTURE:

What actually do the people think of the entire world, the other people, the things around them, and
even of themselves? How do people respond to what they see, think, and perceive and what will be the
effect on them? How do people behave based on their thought?
      All the questions above will bring us to the complexity of the term of Culture. It is a truism that each
individual has a cultural diversity, by which they express his/her thought. Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952)
stated ‘culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by
symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in
artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas
and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products
of action, and on the other as conditioning elements of further action’. We do not explain a culture in
the pattern of one’s perception but we should try to put it across into wide definition in order to get and
cover the widest range of what people think about the nature of culture itself. From the 18th century,
debates surrounding the merits and demerits of ancient and modern culture one can trace the
developing historical understanding from a limited awareness of the historicity of culture and science to
the full recognition of the historical nature of art and knowledge (Oergel: 1964). So, we will cover all
terms deal with culture in this paper. Banks, & McGee, C. A. (1989)

LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND THOUGHT

Language is a complex phenomenon for human communication. In the domain of communication each
language of the world is different from the other on both lingual and cultural grounds. This diversity in
world languages from linguistic standpoints ranges from the clear distinction of pronunciation and
vocabulary to the more complex differences of grammar. The diversity of cultural standpoints related to
different languages can be seen in the variety of cultural connotations assigned to these linguistic codes.
The representation adopted by different languages to the same sentence such as, ‘the professor
delivered the lecture’, is different to each culture. In English, the verb ‘delivered’ marks the past tense.
In Indonesian and Mandarin, the verb never changes to mark tense. In Russian, the verb is changed to
mark tenses and gender, so if the subject is female instead of male, then a different verb is used from
the verb that is used for the male. Similarly, in Russian, the verb is also changed to mark whether the
whole lecture was delivered or only part of it was delivered by the professor. In Turkish, the verb even
specifies weather the delivery of lecture was witnessed or it was a gossip.

. Through history, often over several generations, collective meanings and common practices function as
references and shape normative expectations for people, for the conception of self, as well as for
personal motives to take part in certain behaviors (Kitayama & Park, 2007). Within this frame of
reference, language is considered to be an inseparable collection of linguistic elements evolved through
culture and as a medium in which specific cultures are reflected (Imai et al., 2016). For example, in
personality psychology, the lexical paradigm assumes that all stable individual differences in behavior
that are of social importance within a cultural context are encoded into everyday language (Goldberg,
1981). ...

... In other lines of research, predominantly in cognitive psychology, the focus has generally been on the
influence of particular segments of language on perception, categorization, and knowledge, but how
linguistic categories are embedded in a broader cultural system has not been considered (Imai et al.,
2016). Research in this vein has studied how non-linguistic representations are processed as compared
to linguistic, how psychological and linguistic processing develop during childhood, and by comparing
cognitive processing between monolinguals and bilinguals (e.g., Bialystok, 2011; Bialystok & Barac,
2012;Paap & Greenberg, 2013;Paap et al., 2014). ..

The relationship between culture, language, and thought has long been one of the most important
topics for those who wish to understand the nature of human cognition. This issue has been investigated
for decades across a broad range of research disciplines. However, there has been scant communication
across these different disciplines, a situation largely arising through differences in research interests and
discrepancies in the definitions of key terms such as ‘culture,’ ‘language,’ and ‘thought.’ This article
reviews recent trends in research on the relation between language, culture and thought to capture
how cognitive psychology and cultural psychology have defined ‘language’ and ‘culture,’ and how this
issue was addressed within each research discipline. We then review recent research conducted in
interdisciplinary perspectives, which directly compared the roles of culture and language. Finally, we
highlight the importance of considering the complex interplay between culture and language to provide
a comprehensive picture of how language and culture affect thought. The relationship between culture,
language, and thought has long been one of the most important topics for those who wish to
understand the nature of human cognition. This issue has been investigated for decades across a broad
range of research disciplines. However, there has been scant communication across these different
disciplines, a situation largely arising through differences in research interests and discrepancies in the
definitions of key terms such as ‘culture,’ ‘language,’ and ‘thought.’ This article reviews recent trends in
research on the relation between language, culture and thought to capture how cognitive psychology
and cultural psychology have defined ‘language’ and ‘culture,’ and how this issue was addressed within
each research discipline. We then review recent research conducted in interdisciplinary perspectives,
which directly compared the roles of culture and language. Finally, we highlight the importance of
considering the complex interplay between culture and language to provide a comprehensive picture of
how language and culture affect thought Although few in number, researchers from both the cognitive
and cultural psychology sides have begun to ask overarching questions from interdisciplinary
perspectives. For example, in contrast to the general tendency in cognitive psychologists not to consider
culture-specific effects on thought, Medin and colleagues have highlighted the role of culture-specific
epistemology on knowledge representation and acquisition Here, also different from cultural
psychologists with the social psychology background, their interest is how culturespecific epistemology
affects knowledge representation, memory organization, ecological reasoning, and high level semantic
processing. In a series ofstudies, they found that Susan Carey’s well-known theory of early conceptual
development — that young children begin with human-centered, psychology-based understanding of
biology— was not found in children raised in an indigenous community in North America They
concluded that concepts of human-nature relations are largely different across people living in
technology-oriented urban cultures, where humans are seen as a unique existence independent of the
living environment, and those living in rural areas, where humans are seen as a part of the ecological
system in nature Importantly, this group of researchers also examined the effect of language on
children’s understanding of natural kind categories and category-based inference For example,
availability of the superordinate category labels overarching human kinds and non-human animals (i.e.,
the term ‘animal’ in English) prompt children’s inductive generalizations from human to non-human
animals and subsequent understanding of the broad category of ‘living things’, as compared to when the
language lacks such superordinate terms. However, the casual relationship between culture and
language (here, whether availability of labels for a given superordinate concept reflected culture-specific
values or epistemologies) has not yet been addressed.

Language and culture are intertwined. A particular language usually points out to a specific group of
people. When you interact with another language, it means that you are also interacting with the
culture that speaks the language. You cannot understand one’s culture without accessing its language
directly.

When you learn a new language, it not only involves learning its alphabet, the word arrangement and
the rules of grammar, but also learning about the specific society’s customs and behavior. When
learning or teaching a language, it is important that the culture where the language belongs be
referenced, because language is very much ingrained in the culture.

Language is the main means by which we conduct our social life. When language is used in a
communicational context, it is connected with culture in many complex ways. People in any community
utter subliminally many words which are predicated on common experience. These words express ideas,
events, and thoughts that are communicable since they refer to the knowledge repertoires about the
world that other people share. Moreover, words hold in their folds author’s attitudes, point of views,
ideas and beliefs. In both cases, language most of the time points out to express social cultural reality of
a society. Society members or social groups do not only tend to express their experience but to express
their experiences via language. Both language and culture are considered to be a part and parcel. They
cannot be repeated. The Relationship between Language and culture is deeply-rooted, the go together
hand in hand, and to some extent none could imagine how could culture be like without language.

Language and culture relationship has always been the matter of linguistics study. Most linguists have
come to conclusion that language and culture are two inseparable, integral and inextricable concepts
that none can understand or evaluate the one without the other. Language and culture serve each other
in a way or another, and they are both in a controversial interaction. They reflect the cultural needs of a
society.
"Language may be defined as what a society does and thinks. Language is a particular way of thought. It
is difficult to see what particular causal relations may be expected to subsist between a selected
inventory of experience (culture, a significant selection made by society) and the particular manner in
which the society expresses all the experience.” (Sapir 1921 P: 180).

From what has been discussed in the quotation above, what is noticeable is both that language and
culture are essentially prominent phenomena. It goes without saying that mere aspect of language is
mainly bound up with culture. Sapir sorts out the deeply-rooted relationship between language and
culture from a linguistics determinism adding that language reflects the way we behave and think, so
this hypothesis examines that:

"If can be shown that culture has an innate form, a series of contours, quite apart from subject-matter
of any description whatsoever, we have a something in culture that may serve as a term of comparison
with any possibly a means of relating it to language. But until such purely formal patterns of culture are
discovered and laid bare, we shall do well to hold the drifts of language and of culture to be non-
comparable and unrelated process.” (Sapir 1921 P: 181).

In brief, you can think that language and culture are two interrelated concepts. The latter has many
forms by which it serves language. Language and culture hold in their folds non- comparable and
unrelated process. They are so closely interrelated that the main understanding of their relationship is
vital in cross-cultural communication.

In the work of Sapir, the relationship between language and culture is typical. He believes that both of
language and our thought-grooves are too much involved as to be so hard to unit each other although
he claims that language and culture are closely related concepts. The interaction of a specific culture
with a specific language is not given rise by nature, but it is a historical coincidence. He thinks that each
language tends to serve a particular society. Besides, some relationships between language and culture
might be expected to develop. They have so many broad ways in which they are intimately related. The
have been the subject of great deal of anthropological and sociological study.

All in all, language is a system of signs that has a cultural value in itself. Language speakers identity
themselves through the use of language as a symbol of their social identity.

III - The Impact of Language on Culture

Anthropologists who believe in the theory that words determine thought also believe that language
structure mainly depends on the cultural context. Language and culture have always been interrelated
in different ways concentrating on establishing the impact of one on another. In truth, these features
most of the time overlook the fact on which Sapir focuses.

Sapir focuses on the superiority of language over culture, as he insists on the influential relationship of
the language to culture. To explain, language is more than just an innocent tool used for communication
with an oriented-form by means of rules made to fit culture flow.

"…It goes without saying that the mere content of language is intimately related to culture. A society
that has no knowledge of theosophy need have no name for it; aborigines that had never seen or heard
of a horse were compelled to invent or borrow a word for the animal when they made his acquaintance.
In the sense that the vocabulary of a language more or less faithfully reflected the culture whose
purposes it serves it is perfectly true that the history of language and the history of culture move along
parallel lines”. (Sapir 1921 P: -181).

According to the above quotation, we get the impression that language is of supreme importance to
culture. Consequently, we discover culture through language. Language like every other kind of
production of human culture falling under the cognizance of history.

Homologous relationship of culture and language

The phrase, language is culture and culture is language is often mentioned when language and culture
are discussed. It’s because the two have a homologous although complex relationship. Language and
culture developed together and influenced each other as they evolved. Using this context, Alfred L.
Krober, a cultural anthropologist from the United States said that culture started when speech was
available, and from that beginning, the enrichment of either one led the other to develop further.

If culture is a consequence of the interactions of humans, the acts of communication are their cultural
manifestations within a specific community. Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, a philosopher from Italy whose work
focused on philosophy, semiotics and linguistics said that a speech community is made up of all the
messages that were exchanged with one another using a given language, which is understood by the
entire society. Rossi-Landi further added that young children learn their language and culture from the
society they were born in. In the process of learning, they develop their cognitive abilities as well.

According to Professor Michael Silverstein, who teaches psychology, linguistics and anthropology at the
University of Chicago, culture’s communicative pressure represents aspects of reality as well as connects
different contexts. It means that the use of symbols that represent events, identities, feelings and beliefs
is also the method of bringing these things into the current context.

Influencing the way people think

If you are familiar with the principle of linguistic relativity, it states that the way people think of the
world is influenced directly by the language that the people use to discuss it. Anthropologist-linguist
Edward Sapir of the United States said that the language habits of specific groups of people built the real
world. He further added that no two languages are similar in such a way that they would represent one
society. The world for each society is different. In analysis, this means that speaking a language means
that the person is assuming a culture. Knowing another culture, based on this principle, is knowing its
particular language. Communication is needed to live the interpretations and representations of that
world.

Inter-cultural interactions

What is likely to happen if there is interaction between two cultures? In today’s scenario, inter-cultural
interactions are very common. Communication is necessary for any person who wants to understand
and get along with people whose background and beliefs are greatly dissimilar from their own.
Cultural identity can be marked by language, although language can be used to refer to other processes
and developments, like when intentions are explained in the language by a specific speaker. A specific
language refers to a particular cultural group.

Values, basic assumptions, behavioral conventions, beliefs and attitudes shared by an ethnic group make
up what we call culture. This set of attributes influences the behavior of the individual members of the
group and their interpretations of the meanings of the behavior displayed by each member.

The set of attributes of a culture is expressed through language. Language is also used to point to
objects that are unique to a particular culture.

All this means that learning and teaching another language is essential for international communication
and cooperation. The knowledge of other languages facilitates knowledge of other countries and the
specific cultures of each one.

Transmission of culture and language

Language is learned, which means it can be culturally transmitted. Pre-school children take on their first
language from their exposure to random words they encounter in and out of their homes. When they
reach school age, they are taught either their first language or another language. If it is the first
language, the children are taught writing and reading, the correct ways to construct sentences and how
to use formal grammar. However, the initial knowledge of the child about the essential structure and
vocabulary of the first language was learned before the child went to school.

Conversely, culture is transmitted in a large part, by language, through teaching. Language is the reason
why humans have histories that animals do not have. In the study of animal behavior through the course
of history, alterations to their behavior were the result of the intervention of humans through
domestication and other types of interference.

The culture of humans on the other hand is as different as the world’s languages. They are likely to
change over time. In industrialized countries, the changes in the language are more rapid.

Culture is not learned by imitation but by oral instruction. There could be some imitation, if the learner
is still young. With language, methods of social control, products, techniques and skills are explained.
Spoken language offers a vast quantity of usable information for the community. This helps to quicken
new skill acquisition and the techniques to adapt to new environments or altered circumstances.

The advent of writing increased the process of culture dissemination. The permanent state of writing
made it easier for information to be diffused. The process is further hastened by the increase in literacy
and the invention of printing.

Modern techniques for fast communication transmission across the globe through broadcasting and the
presence of translation services around the world help make usable knowledge to be accessible to
people anywhere in the world. Thus, the world benefits from the fast transference, availability and
exchange of social, political, technological and scientific knowledge.

Assimilation and social differentiation, and language

Through time, variations appeared within a language. Transmission of a language is self-perpetuating

unless there is deliberate interference. However, it became important for humans to improve their
social hierarchies and social status to advance personally. Thus, many people cultivate the right dialect
with is phonological, grammatical and lexical features to make themselves better than the rest and get
accepted in new communities.

An example of this phenomenon is the insistence of immigrants from Europe to speak American English
when they decided to move to the United States. It is because they realized that speaking American
English is the sign of acceptance in their new home country. Unexpectedly, third generation immigrants
now want to get in touch with the language of their ancestors.

Cultural and linguistic diversity

Culture unifies a community although there is diversity within that unity. For example, the speech used
by the older generation could be different from the one used by the younger people. Further, different
groups may speak one language, but there would be subsets used by different groups of people. There
could be slight differences in the language used by a professor compared to the one used by a young
office worker. People could use a different form of the same language in online forums, which would
vastly differ from the language used by media and classically trained individuals.

Language is used in different ways and broadly, the linguistic varieties could be categorized into
geographical (used only in particular parts of the community), social (varieties used by societal groups
based on occupation, gender and age) and functional (used based on function and situation). These
factors lead to the formation of dialects that add diversity to the language.

Language is a complex phenomenon for human communication. In the domain of communication each
language of the world is different from the other on both lingual and cultural grounds. This diversity in
world languages from linguistic standpoints ranges from the clear distinction of pronunciation and
vocabulary to the more complex differences of grammar. The diversity of cultural standpoints related to
different languages can be seen in the variety of cultural connotations assigned to these linguistic codes.
The representation adopted by different languages to the same sentence such as, ‘the professor
delivered the lecture’, is different to each culture. In English, the verb ‘delivered’ marks the past tense.
In Indonesian and Mandarin, the verb never changes to mark tense. In Russian, the verb is changed to
mark tenses and gender, so if the subject is female instead of male, then a different verb is used from
the verb that is used for the male. Similarly, in Russian, the verb is also changed to mark whether the
whole lecture was delivered or only part of it was delivered by the professor. In Turkish, the verb even
specifies weather the delivery of lecture was witnessed or it was a gossip. It is apparent the speakers of
different languages see the different aspects of the world to use their language properly (Gumperz and
Levinson: 1996) Do these features of language affect the way their speakers think about the world?

The idea that thought is shaped by language is most commonly associated with the works of American
linguistics Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. According to Whorf, the categories of every human
language present a way of perceiving, analyzing and acting in the world. The strong view of the Sapir
Whorf Hypothesis that thought and actions are completely determined by language has been rejected in
the field of linguistics. However, answering a less deterministic weaker version ‘does language affect
thought” has proven to be a very difficult task for the researchers. In recent times researches have
found new evidences which highlight the effects of language on thought. This assignment discusses the
effect of language on people’s thinking of space time, substance, and objects.

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

The word culture is etymologically derived from the Latin word ‘cultura’, which means ‘to cultivate’ and
different philosophers such as Voltaire, Hegel, Humboldt and Kant assign different meaning to it. In
antiquity, culture was referred to the opposite of nature, something that is willingly produced by man.
(Dahl: 2001) In 18th century, the term was used to describe elite and high-culture concepts in
continental Europe.

According to Dahl, culture is a collectively held set of attributes, which is dynamic and changing over
time. It is the totality of values, beliefs, basic assumptions as well as code of social behavior in a society.
Individual are made by culture on one level and culture is made by individuals on the other. (Dahl: 2001)

Language is the basic means for communication in a society. Language is primarily related with culture
in the domain of communication. Speakers communicate their ideas, feelings and facts with language
both in inter and intra societal setups. Hence, we can say that language expresses cultural reality.
(Kramsch, 3: 2005)

Language is not only a mean of expressing experience but it also creates experience. Speakers give
meaning to such an experience through various mediums, such as, mass media, internet, telephonic
conversations, presentations, etc. The medium with which language is used also designate meaning to
experience, for example, the phonological and supra-segmented phonological features of language.
Hence, we can say that language embodies a cultural reality. (Kramsch, 3: 2005)

In every society the collective set of social values, beliefs, norms and mores are transmitted from one
generation to another by the process of socialization. Hence, culture is a socially acquired knowledge. If
we observe language from this standpoint, it is observable that language is also transmitted from one
generation to another through the process of socialization. It is, therefore, evident that language is also
a socially acquired knowledge. (Horton and Hunt: 2005)

Finally, the speakers of one language identify themselves with a particular group through their peculiar
way of using language. This characteristic of individuals in a group signify that language is viewed a
symbol of social identity. Hence, we can say that language symbolized culture. (Kramsch, 3: 2005)

EFFECTS OF LANGUAGE ON THOUGHT

Space

Languages differ from each other in the description of the setting of space. For example, In English, it is
different to put something in which it is contained (the orange in the plate’, ‘the letter in envelope’) and
putting things onto surfaces (“the orange on the table’, ‘the sticker on refrigerator door’). `In Korean,
putting an orange in a bowl uses a different term (nehta) from putting a letter in an envelope (kitta).
Additionally, putting a letter in envelops and putting sticker on the refrigerator is both expressed by the
similar term Kitta because both involves close fitting.

McDonough et al. (2000) conducted a research to test whether the linguistic differences between
English and Korean speaker affects the representation of spatial relations. He showed scenes containing
examples of tight and loose fit to Korean and English adults. The Korean adults looked longer at the
example scenes compared to English adults. After that they were shown tight fit on one screen and
loose fit on another and were asked to distinguish between them. The Korean adults were quick to
identify between the tight fit and lose fit, whereas, the English adults were unable to distinguish
between the tight fit and the lose fit, and they took relatively longer time than the Korean adults.
Further, when these speakers were given several examples of tight fight and one example of lose fight
(or vice versa). The Korean adults could easily pick out the odd ones, but the English adults could not.
This study concluded that the distinctions of settings reinforced by the particular languages remained
central in the representation of their spatial settings.

Time

Languages are also different from one another because of the difference in the descriptions of time. In
English language, the conception of time is represented in horizontal terms. For example, students may
ask the teacher to move the test forward, or the teacher may push the test back for the students.
Similarly, the speakers of Mandarin language also use terms qian (front) and hou (back) to represent
time in horizontal terms. However, the speakers of Mandarin also use vertical terms such as shang (up)
and xia (down) to describe time which in English signifies last and next respectively. The use of the
vertical terms of time in Mandarin is more common in than the horizontal terms of time.

CONCLUSION

Languages appear to influence many aspects of human cognition: evidence regarding space, time,
objects, has been reviewed in this assignment. Further studies have also found effects of language on
people’s understanding of numbers, colors, and shapes, events, and other minds. Considering the many
ways in which languages differ, the findings reviewed here suggest that the mental lives of people who
speak different languages may differ much more than previously thought

Beyond showing that speakers of different languages think differently, these results suggest that
linguistic processes are pervasive in most fundamental domains of thought.
Topic # 02 BILINGUALISM AND MUTILINGUALISM

Bilingualism (or more generally: Multilingualism) is the phenomenon of speaking and understanding
two or more languages. The term can refer to individuals (individual bilingualism) as well as to an entire
society (social bilingualism).
The term can also refer to the corresponding scientific research which studies the phenomenon itself.

Bilingualism, multilingualism and polyglotism can all be used as synonyms for the same phenomenon.

Language Learning - Categories

Simultaneous acquisition occurs when, for example, a child learns several

languages simultaneously within its social environment. Also called Compound
bilingual (amalgamated).

Successive acquisition means. that different languages are learned at different stages during different
phases of life. Called Coordinate bilingual when the two languages are equally used / important
or Subordinate bilingual when one language (usually the Mother/Native tongue) dominates the daily
life.

Natural acquisition means that a language is learned without formal instruction.

Guided acquisition means that the knowledge of a language is acquired by means of instructions (e.g.,
learning at school).

Symmetric acquisition means that several languages are equally mastered with a similar proficiency.

Asymmetric acquisition means that one language dominates the other.

This set of categories is somewhat arbitrary. A specific bilingual person is not necessarily “completely”
coordinated, compound or subordinate. Indeed, a bilingual can be coordinated for certain parts of the
linguistic system, at the level of syntax and semantics, for example, but subordinate to the phonological
level. It has a strong accent in its L2, while having impeccable syntax and a rich lexicon.

Thus, an ideal coordinated bilingual would have two completely separate linguistic systems and there
would never be a mix of languages at any level. It should also be noted that the organization of the
linguistic system and thus the state of bilingualism of a person can change depending on his or her
experiences during life.

First / Second Language

The mother tongue, L1, or first language all refer to the language first learned by a child during
development. It is the language of communication used with the child before it learns to speak. In child
development, language acquisition extends generally from 0 to 3 years. A language learned after the age
of 12 is regarded as a second language designated L2.

First Language Acquisition

In the bilingual “first language acquisition” ("natural" simultaneous learning of two languages), there are
different constellations.
A family language (L1), an environment language (L2) (kindergarten, outside world).

Mixed-languages families A (father speaks L1, mother speaks L2, the environment speaks L1 or L2).

Mixed-languages families B (father speaks L1, mother speaks L2) in a different-language environment
(L3).

Language

Definition

Language is a combination of sounds, representing words (which can be represented in writing by

symbols), and these are combined by grammar rules to form sentences. It is used by human beings, to
communicate and to share and express their inner status.

Language in a more technical context (language of algebra, or programming languages) is a system of

formal symbols and rules.

A very short but succinct definition comes from the German philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-
1940): "Every communication of mental content is language."

Language serves to grasp and understand the world. Thinking also employs language. Thus, one's
identity is developed through one's own language.

The scientific study of language is called linguistics. Some modern philosophers such as Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) argued that philosophy is in fact the study of language. In his magnum opus
(= main work), the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" (1921, 75 pages).
The book starts with the statement: "The world is all that is the case."
And it ends with the proposition "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Bilingualism as the Norm

According to "The Handbook of Bilingualism," "Bilingualism—more generally, multilingualism—is a
major fact of life in the world today. To begin with, the world's estimated 5,000 languages are spoken in
the world's 200 sovereign states (or 25 languages per state), so that communication among the citizens
of many of the world's countries clearly requires extensive bi- (if not multi-) lingualism. In fact, [British
linquist] David Crystal (1997) estimates that two-thirds of the world's children grow up in a bilingual
environment. Considering only bilingualism involving English, the statistics that Crystal has gathered
indicate that, of the approximately 570 million people worldwide who speak English, over 41 percent or
235 million are bilingual in English and some other language.... One must conclude that, far from being
exceptional, as many lay people believe, bilingualism/multilingualism—which, of course, goes hand in
hand with multiculturalism in many cases—is currently the rule throughout the world and will become
increasingly so in the future."

Global Multilingualism
"The political history of the 19th and 20th centuries and the ideology of 'one state—one nation—one
language' have given rise to the idea that monolingualism has always been the default or normal case in
Europe and more or less a precondition for political loyalty. Facing this situation, it has been overlooked
that the vast majority of the world's population—in whatever form or conditions—is multilingual. This is
quite obvious when we look at the linguistic maps of Africa, Asia or Southern America at any given
time," according to Kurt Braunmüller and Gisella Ferraresi, editors of the book, "Aspects of
Multilingualism in European Language."

Individual and Societal Bilingualism

Per the "Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education," "Bilingualism exists as a possession of an
individual. It is also possible to talk about bilingualism as a characteristic of a group or community of
people [societal bilingualism]. Bilinguals and multilinguals are most often located in groups,
communities or in a particular region (e.g., Catalans in Spain) .... [C]o-existing languages may be in a
process of rapid change, living in harmony or one rapidly advancing at the cost of the other, or
sometimes in conflict. Where many language minorities exist, there is often language shift...."

Advantages of individual bilingualism and multilingualism

In this section, we appraise empirical evidence of advantages to individuals with respect to cognitive
development, aging complications, linguistic awareness, communicative competence, academic or
educational performance, as well as sociocultural and economic benefits.

Advantages of bilingualism in cognitive development

Asserting that bilinguals or multilingual individuals have more improved cognitive abilities than

monolinguals is not a sentimental claim, but one substantiated by scientific experiments conducted to
validate the point. The 1989 publication of Foster and Reeves , for example, details the use of the Ross
test for cognitive function and the Butterfly and Moths test instruments for the assessment of
metacognitive processes in a group of English-French bilinguals receiving instruction in French and the
control group of English monolinguals. They came up with the findings that “the students who had
received foreign language instruction scored higher on tasks involving evaluation which is the highest
cognitive skill according to Bloom’s taxonomy. The linear trend analysis showed that the students who
had studied French the longest, performed the best.”

That bilinguals and multilinguals have proven to be more creative and apt with respect to flexible
thinking ability is now a widely accepted fact supported by Landry for whom bilinguals not only have “…
the ability to depart from the traditional approaches to a problem, but bilingual competence also
supplies them with possible rich resources for new and different ideas.” Landry’s statement is a
conclusion arrived after his research on the evaluation of thinking figural tasks assigned to both bilingual
and monolingual groups of elementary students using both historiometric and psychometric research
methods. At the end of his study, the bilinguals came out with significantly higher grades than the
monolinguals. Hence, the outstanding performance realized from his experimental group buttresses his
claims that the bilinguals are cognitively more creative and proactive in nature.

Another study, conducted by Mohanty, indicates that bilinguals “exercise […] superiority in cognitive,
linguistic, and academic performances” over monolinguals. He reported that in “[a] series of studies
involving the comparison of unilingual and balanced bilingual children, with respect to
the metalinguistic hypothesis these studies show that the bilinguals outperform the unilinguals on a
number of cognitive, linguistic, and metalinguistic tasks, even when the differences in intelligence were
controlled.” His interpretation of the results is incontrovertible in that, after the control of all the other
obvious interfering factors and variables, the only possible variable that could be contributing to the
excellent performance of the experimental group was their bilingual status.

Furthermore, on cognitive-related advantages for bilinguals, Ricciardelli carried out a similar research on
Italian-English bilingual and Italian monolingual children, in which he measured their metalinguistic
awareness, creativity, nonverbal abilities, and reading achievement through proficiency testing. His
report states that “Results of comparison of performance on the measures of cognitive development
indicate that students who demonstrated high proficiency in both English and Italian achieved higher
scores on the creativity, metalinguistic awareness, and reading achievement tests.” The outcome of
his study is not very different from what Mohanty observed with the bilinguals in his research
population as stated in the above paragraph.

With the neurocognitive perspective, using neuroimaging methodologies, Wodniecka et al. provided a

comprehensive account to justify their claim that “Given that the differences observed spanned several
measures of structural integrity, including enhanced gray and white matter as well as enhanced long-
range connectivity in bilinguals compared to monolinguals, it has been suggested that the enhanced
cognitive and neural functioning in bilinguals may rely upon this enriched neural architecture.” These
researchers, based on their findings, concluded that “These results consequently suggest that
the bilingual executive control advantage does indeed extend to memory as bilinguals were selectively
advantaged in recollection as opposed to familiarity judgments.”

Furthermore, and in the same light about the advantage in cognitive development, Rodriguez
investigated the effect of bilingualism on the cognitive development and linguistic performance of
children at various ages living in the same cultural environment. Here, abstract thinking was measured
using verbal and nonverbal cognition test. He reported from his findings that “The bilingual children
used higher order rules more frequently than the monolingual children. The evidence seems to suggest
that bilingualism may scaffold concept formation and general mental flexibility.” The avalanche of
research evidence discussed underscores the fact that bilinguals are undoubtedly endowed with
cognitive benefits as a result of their capacity to use and process two or more linguistic codes