The sixth volume of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (ARAL) concerns itself with international bilingual communities, and specifically with the linguistic and educational issues associated with such communities. The objective of this collection of articles is to identify multilingual communities by profile and to deal with such issues as the functional allocation of linguistic repertoires, the implications for education of the existence of multilingual communities, and the implications for the professions resulting from the allocation of linguistic repertoires. The volume aims to survey both field research and linguistic description and to cover as much of the world as it is possible to do in such a limited volume. In fact, contributions covering Australia, Canada, Ghana, Great Britain, the Philippines, South Asia, and Southeast Asia were received, while a number of other areas which had been solicited were not completed in time for publication. In addition, the material covers such concerns as the bilingual's creativity, cognitive development, education, and the media. The several studies raise a number of important questions in addition to supplying extensive annotated and unannotated bibliographies.

The term “multilingualism,” or any of its partial synonyms and correlates (such as “bilingualism” or “bilingual education”), refers to so complex a field of phenomena that it should really be no surprise that it is defined or clarified in much the same way as are the constituent items of a projective test: more in accord with the latent internal dynamics of whatever “moves” the definer than in accord with the manifest external characteristics of the defined. Not only is this true if we move from culture to culture and seek to discover the dominant views about “multilingualism” in a variety of ethnocultural traditions, but it is also true if we focus on any one context, particularly one that is highly exposed to the assets and debits of rapid social change, such as the one we are in presently in the United States, and we seek to discover the dominant view about “multilingualism” from one period of time to another. Under both types of contrastive circumstances we quickly discover that “multilingualism is a sometime thing”; i.e., it is a variable rather than a constant. It is interpreted and reinterpreted, by all segments of society, in accord with larger issues, more pressing priorities that shape these segments, that move them, worry them, force them to alter their priorities. Yes, “multilingualism is a Zeitgeist thing” and “the times, they are a-changing,” particularly in the U.S.A. and the rest of the Western Democratic world.

This paper specifies characteristics of language as a resource and demonstrates that it is possible from the perspective of economics to make a case for government involvement in foreign language learning and maintenance of skills in the U.S.A. Market solutions based on private incentives to learn and maintain language skills alone fail to provide nationally optimal solutions to international communication needs. What is required is an alternative system which combines market with non-market incentives to foreign language learning and use.

The term bilinguals' creativity is used here to refer to those creative linguistic processes which are the result of competence in two or more languages. The term is not interpreted in the sense of acquisitional inadequacies of the bilinguals in a particular language, as has generally been done in describing the linguistic behavior of the bilinguals' use of “non-native” languages. The concept creativity applies both to an individual bilingual and to a bilingual speech community (or a speech fellowship). The bilinguals' creativity entails two things: first, the designing of a text which uses linguistic resources from two or more—related or unrelated—languages; second, the use of verbal strategies in which subtle linguistic adjustments are made for psychological, sociological, and attitudinal reasons. Examples of such creativity may be drawn from non-native literatures written in English or French, or the code-mixed varieties of languages (see section 2 below).

The study of the relationship between bilingualism and cognitive development has struggled with the dual definitional problems of the key component concepts. Bilingualism has been defined at various levels of functional definition. These include linguistic, cognitive, and social-psychological characteristics of individuals, as well as societal characteristics such as ethnicity and other sociodemographic variables. Failure to distinguish between these various definitions of bilingualism has led to confusion in deciphering the relationship of this elusive concept with cognitive development.

I want to go beyond the narrower definition of applied linguistics as the application of theoretical linguistics to the acquisition of second, third, and fourth languages, to the broader notion proposed by Trudgill as "the application of linguistic research to the solution of practical, educational and social problems of all types" (Trudgill 1984:1, see also Kaplan 1980).

Throughout the entire recorded history of Africa, from the days of early missionaries until the present, the question of language constantly recurs. This is not surprising in view of the existence of a plethora of indigenous languages which cut across national borders and the added aggravation brought on by the introduction of the widely spoken and prestigious languages of the colonial powers. Finding answers to questions such as the most appropriate language, the medium for training citizens to meet their responsibilities, or the vehicle for conducting business has by no means been an easy task, given this sociolinguistic complexity, coupled with the fragile unification of African states.

For the benefit of readers unfamiliar with Australia's multilingual situation, the following statistics on language are provided, all derived from the 1976 Australian Census, the most recent one to provide detailed information on language use.l

A wealth of languages is represented in Australia: depending on what is considered a language and what a dialect, the number of languages present in Australia is estimated at around 150 for the Aboriginal languages (100 of which are threatened by extinction) and between 75 and 100 for the immigrant languages.

Over the last few years many statements have been made indicating that a variety of groups and organizations recognize and support multilingualism and multiculturalism in Australia. It is less clear at a policy level, however, how these ‘;ism’ can or should be maintained. Smolicz (1983) has argued in a variety of forums that language is a ‘core’ value for many cultural groups. If language is lost or destroyed, these cultures become de-activated and form sub-cultural variants on the majority culture.

One of the most salient characteristics of the Canadian federation is its linguistic, cultural, and geographic diversity. The second largest country in the world, Canada's population of 24,343,180 (Statistics Canada 1981) is irregularly dispersed, with enclaves of high density in the industrial areas along the United States border and vast sparsely inhabited areas in the central prairies and northern regions. These geographic facts, coupled with a high level of cultural heterogeneity, are reflected in a tendency toward the decentralization of political powers and in regional distinctiveness and autonomy.

The 1980 Census of the Philippines (National Census and Statistics Office 1983) shows a multi-ethnic population speaking various Austronesian languages of the West Indonesian branch, which are not mutally intelligible but are clearly related to each other under various sub-groupings. The clearest divisions are the Northern Group and the Central Group, with the Northern Group situated in Northern and Central Luzon, and the Central Group located in Central and Southern Luzon, the Visayas, and parts of Mindanao (Zorc 1984). Smaller groups may be found in Eastern Mindanao (Eastern Mindanao Group), Southern Mindanao and Sulu (Sama-Bajaw Group), the area around Lake Lanao (Danao language group), Central Mindanao (the Manobo Group), and the islands of Palawan (the Palawanese Group) (cf., Pallesen 1985).

Up to the present the term to use in referring to linguistic or cultural minorities of the Philippines has not been settled. In the 1903 Census of the Philippines, the population was divided into Christians and non-Christians, the Christians being considered civilized while the non- Christians who composed the minorities were referred to as wild [sic]. In the 1918 Census, the anthropologist Beyer (1921) classified the minorities into pygmies, Malays, and Indonesians. By the time the 1939 Census was taken, however, the main identification of the inhabitants was in terms of their languages or ethnic groups.

Anyone who undertakes to do an overview of so large an area as studies on “the South Asian bilingual's verbal repertoire and the functional allocation of languages” within so small a space as permitted by this review deserves her predicament. The problem lies in the complexity and diversity of the situation, and the danger of inanity resulting from oversimplification. However, since the alternative is to wait for book-length treatments which have yet to be written, and in the meanwhile, suffer the omission of a prime example of a multilingual region from a volume devoted to multilingualism, I shall compromise by treating only the broadly representative situations and trends and ignoring the (sometimes more interesting) particularities of a given language or an individual contact situation.

In this paper, Southeast Asia is defined as the region made up of: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. It is a region of great diversity. Each country has its own characteristic heterogeneity in ethnicity, culture, and language. There is also marked contrast in size; compare tiny Singapore (area: 618 sq. km.; population: 2.5 million) with Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago (area: 2 million sq. km. [actually 3,000 islands having that total area]; population: 146.7 million). Nonetheless, the identity of the region is recognizable, for it has certain common diagnostic features of multilingualism which distinguish it from other bilingual communities such as those in Europe and America.

The scope of this brief review, and of the bibliographies which follow, has been restricted to England itself, and includes only passing reference to the Celtic languages in general (Durkacz 1983, Price 1984, Trudgill 1984), or to Scottish Gaelic and Welsh in particular (McKinnon 1977, Murray and Morrison 1984, Price and Dodson 1978). The decision to limit the scope in this way was made essentially because of the very extensive existing literature on the sociolinguistic situation of the Celtic languages in Britain, and on related educational questions. It also seemed more useful at the present time to use the limited space available to focus on the much less explored field of bilingualism and educational debate about bilingualism in England itself.

From the vantage point of August 1, 1985, the past three years are better characterized by what has failed to happen, politically, in realms directly affecting the concerns of applied linguistics in the United States than by what actually has happened. Despite 55 months of the Reagan Revolution, the Department of Education is still intact, and, with it, the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs (OBEMLA). Bilingual education continues to receive federal funding, though predictably at levels that satisfy neither its advocates (too low) nor its detractors (too high).

A variety of factors will converge during the latter part of the 1980s which lend urgency to the need to continue to implement a series of research agendas within the broad domain of bilingualism. Among these, changes in demographic patterns with the resultant movement of peoples across national, political, or linguistic boundaries; pressures toward universal primary (and secondary) education—particularly in ethnolinguistically heterogeneous developing countries, and pressures for improved foreign language education in industrialized countries—particularly in the United States—will lead us to want to examine thoroughly the array of factors associated with second language teaching or learning and with the personal and social correlates and consequences of bilinguality or language attrition.