2 - A Holistic View of Bilingualism

Summary

At the start of his career, the author was struck by the many questionable conceptions and negative attitudes that surrounded bilingualism. He addressed them in two theoretical papers, in 1985 and 1989, in which he argued that a fractional view of bilingualism had played too great a role in the field. He then expressed his own holistic view that bilinguals are not two monolinguals in one person. Instead, they are an integrated whole which cannot easily be decomposed into two separate parts. Bilinguals have a unique and specific linguistic configuration; the coexistence and constant interaction of the two languages has produced a different but complete language system. After expanding on this, the author adds a few follow-up comments to complement his view. They concern the definition of bilingualism, the language history of bilinguals, the difference between monolinguals and bilinguals, and so on. The author ends by summarizing the impact his holistic view has had over the years on theories and models of bilingualism, as well as on the use of tranlanguaging in schools, and the learning and evaluation of foreign languages.