11 - A Bilingualism Researcher’s Social Role

Summary

The careers of academics are rather straightforward, but since research on bilingualism and biculturalism have potentially important social consequences, the author communicated about them. His audience was the general public as well as professionals involved with bilingual children and adolescents. In this chapter, he describes three activities he undertook over the years. The first was to write books and articles, and give interviews, on the myths that surround bilingualism as well as on topics such as its extent, how it can be defined, having an accent in one or several languages, the personality of bilinguals, how children go in and out of bilingualism, family strategies to ensure that children become bilingual, and so on. The second activity was to have a blog on bilingualism, “Life as a Bilingual,” which was housed by a well-known social media organization, Psychology Today. The author maintained it for eleven years and it has been visited by more than 2.4 million readers. And the third activity was to defend the right of the deaf child to grow up bilingual. He wrote a position paper, which has been translated into 31 different languages. Reactions to these activities are then reviewed and discussed.