Bilingualism And Semilingualism

“Our culture, our traditions, our languages are the foundations upon which we build our identity.” - Unknown. Bilingualism has many different interpretations and definitions and can cause problems in the community or unite it. The concept of bilingualism represents several different ideas, two writers, Martin Espada and Richard Rodriguez share in their essays their personal stories about being immersed into the English culture and learning the language. They share their views of what bilingualism means to them personally and make arguments about the importance of the concept. The two essayists bring awareness to the major role bilingualism plays in the communities today and highlight the effects of disagreements between cultural groups.

Being bilingual is a tool that can enhance someone’s life tremendously. The development of this tool can happen either simultaneously or successively.

In America, there is a predominant growth in multiple ethnicities and cultural backgrounds; leading to the usage of multiple languages in the American culture. There is a growing need for many people to learn and utilize multiple languages within the workplace and within one 's own personal life. The importance of bilingualism and the knowledge of multiple languages is ever increasing, and therefore becoming more important for the younger generations. The push for knowing multiple languages and becoming bilingual has many potential negative and positive effects.

In my entire life, I have been labeled many different names such as daughter, sister, athlete, student, but I have never been labeled as a bilingual speaker. My stepmother, who speaks fluent spanish, used to teach me when I was a little girl. We would parade around the house, me pointing out objects and her naming each in a language I was determined to understand. I have always admired the ability to communicate in another language. But I am just one person with one view on the subject. For bilingual speakers Martin Espada and Richard Rodriguez, their experiences explain their different views.

Moreover, studies on bilingual language processing have shown that when bilingual speakers, listen to, read, or produce sentences, linguistic competency in both languages is activated, even when the speaker uses one language (Kroll, J. F., Bobb, S. C., & Hoshino, N. (2014). This cross-language activation can be detected in both beginners and highly skilled bilinguals and can be found at various levels of language processing system, such as lexicon, phonology, and grammar. In particular, cognitive research on bilingualism suggests that a bilingual speaker’s second language, which is not used in word recognition and language production, is being suppressed and the language that tends to be self-controlled is the native language of the speaker, not the second foreign language, implying that the native language is indeed compromised to accommodate the second language. The control system used to cognitively prohibit and switch languages is a control system commonly used for

How I speak to my friends differs from the way I speak to my teachers. How I speak to my family differs from the way I speak in public. Does my ability to speak multiple dialects of English infer I am bilingual? Society commonly interprets bilingualism as the capability to speak multiple languages. In reality, someone’s cultural and emotional connection largely helps define bilingualism. I define bilingualism as someone’s ability to express their culture(s) while speaking a language(s). The writers Martin Espada and Richard Rodriguez discuss their views of bilingualism within their essays. Espada teaches at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and conducts political poems. In his essay “The New Bathroom Policy at English High School” he

Francois Grosjean Ph.D. said, “Over the past thirty years, many "traditional" immigrant languages have declined in number.” In fact, approximately 80% population of The United States are monolingual, therefore, some states contain proportionally small percentage bilingual or multilingual speakers. However, situation looks different in New York which is one of few most bilingual cities. According to 2016 Census data about 53% New Yorkers are bilingual or multilingual. Each of them has gone through a different route to bilingualism and their personal experiences contain interesting aspects of bilingualism. This research presents one of many bilingual people living in New York.

The first myth of the monolingual brain means that infant’s brains are monolingual and treat two different languages as the same language. This, however, is untrue; infants can learn two languages at the same time and will not get confused between the two. Evidence for the myth of the monolingual brain comes from developmental milestones, differentiated use of two languages, and grammatical constraints on bilingual code mixing. In regards to developmental milestones, bilingualism versus monolingualism has no known consequences for phonological

Bilingualism and multilingualism are well practiced through the World. Despite it being well accepted on other parts of the globe, many areas in the United States tends to turn a cold shoulder to it.. Most education policies concerning bilingual or not based on scientific evidence and research (which has discovered the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism) but rather pre conceived notions and stigmas when it comes to the practice. After some brief research, I believe we should embrace the "new wave" practices and policies, which are more well informed rather than the past. Researches also need to explore new ways in which the brain retains, recognizes and organizes language learning. Now is the tome to put evidence based practices and

Bilingualism is a person’s ability to speak two or more languages fluently. Initially it was believed that bilingualism had negative effects on an individual’s intelligence and speech and it was thought that the knowledge of multiple languages would complicate one’s thought processing rather than improve its functioning. This theory

In a multilingual or bilingual environment, use of code switching is a common practice. This research aims at finding the attitude of students towards code switching on daily conversation. Nipel (2006) investigates social culture linguistics where students frequently use code switching a lot as not to break a conversation that they are participating in. Therefore, code switching is always used by students who are from the same area and speak the same language. The definition of code switching has been suggested by many researchers in the past. For example, Wardhaugh (2006) in his book defined code switching as switching from one code to another in order to create a new code. In other words, it is defined as a form of identity marker for a group of speakers who use more than one language. Moreover, Myers-Scotton (2006) defined code switching as the use of two different language types in a single or same conversation. Therefore, code-switching is the collocation within the same conversation between two people who use different grammatical systems while participating in the conversation. Code-Switching occurs when two languages are used in one interaction session between two bilingual speakers (Young, 2014).

The world has become a global village and that has brought a lot of changes and new work positions into the market. Almost everywhere around the globe, bilingual professionals are in high demand. Also, bilingualism opens up two worlds of experience, job opportunities, literature, resources, and cultural heritage. Bilinguals have the privilege of getting their information from a wider variety of resources. Besides, research has shown that it’s easier for bilingual children to acquire other languages later in life. A study conducted by professors of the Department of Special Education of the University of Haifa, Israel showed that “students who know two languages would have an easier time gaining command of a third language than would students who are fluent in only one language.”

Code-switching is considered a phenomenon in communication, where the speakers, typically bilinguals, alternate codes such as languages, dialects, style or accent within a conversation to accommodate interaction needs (Gladkova, 2017; Shay, 2015). Even though code-switch users are considered to be language incompetent, and to impure languages, the process serves many positive purposes in multiple contexts. Switching between codes is a behaviour to utilise lexical resources of both languages or to emphasise the meaning of the delivered messages, to define personal or groups’ identity, and to aid teachers in conducting language lessons.

One of the very interesting parts of being bilingual is that bilingual speakers are able to switch between languages without much effort. It all appears to come to them in a very natural way. Unfortunately, it isn't all so simple as it appears. Experiments have shown that switching between two or more languages comes at a cost. The cost is involved in speech comprehension ( Thomas & Allport 2000 ) and also in speech production, as observed in the study of Finkbeiner, Almeida, Janssen & Caramaza ( 2006 ).

In this world, there are a lot of languages used to communicate. Nation and cultural diversity are a source of variation in the languages. The diversity of the language used by a particular group is a factor of the occurrence of bilingualism. According to Grosjean (1984, p. 1) bilingualism is the use of two or more languages. The proficiency of bilingualism may vary depending on the exposure to the other users of language and opportunities to use the language. It is one of the factors of replacement of the language. This phenomenon known as code switching, it can occur as a whole, the incorporating elements of other languages in the language being used, or the turn of a variation of a language. Based on Poplack (1980) theory code switching is the alternation of two languages within a single discourse, sentence or constituent. Garrett (2010, p. 11) said that code switching is the most powerful feature of informal communication. Code switching happens when speakers speak in one language into another language as example when they