Читать книгу The Mysteries of Bilingualism. Unresolved Issues онлайн

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Definitions have never replaced a good description of a phenomenon, and this also true for what it means to be bilingual. In what follows, I will present some important characteristics of bilingual people, first at a particular point in time in their lives, and then over the years, as is revealed in their language history.

Language proficiency and language use are probably the two foremost factors (variables) when describing bilinguals at a particular point in time. A third one, when they actually started to become bilingual, will be dealt with in their language history below. A grid approach proposed by Grosjean (2010) can help us visualize proficiency and use together (see Figure 1.1).

ssss1 A visual representation of a bilingual’s language proficiency and language use.

Language use is presented along the vertical axis (from Never used at the bottom all the way to Daily use at the top) and language proficiency is on the horizontal axis (from Low proficiency on the left to High proficiency on the right). These labels can be replaced with numerical values if necessary. An example allows us to see the three languages of Lucia, a bilingual, and where they stand in relation to one another. Her most used and most proficient language is La (French). Her other language, Lb (English), is used slightly less frequently and she is slightly less proficient in it, although the level is still very high. This explains why its position is just below and to the left of La in the figure. She also knows a third language, Lc (German), but not very well, and she uses it rarely. Hence its position in the lower left of the grid. Lucia is clearly bilingual in English and French, on both factors, and like many others, she also has some knowledge of another language but rarely uses it. Note that in this type of presentation, the position of each language can be based either on self‐assessment ratings, as in this case, or on the results of more objective tests.