Читать книгу The Mysteries of Bilingualism. Unresolved Issues онлайн

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The other variable that is influenced by language proficiency, language use, and functions of languages, is language dominance. For a long time, researchers asked themselves whether dominance was based on just proficiency, or use, or both, or whether it depended on basic skills such as reading and writing a language, or even whether it concerned when the languages were acquired. Silva-Corvalán and Treffers-Daller (2016) studied dominance extensively and came to the conclusion that a dominant language is that in which a bilingual has attained an overall higher level of proficiency at a given age, and/or the language which s/he uses more frequently, and across a wider range of domains. As we see, all three factors are mentioned in their definition.

A final factor that needs to be included when describing bilinguals at a particular point in time concerns biculturalism. Are the bilinguals being described also bicultural and, if so, what impact does it have on their bilingualism (Grosjean 2015). ssss1 is dedicated to biculturalism but it worth mentioning here that bilingualism and biculturalism are not automatically coextensive. You can find bilinguals who are not bicultural (e.g., those bilinguals who have lived in just one culture, such as many Dutch people), biculturals who are not bilingual (e.g., British people who have migrated to the United States), as well as people who are both bicultural and bilingual. Biculturals can be characterized in the following way: They take part, to varying degrees, in the life of two or more cultures; they adapt, in part at least, their attitudes, behaviors, values, languages, etc., to these cultures; and they combine and blend aspects of the cultures involved. Being bicultural has a real impact on language knowledge and language use in bilinguals. One example that comes to mind concerns concepts in the bilingual lexicon. So called translation equivalents, such as French “pain” and English “bread” may share the same concept in bilinguals who are not bicultural, but certainly not if they are bicultural. The same is true of French “café” and English “coffee.”