4. BILINGUALISM AND A FLUENCY CONTINUUM
Languages are used in a number of different ways and in different situations, but on the whole we can talk about speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. Of course, not all speakers have the same degree of proficiency in any of these skills, nor is there an absolute way to say what counts as proficiency in any one skill. Fishman (1972) and others make an initial classification into domains; the basic domains include home, work, neighborhood, church and the more general public domain (both formal and informal activities). But under any of these domains, there are many different types of activities to consider. For example, conversation at home between two teenage siblings is quite different from conversation at home at a holiday family dinner with elderly relatives present. And assigning one language to one domain in a given community doesn't allow for the possibility of something some bilinguals do very often: code-switching, using two languages in the same conversation.
All of these factors result in bilinguals having what can be called a fluency continuum in each of the skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. While people expect all those that they call bilinguals to speak and understand their L.'l to some extent, their fluency typically varies in different situations. Some af the main factors affecting performance are who the participants are, what the topic is, and what the goal of the interaction is. As you can imagine, simply how often a bilingual uses her or his L2 also makes a difference; if you speak or read your L2 every day you probably are more fluent in it than if you only use it on occasional trips to the home area of that language.
Some scientists emphasize the possibility that bilinguals may show either "active" or ''passive" bilingualism. That is, someone may be able to understand a certain L2, but not speak it, making him or her a passive bilingual. And in some societies, many conversations are carried on with one speaker speaking one language and the other speaking another language, with both speakers as passive bilinguals.
Words and phrases to remember
Grammatical competence = the speakers' ability to recognize and produce well-formed utterances in the language
Communicative competence = the ability to use utterances in ways that are considered appropriate in a situation
Marked usage = use of utterances inappropriately in a given situation when the speaker intends to convey a different or hidden meaning
Fluency continuum = a proficiency in a certain skill
Linguistic domain = a like set of social situations
Active bilingualism = an ability to understand and speak a language
Passive bilingualism = an ability to understand a language without speaking it
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Questions and Tasks
Evaluate your degree of proficiency in L2 speaking, listening, reading and writing skills. What are your strengths and weaknesses? What can you do to boost up your skills?.
Make a list of 10 topics you are comfortable and 10 topics you are highly uncomfortable with in a foreign language. If you speak several languages, make a separate list for every L2 you speak and compare them.
Analyze your language repertoire: are there any languages you cannot speak but can understand, i.e. are there any situations in which you can perform as a passive bilingual?
Work in pairs: think of a dialogue that can illustrate passive bilingualism.
5. Factors promoting bilingualism
Of course bilingualism is the result of contact between speakers speaking different languages, especially different Lis. If we look at bilingualism when it is a group phenomenon, bilingualism often results under two main sets of conditions.
1) Close proximity. That is, the ordinary conditions of life in their ethnic group regularly put speakers in close proximity to speakers of another language. Fur ther, if learning the other group's language is not a reciprocal matter, then the group of less power and prestige makes the effort to learn the other group's language.
The conditions of close proximity with other groups that promote bilingualism include:
Living in a bilingual nation, especially as a minority group member.
Living in border areas between ethnic groups or nations.
Living in a multi-ethnic urban area.
Engaging in an occupation that involves many contacts with out-group members.
Marrying outside one's ethnic group.
Having a parent or grandparent outside one's ethnic group.
2) Displacement. Speakers are likely to become bilingual under certain conditions of displacement which promote the need or desire to leam another language. Displacement can mean either physical movement or a change in psy chological outlook and its conditions can be the following.
Speakers move, whether voluntarily or involuntarily (migration).
The ruling class changes (wars and colonialism).
Borders change (peace settlements).
Circumstances encourage speakers to leam the territorially dominant language (incorporation for national integration).
Speakers admire/espouse the characteristics of an attractive group (acculturation).
Education in an L2 is a prerequisite for socio-economic mobility.
Socio-economic mobility is an important part of the displacement factor that promotes bihngualism. In many parts of the world, speakers are adding a language tc their repertoire because of the instrumental rewards and psychological values (hat are associated with that language. Everywhere, learning the language that enables speakers either to get a job or retain the one they have, or to get a better job, is a major motivation to become bilingual.
The best example we have today of learning an L2 for instrumental motivations is the learning of English for job-related activities all over the world. The most obvious reason is to do business with the many American and British multinational corporations. But another reason is that English is becoming the lingua franca of business in many places where native speakers of English are not necessarily involved. This is especially true in today's Europe. For example, an article in The New York Times (May 19, 2002) outlines how an attorney found, much to his surprise, that he needed to know English when he joined a Paris law firm. He said, "I want to be a business lawyer, and I realized you just cannot avoid speaking English." Many European banks cross national borders in their operations and have made English the official corporate language. Further, many European companies have made English their corporate language. This doesn't me;in that everyone employed there speaks English; the average workers still speak the local language to each other, but the boardroom language is English. At an Italian appliance maker which has recently acquired both a Russian and a British appliance maker, English is the language of management, partly because many of the executives are now not Italian.
A second major instrumental reason that English is being learned around the globe in that the English-speaking US is the source of many recent technological advancements, which is especially evident in the computer industry. True, many manuals for new devices from computers to air conditioners are multilingual, but the controls often are just in English.