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The literary culture of early modern England was bilingual; literature of all kinds, including poetry which is the focus of this book, was read and written in both English and Latin throughout the whole of the period that we call Renaissance or early modern. Both the overlap and the lack of overlap between Latin and English poetry make a difference to our understanding of this literary culture. It matters that so many apparently innovative moves in English poetics – including the fashion for epyllia, epigrams and Cowley’s ‘irregular’ Pindaric odes – can be traced back to continental Latin poetry: that is, to ‘neo-’ Latin rather than primarily classical verse; it is also important that there are some forms – such as sonnets in English and (until Marvell’s First Anniversary) short panegyric epic in Latin – that were a characteristic feature of verse in one language but not the other. This introduction outlines the educational and literary context in which this poetic bilingualism emerged and developed, with a particular emphasis upon the cultural centrality of 'paraphrase' broadly understood.
Morphological awareness contributes to vocabulary acquisition and reading in bilingual children who learned English after their native language. In line with these considerations, we further investigated L2 processing in late adult bilinguals where questions related to morphology need to be clarified. French–English speakers (N = 92) were assessed for three morphological awareness stages: lexical semantic knowledge, syntactic knowledge, and distributive knowledge. We investigated whether the evolution of morphological awareness was related to L2 proficiency and whether it was facilitated by the presence of suffixes shared in L1 and L2. Our results confirmed the influence of language proficiency at each stage of morphological awareness. However, the hypothesis of an advantage of suffixes shared between French and English was not confirmed as no clear advantage was found for those suffixes. Our findings are discussed in line with the morphological congruence hypothesis and compared with the previous results in the literature.
In this chapter, which takes a psychoanalytical approach, the author references Jean-Paul Hiltenbrand’s work on untranslatability in situations of migration and bilingualism, and presents the case history of a thirteen-year-old adolescent who is the third daughter of a Korean mother and a French father. Silent and depressed, Ohé was brought for counselling by her mother, who learned French at university on arriving in Paris, where she settled as a young woman. When she became a mother, she chose to speak to her daughters only in French. The therapy sessions focus increasingly on the analyst’s intuition that something is lacking in the adolescent’s Mother tongue, leading to the hypothesis that the daughter’s difficulties might be related to the mother’s dilemma of untranslatability in certain crucial areas of experience. This is related to the adolescent’s passion for Japanese cartoons. To Ohé, it seems, Japanese has come to represent a kind of halfway house in which the maternal dimension can be found between the second Mother tongue and the first (albeit missing) Mother tongue.
Codeswitchingching, well known as a speech style in which bilinguals alternate languages between or within sentences, has recently been joined by a new term, translanguaging, which is widely used in bilingual education with a similar meaning. Among a variety of perspectives within the translanguaging literature, some scholars have adopted deconstructivism, the view that discrete languages and multilingualism do not actually exist. Deconstructivists see translanguaging as a theoretical alternative to codeswitching, as codeswitching implies internalized linguistic diversity. In this chapter, the author argues that the political use of language names (a concern of deconstructivists) can and should be distinguished from the social and structural idealizations used to study linguistic diversity, favoring what the author calls an Integrated Multilingual Model of bilingualism, contrasted with the Unitary and Dual Competence models. The author further distinguishes grammars from linguistic repertoires, arguing that bilinguals, like everybody, have a single linguistic repertoire but a richly diverse mental grammar, a viewpoint the author calls a multilingual perspective on translanguaging.
In this chapter, the author, as a psychiatrist who has written books on Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Samuel Beckett, both writers who push back the limits of literary writing, focuses on Beckett's change of literary language, not from the starting point of exophonic writing and self-translation, as most critics writing on Beckett’s bilingualism usually do, but ‘from underneath’, making this change of literary language appear as an apparent severing of links to continue writing on the ‘maternal side of language’. The author brings his specialist knowledge of adolescent care to bear on his subject and explodes some of the myths surrounding Beckett’s change of language, such as the famous ‘no style’ of French and the idea of a ‘counter-language’ to ward off the ‘(s)Mother tongue’. The author presents Beckett’s use of French as a paradoxically regressive move, which allows him to live ‘in exile within exile’, to set up the conditions of ‘nostalgia’ by putting the distance of the foreign language to the service of a risky regression to infancy in search of the body, in search of sensory perception and archaic aggressivity: a language ‘beyond the verb’.
The introduction sets out the dual purpose of the book: to present the editors’ research on the residual presence of the Mother tongue in second language learning, and to showcase a selection of essays by Francophone authors whose thinking on the Mother tongue has influenced their own. They wish to introduce the concept of the langue mat-rangère, or ‘(M)other tongue’. This term conveys the way the second language comprises an in-matrie dimension that underlies speech in a foreign language. By presenting the foreign language as an act involving the body, they highlight the place that should be given to the mother tongue in second language learning. Thanks to the multidisciplinary creative pedagogy they promote, the forgotten or repressed mother tongue finds its place again, making it easier to learn the foreign language. Two second language learning situations are described: the foreign language started at school, usually at about eleven years old, and the second language that is grafted onto the original language in a context such as migration. Both situations reveal a common denominator between them: the central role played in second language learning by the original Mother tongue, in its most archaically emotional, sensory, and bodily dimension.
The moral foreign language effect (MFLE) describes how people’s decisions may change when a moral dilemma is presented in either their native (NL) or foreign language (FL). Growing attention is being directed to unpacking what aspects of bilingualism may influence the MFLE, though with mixed or inconclusive results. The current study aims to bridge this gap by adopting a conceptualization of bilingualism that frames this construct as a composite and continuous measure. In a between-group analysis, we asked 196 Italian–English bilinguals to perform a moral dilemmas task in either their NL (i.e., Italian) or FL (i.e., English). In a within-group analysis, we evaluated the effects of FL age of acquisition, FL proficiency, and language dominance – all measured as continuous variables – on moral decision-making. Overall, findings indicate that differences within bilinguals’ language experience impact moral decisions in an FL. However, the effect of the linguistic factors considered was not ubiquitous across dilemmas, and not always emerged into a MFLE. In light of these results, our study addresses the importance of treating bilingualism as multidimensional, rather than a unitary variable. It also discusses the need to reconceptualize the FLE and its implications on moral decision-making.
Innovative and interdisciplinary in approach, this book explores the role of the mother tongue in second language learning. It brings together contributions from a diverse team of authors, to showcase a range of Francophone perspectives from the fields of linguistics, psychology, cross-cultural psychiatry, psychoanalysis, translation studies, literature, creative writing, the neurosciences, and more. The book introduces a major new concept: the (M)other tongue, and shows its relevance to language learning and pediatrics in a multicultural society. The first chapter explores this concept from different angles, and the subsequent chapters present a range of theoretical and practical perspectives, including counselling case studies, literary examples and creative plurilingual pedagogies, to highlight how this theory can inform practical approaches to language learning. Engaging and accessible, readers will find new ideas and methods to adopt to their own thinking and practices, whether their background is in language and linguistics, psychiatry, psychology, or neuroscience.
Bilinguals’ emotions can vary in intensity with the language of a stimulus. Yet, extant research has somewhat surprisingly accepted inconsistent results from implicit nonverbal and explicit verbal emotion measures. To date, it is unclear if this inconsistency recurs to conceptual or methodological differences. We therefore investigated if squeezing a handheld dynamometer is a valid nonverbal, “visceral” alternative to self-reported language-dependent feelings by comparing explicit ratings to neuro-physiological emotional reactions. We replicated two pupillometry experiments inducing language-dependent emotions through sentence reading (Study 1) and listening to narrative video commercials (Study 2) of low and high emotionality in the first or second language. Pupillometry confirmed that bilinguals are more sensitive to the low-high emotionality contrast in their first than second language. Grip force (but not duration) mirrored these findings, whereas verbal ratings did not. We thus recommend grip force as a new attentional, nonverbal measure for bilingualism research.
Heather Jane Smith experienced isolation in her early childhood in the United Kingdom because of her Canadian accent. She then decided to work in Zimbabwe, and back in Newcastle, she focused on the negative prejudices that prevailed regarding multiculturalism in education, taking into account British values and national security, and the growing racist nativist discourse in the English media.
"I have learned these words when I first went to school in La Habana, Cuba." This is how Ofelia Garcia introduces the reader to an in-depth discussion of the concepts of translanguaging, multilingualism, plurilingualism, heteroglossia, xenophobia, and discrimination. She explains how well-intentioned educational programs can carry the stigma of Otherness and discrimination. She strongly advocates the use of the full semiotic repertoires of students, moving away from monolingual ideologies and neo-liberal economics, curricula and pedagogy.
Con el retorno reciente de los migrantes mexicanos, miles de estudiantes con experiencia escolar en Estados Unidos se incorporaron a las escuelas mexicanas. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar la adaptación lingüística de estos estudiantes en una ciudad con alto retorno, Tijuana, México. Se utiliza metodología mixta que comprende el análisis de la Encuesta de Migración e Integración Escolar 2017, así como treinta y seis entrevistas semiestructuradas realizadas a estudiantes transnacionales en 2018 y 2019. Los hallazgos sugieren un proceso paulatino de aprendizaje del español y pérdida del inglés a mayor tiempo en México desde el último arribo, así como la existencia de competencias lingüísticas desiguales según la socialización escolar en cada país, el país de identificación cultural y nacimiento, el capital económico, social y cultural de los hogares, y los apoyos de maestros y compañeros. Se requieren políticas públicas que favorezcan el bilingüismo en las escuelas de ambos países.
Shedding new light on the alternative, emancipatory Germany discovered and written about by progressive women writers during the long nineteenth century, this illuminating study uncovers a country that offered a degree of freedom and intellectual agency unheard of in England. Opening with the striking account of Anna Jameson and her friendship with Ottilie von Goethe, Linda K. Hughes shows how cultural differences spurred ten writers' advocacy of progressive ideas and provided fresh materials for publishing careers. Alongside well-known writers – Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Michael Field, Elizabeth von Arnim, and Vernon Lee – this study sheds light on the lesser-known writers Mary and Anna Mary Howitt, Jessie Fothergill, and the important Anglo-Jewish lesbian writer Amy Levy. Armed with their knowledge of the German language, each of these women championed an extraordinarily productive openness to cultural exchange and, by approaching Germany through a female lens, imported an alternative, 'other' Germany into English letters.
The shared-syntax account of bilingual syntactic representations suggests that similar structures from different languages are represented as one in the bilingual mind. In this study, we examined the degree of morpho-syntactic similarity needed for representations to be shared in the bilingual mind by comparing passive structures in Greek and English. Contrary to English, non-active morphology in Greek is not restricted to passives and the “by phrase” is considered marked. In two structural priming experiments, we examined whether passives can be primed in L1-Greek and, subsequently, whether there is a single representation for passives in Greek–English bilinguals despite distributional and morpho-syntactic differences. Results showed that passive structures were primed in L1-Greek (Experiment 1) and from L1-Greek to L2-English (Experiment 2). Our findings suggest that morpho-syntactic and distributional differences inherent to passives do not prevent priming, and that structural representations can be shared even when featural structure is not identical.
It has been found that bilinguals and children from minority backgrounds lag behind monolinguals or those in the majority culture, with respect to prevalence, assessment, and treatment for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This suggests that bilingualism might be yet another factor giving rise to variability in ADHD. Using regression methods, we analyzed parent reports for 394 primary school-age children on background and language experience, ADHD-related behavior, and structural language skill in English to explore whether bilingualism is associated with levels of ADHD-related behavior. Bilingualism as a category was associated with slightly lower levels of ADHD-related behavior. Bilingualism as a continuous measure showed a trend of being associated with lower levels, but this did not quite reach significance. Structural language skill in English was the main predictor of levels of ADHD-related behavior; higher skill predicting lower levels. More investigation is required to confirm whether these effects occur across different populations, to understand which, if any, aspects of bilingualism give rise to variability, and if need be, to address these as far as possible.
Research on English relative clauses shows that, in most studies, subject relatives are comprehended more accurately than object relatives by both monolingual and bilingual children. The current study focuses on Czech-English bilingual children and extends this line of research in two ways. First, it includes a condition in which the noun phrases involved in the action differ in number (one is singular and the other is plural), a manipulation that was never tested on bilinguals. Second, it includes a fine-grained measure of language exposure, since the exposure has been linked to the acquisition of complex structures. Thirty-eight Czech-English bilinguals (aged 8–11 years) were tested on their comprehension of relative clauses using a picture matching paradigm. Results show that sentences with number mismatch were comprehended more accurately than match sentences and that subject relatives were comprehended more accurately than object relatives. In addition, in the subject relatives subset, higher exposure to English corresponded to poorer performance in relative clauses with number mismatch. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.
Bilingualism is hard to define, measure, and study. Sparked by the “replication crisis” in the social sciences, a recent discussion on the advantages of open science is gaining momentum. Here, we join this debate to argue that bilingualism research would greatly benefit from embracing open science. We do so in a unique way, by presenting six fictional stories that illustrate how open science practices – sharing preprints, materials, code, and data; pre-registering studies; and joining large-scale collaborations – can strengthen bilingualism research and further improve its quality.
Parental level of education, instruction time, and amount of language practice that children receive have enhanced our understanding of how bilingual and multilingual children learn to comprehend text. Guided by the simple view of reading and the interdependence hypothesis, this longitudinal study conducted in Canadian French immersion programs examined the (a) within- and cross-language association between oral language skills and reading comprehension of bilingual English–French and multilingual children and (b) patterns of growth, while controlling for possible influences of parental level of education and methods of instruction on reading achievement. The sample included 150 children tested once at the beginning of Grade 4 (T1) and again at the end of Grade 4 (T2) and in Grade 6 (T3). Individual growth modeling revealed that bilingual and multilingual children showed similar development in oral language and reading skills across the timeframe. Moreover, growth in English and French reading comprehension was associated with within-language variables. English reading comprehension in Grade 4 was also associated with cross-language variables, including French listening comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. Reading development in the second and third language is enhanced in contexts where classroom instruction, as well as social, economic, and educational opportunities to learn, is equivalent for all students.
This study examined whether bilinguals automatically activate lexical options from both of their languages when performing a picture matching task in their dominant language (L1) by using event related potentials. English–French bilinguals and English monolinguals performed a picture-spoken word matching task with three conditions: match (BEACH-“beach”), unrelated mismatch (BEACH-“tack”), and L2 onset competitor mismatch (BEACH-“plaid”; plaid sounds like plage, the French word for beach). Critically, bilinguals, but not monolinguals, showed reduced N400s for L2-cohort vs. unrelated mismatches. The results provide clear evidence that when bilinguals identify pictures, they automatically activate lexical options from both languages, even when expecting oral input from only their dominant language. N400 attenuation suggests bilinguals activate but do not expect L2 lexical options.