Stephen van Vlack

Sookmyung Women`s University

Graduate School of TESOL

Developing Bilingualism

Fall 2007

Week 2 - Answers

Hamers and Blanc (2000), Chapter 1: Definitions and Guiding Principles

There are some important things to remember about this chapter. First of all, it is an introductory chapter in which the authors try to explain their view not so much of bilingualism, but how language works. It is, therefore, very important that you understand the concepts of this chapter in their most basic form. They will keep on popping up throughout the book, but it is better if you get the concepts right from the start.

Hamers and Blanc are psychologists, or at least follow the psychological approach to language, which means that many of the ideas here will be unfamiliar to you. Keep in mind that, as psychologists, they are interested primarily in the functional side of language. In a general sense they are not concerned with the forms as much as the way the forms are used. That, in effect, is why we are studying this in the first place. By looking at bilinguality and the issues surrounding it we are going to be able to think about language acquisition in a different and hopefully more comprehensive way.

1. What is a bilingual individual? Make up your own definition.

There are many conflicting definitions of what a bilingual is and who can and who can`t qualify as bilingual. The authors take the safe way out for now and simply dodge the issue by giving other people`s definitions and critiquing them without giving one of their own. I will try to help you by giving my own definition, but remember this definition is subject to change in the future. A bilingual individual is someone who has the necessary structures in their brain to use and comprehend incoming messages in more than one linguistic system and is able to communicate with a variety of users of at least two of those linguistic systems adequately at the general/personal level. That is, they must be able to use at least two of the language systems in their brain to satisfy personal needs as deemed appropriate by society. This might seems long and drawn out, but I am trying to make it as clear as possible. One area of major contention in this definition is the use of the term `linguistic system`. As we will find out in this course that it is hard to find a clear boundary between one language and another, especially when dialects are thrown into the equation. Competing and overlapping systems, those not in complementary distribution, would need to be tagged in the brain in some way.

2. What are the main controversies in the definitions of bilingual individuals?

The main controversies in trying to determine what a bilingual individual is generally revolve around the areas of level of competence, the level of proficiency, the concept of cultural proficiency, and what a language is. It is possible to have high competence in (specific functional area of) a language, but have little or no ability to use the language. This is often cited as being the case in individuals who have mastered a dead language, or a language learned only to read where the learner has never had any contact with speakers of the language. Researchers often see the level of proficiency as the key but few people agree on what the necessary level is and many of the terms used, like minimal or adequate, are simply not scientific or descriptive enough. For many the cultural side of language is the most important. They believe that someone must first be bicultural in order to be bilingual. This seems to be an old fashioned concept, but is not without its validity. Lastly, the concept of what makes a language and what makes a dialect is by no means clear. Much of the distinctions between the two are not actually part of language, but are part of politics and many researchers have come to accept speakers of standard and dialectal forms of the same language as being bilingual (the term currently used is diglossic).

For Hamers and Blanc language and society are joined in a profound way. This sounds like a simple idea, but it carries very strong repercussions. Remember, when they say language they mean the functional side of language. Forms, as Saussure pointed out nearly 100 years ago, are arbitrary. This means that the forms of language do not occur for any specific reason, rather they are created along the lines of chance or chaos. Functions, however, are the product of a direct link from society to language. The need to use language is universal in humans, but how we use language is culturally specific and determined by the society of users. Different societies use language in different ways. This is how language use and society are profoundly linked.

Think of it this way, a young child has to acquire the forms of her/his language and due to the LAD, this happens in a very automatic way, but how the forms are to be used is a whole different question. Hamers and Blanc believe that cultural learning must precede language use. That is, a child has to know how their language is used before they go and use it. Language use is a product of society because it is determined by the cultural norms of the society it is used in

3. How does form to function mapping form the basis of language according to Bates and MacWhinney?

Form to function mapping is the basic system upon which language use works. At this point it must be stated that functions necessarily precede forms. That is, we use the function to pick the form. The form is not first accessed by the brain to pick the function although this might happen in a highly unnatural learning situation as often occurs in second or foreign language classroom.

We can think of the function as being what the speaker wants to do with language. In this way, it might help to think of functions as fulfilling the needs or wants of the speaker. For example, you walk into your house one night and see someone you don`t know sitting on the floor looking very comfortable. What are you going to say? Are you going to yell or make inquiries as to who they are? That is the function. The function in this case will probably be to inquire but this may very well depend on the way the person looks. So you want to ask the person who they are. There are, however, thousands of ways that you can do this. You have your function, now you have to find the form that you want to use. You then run through a list of potential forms in your mind that will meet your functional needs. Based on a complex mixture of contextual and societal/personality factors including those of past experience you will decide which form you want to use through some sort of weed out process. That decision making is, in effect, form to function mapping. Form to function mapping is the process by which you pick the best form to suit your functional needs. Easy, right? Well, not so much.

Exactly how you go about picking your forms is a rather complex process. It involves a large amount of conscious and sub-conscious decision making.

In languages there cannot be a one to one correlation in form to function mapping because that is too simplistic. Such a simple communication system would not adequately satisfy the societal and personal demands that language can satisfy. Human beings and human society have developed an inherent need for language. This need occurs at several levels which can be seen in the figure on page 15 of the text. Without the complex system of associations between forms and function and function and function and forms language would not be able to meet the demands that it has come to fulfil. The entire becomes even more complex when more and more linguistic systems are added to the equation. More options and more variables exist to cloud the process and make it more demanding.

4. Based on this idea of form/function, what affects second language learning?

What really affects language learning is personality. In order to understand this we need to take a step back and look at how some psychologists look at the concept of personality. Central to the idea of personality is valorization in a grander sense than it is explained in this chapter. Valorization is a psychological process by which a person puts values on objects, both physical and conceptual. Our personality is then the net result of all the values. It might be represented in a grid as shown below.

food              +

clothes                     -

money                     +/-

age               -

experience    +

trees             +

etc.

The grid which makes up our personality has thousands of items all of which are marked based on the person`s feelings toward the concept. The idea is that no two people have exactly the same grid values because everyone has different experience. The values of the grid are strongly influenced by the norms of society, but also by social networks, interpersonal interactions and individual development, so we can begin to see how the figure on page 15 works.

People make decisions about language use based on their personality. We can see this when two different people in the same situation come up with different forms for the same function. They react differently for reasons of personality differences.

Now, taking this up a notch we can say that if we use the valorization grid to decide what to say, then we also use the same grid to make choices about the second language; about how to use that second language and/or about whether to use it or learn it at all. Personality is the key to motivation. The main motivation many Koreans have in learning English is strongly instrumental. This means, for example, that people with strong positive values for items that correlate strongly with wealth and material success will be better motivated to learn English.

In this way we can see how personality not only affects the way we use our L1 and the way we might want to use our L2, but also whether we will learn or how well we will learn our L2 at all. 

5. When looking at overall language behavior, how do the societal and individual levels work together? Briefly describe the model.

If you look at the figure on page 15 you will see that there are four cells. They are social structure, social networks, interpersonal interactions, and individual development. According to the chart language behavior originates or is first affected by the rules of society/societal structures. This means that the rules of the society play an important role in deciding valorization values and in turn how language is going to be used in that society. Language use in society is best seen in language use in social networks. Since the speaker is more distant from the individuals they encounter in social networks, then the rules of society play a major role in determining how language is used there. In the interpersonal interactions cell the speaker is has a much better knowledge of the people s/he intends to communicate with and thus has more freedom in diverting more from the rules of society. Personality and personal experience play a much larger role here. The last cell, individual development, involves how the person uses language in their own mind. Here we can say that societal norms are the basis for thought and language sue, but personality and experience play the pivotal role.

Because society is constantly changing and people are constantly experiencing new things, both of which cause changes in the valorization grid, then it is clear that our language use is also in a constant state of flux. Central to this constant change is the individual development cell which contains our valorization grid. That is why there are two different feedback loops in the diagram, to allow for global changes coming from any of the cells in any of the levels.

So it seems that the figure is not that difficult after all. All it seeks to do is make us visualize the elements that have an effect on language use and is useful in showing us the postulated order of those effects.

6. What is the main difference between linguistic and psychological approaches to language acquisition and which one do you prefer?

The main difference is in how they view input.

Linguists are concerned primarily about the forms of language. Since the forms of language are arbitrary and are acquired subject to the LAD/UG the amount and type of input is not particularly important for linguists. According to Chomsky, all children need to get the acquisition process to start is a minimal amount of meaningful input. Studies carried out in the generative linguistic tradition have shown that large amounts of carefully directed input have little effect on the acquisition of forms.

Psychologists are more concerned with the functions and use of language and how such use is generated and regulated. Unlike language forms, functions are thought to be closely tied to the culture (social structures) of the language. For this reason, psychologists feel that the type and amount of input a developing child receives is of paramount importance. Through input a developing child learns about how language is used in their culture. That is the value of input in the acquisition process.

7. According to Hamers and Blanc, what must a child understand before they can try to use language? Why is this important?

A child must have a basic understanding of how his/her society works and how language is used in that society before s/he can try to use language. Psychologists often cite this as being one of the reasons why it takes children such a long time to master their first language. As language teachers this means that it might be useful if we were to teach our students about certain important elements of the TL culture and societal structure before we teach them forms. An alternative to the overt approach is to make sure we teach these things along with the initial teaching of forms from the very beginning. Language use as expressed in forms must be linked to choices. To make such choices an understanding of how the TL language is used in the TL society is imperative.

8. According to Hamers and Blanc, what two important developments in language acquisition must be taken into account?

The two developments are valorization and self-regulation. Both of them can only come about as a result of a threshold level of knowledge of the societal uses of language. People first inherit their valorizations on concrete objects in concrete ways. They like them or dislike them for reasons coming either form personal experience or from their immediate relatives who transfer their own valorizations through behavior both explicit (overt) and implicit (covert). These valorization levels change constantly depending on new input coming in from the world. A giant leap is taken when the child is able to start to internalize and valorize abstract concepts like those both in and about languages (metalanguage). Valorization is an automatic process and one not under direct control of the person. It is posited that valorization occurs in the amygdala, two almond shaped bundles of he neurons in the midbrain which are part of what is called the limbic system. Interestingly, it has recently been posited that the amygdala is actually the storage center for our earliest memories. More about this later.

Self-regulation is also known as inhibition, but is not to be confused as inhibition in the personal (psychological) sense but inhibition in the purely neurological sense, although the two are obviously linked. In the brain self-regulation is used to inhibit the firing of specific neurons in a specific sequence which has been shown to be somewhat detrimental in previously experienced instances of a similar nature, hence the term inhibition. Self-regulation and the neuronal inhibition which is a concrete manifestation of that process is a complex, generally implicit, task involving two different explicit memory systems, those of semantic and episodic memory, which makes it an interesting process.

Self-regulation is a system by which a speaker uses previous experience in linguistic/behavioral engagements to help them reevaluate and regulate their subsequent linguistic behavior. The simplest way to explain this is to use an example. Let`s say you are talking to someone and you say something that gets a negative reaction, such as, ̋Hey, wow. You remind me of my pet elephant.̋ According to the principles of self- regulation, when you are in the same situation and have the same functional need, you will hopefully stop yourself from using that form again or you will use it with a slight alteration. Self-regulation is simply a system of using experience to help us make choices in which forms to use. Further, it correlates to models of neural firing where suppression of certain neural patterns and pathways is as important as activation.

Kecskes and Papp 2000, Chapter 1

1. What is a mother tongue?

While the idea of a mother tongue straightforward to Koreans, most Japanese, Americans, or Han Chinese it is not necessarily a very simple concept to many people in the world. In particular where people not only move around relatively freely, thus exposing themselves to more varied languages, but also where English (in particular) is given an official status despite the lack of an actual speaking community, we find that people`s linguistic profiles are much more complicated then linguists would like to believe. In fact, modern generative linguistics (the most dominant theory in linguistics since the 1960s) is completely reliant on the idea all of a native speaker. What we find in discussing this term `mother tongue` is that maybe there is no such thing as a native speaker, as linguists might try to define it. Certainly the concept of multilingualism creates tremendous problems for the term `native speaker` or `mother tongue`.

While for many monolinguals or what we will term successive bilinguals the first language they learned is in fact the language in which they are most efficient and therefore feel a closer connection to, this is not necessarily true for people who have grown up in a multilingual environment or have experienced tremendous diversity in their linguistic exposure in practice. A person`s mother tongue is not necessarily the language that they were taught by their mother or even the language which they learned first. Certainly there are many Korean Americans, for example, who grew up in Korea speaking Korean and at some later point move to the United States and sometimes stop speaking Korean entirely. At some inevitable point English eclipses Korean and at this point English might be seen as mother tongue even though this individual`s mother has been no idea how to speak English. A mother tongue may also simply be the language which they use the most or feel the most comfortable in, even if the speaker is not particularly proficient in that language. Fabbro (1999) records a multitude of interesting examples in which people who had incurred certain brain trauma, such as a stroke or being whacked over the head with a piece of wood, upon waking up from the trauma sometimes prefer to speak second or third languages in which their proficiency is highly limited and will actually report an inability to be able to speak their first language. The power of emotion is not to be underestimated. Human beings can really convince themselves of almost anything.

What is also interesting is that a person`s perception of their own `mother tongue` may vary throughout their lifetime depending on experience. As I mentioned in class, one I was living in Germany and speaking German to the exclusion of virtually every other language I was certainly living under the impression that German was more like a mother tongue than any other language at that time. This is really a byproduct all of an immersion situation. Human being simply can not avoid being affected both cognitively and emotionally from their environments and, to a large degree, to do so is to really reject the power of our brain and our humanity itself. What is interesting about this in relation to globalization is that all of us, regardless of where we actually are live under the pressure of an English environment. Will the pressure varies dramatically depending on where someone is it is nonetheless always there. It would be strange to assume that such pressure would have no effects on our cognitive or certainly our linguistic makeup.

2. What is a foreign language?

Simply put, a foreign language is a language which had little or no place in the society in which it is being studied/learned. There are virtually no native speakers or at least no native speaker community and the speakers within the society do not need to use this language to talk to each other. Certainly English in Korea is a foreign language, as is every other language. In describing the Korean linguistics situation Katzner (1995: 348) states,Korean is the official and universal language. Interestingly this is all that can or need be said about the Korean linguistic situation. This means then that all languages aside from Korean are restricted to study in the classroom. In a very true sense, once people hit the streets there is very little use for English. Uses for English are more artificial than realistic or practical. Koreans generally and often refuse to speak English with each other, in part because the simply not used to it. This is a strong reflection of the foreign nature of the English language in Korea.

So what about this pressure that I mentioned in the answer above? Well, certainly it is there, and in being there undoubtedly has effects on both the status of English and have English may be viewed and used, but it is pressure still and pressure is not something that leads to particularly good learning or happy feelings for that matter. Because this is an outside pressure which has been turned into an inside pressure it is really not something that people actually want to do as much as they feel they need to do it. Certainly, because of this pressure English does adopt certain elements all of a second language, but it remains, nonetheless, a foreign language.

3. What is a second language?

 In contrast to a foreign language a second language has elements of use and within a given linguistic community. While there may not need to be a large number of native speakers of the second language, or any native speaker community really, the language is nonetheless used in this society for certain purposes. It might be used as a general lingua franca, as in the case of English in The Philippines or India, so that speakers within a highly multilingual society can contact each other for a wide variety of different purposes and more generalized functions. In other cases, such as in Algeria, a second language like French or English may also be used for a particular type of function within a society. If we think about English in Korea we might say that English is developing into a second language (albeit relatively slowly, or least with a certain amount of consternation) through its increased and more exclusive use in the area of education. Looking at this example we can see that in societies second languages are granted special status because they are used for doing something deemed special or necessary. A further common type of second language situation is a regional one, as in the case of Belgium, Switzerland and a large number of sub-Saharan African countries. In this scenario different languages are spoken within a continuous political entity, a country. In Belgium there are three languages, Flemish (Dutch) in the north, Walloon (French) in the south and German in the east. At least for the two majority languages (every country has its minorities and in Belgium it is the German speakers) one can speak their own language freely in their own region, but once one travels or moves to another linguistic region she or he will need to shift into the language of that region. Not to do so would cause problems. So, regionally multilingual societies require that their citizens master all the major regional languages.

4. How does a second language differ from a foreign language?

There are many options in how we might choose to differ a second language and a foreign language as regards the way they are learned in a particular environment. In doing so we must acknowledge that the differences but in second in foreign languages are far from being absolute. They do blend together at some points. So, it therefore make sense to put them instead of different places, to put them along what we can call a continuum where one slowly blends into the other.

-Continuum Approach = functional -vs- formal

 The basic idea here is that because second languages are learned in a more natural environment and in a more natural way then they will be more functional in nature. To say that the second language is more functional is to simply say that the actual reasons underlying instances on language use are a parent and second language learning because this language is learned in a more real context. Foreign languages little bit different in that it is generally learned in the classroom where the emphasis is not on language use so much as on simply acquiring knowledge about the language. Honestly, many of the teachers over for a foreign language don`t know it themselves how to use the language because they also have lived their entire lives in a foreign language environment. Based on this then students are generally exposed more to forms alone and very little attention is paid to have these forms might actually be used. The functional nature of language is undervalued because it is simply not familiar and the society does not know how to deal with that element. Certainly for us in Korea we can to feel this distinction.

-Completeness, Nativelike proficiency = the level of cognition involved

Here, what we are focusing on is the basic idea that second languages seem to be learned in a much more complete manner which more closely resembles native-like proficiency in that language. It is often said about foreign languages that learners are in its hands doomed from the very start because they will simply never be able to achieve high levels all proficiency if they stay in a foreign language mode. These are stereotypes, and like all stereotypes are not true although they might have sprung from grains of truth. Part of the reason for the more complete learning of a second language as opposed to a foreign language is simply the amount of exposure. Because second languages are actually there, embedded somehow in the society they are more easily accessed. Exposure is not only longer loss of the different nature as we will soon see.

-Content of context = Is the content from the local region local context or from a foreign context?

 This is actually a very interesting concern and one which I know Koreans think a lot about these days. The basely revolves around the idea that in a second language situation the second language is learned often in an environment or society different from the one from which the language originally sprung. A simple example should clarify. English is a second language in India based on its important to use as a lingua franca. Indians must learn English in order to speak with other Indians. But the English which they speak is certainly not the same as the English spoken in Britain. This is because the Indians have been taught English not by British or American teachers but by Indian teachers in an Indian society. English is not being used in India to contact foreigners so much as it is being used to contact other Indians and as a result the societal factors on India have become superimposed on their version of English. Of course we see similar things happening in all second language environments and this is why English as a widely spread language across the world is changing dramatically from region to region. A foreign language does not go through the same change because the purpose of the foreign language is not for people in a local environment to speak to each other but for them to be able to speak to the native speakers of that language, and in the same forms from which the language has sprung. The local culture is not fused onto the foreign language because the foreign languages never intended to actually be spoken in the local environment.

-Tasks and processes = Real-World tasks - vs- Pedagogical tasks (+/- conceptual structures)

 Because of the different environments for second and foreign-languages different types of actual tasks both for learning and for practice are available. In the second language environment it is easy for learners to be able to engage and what are called real-world tasks. In fact they probably have to do this whether they want to or not. What these real tasks are simply things that people actually have to do in their lives for real or authentic purposes. That could be something as simple as going to the store and buying a bag of rice or as complicated as not only by buying a car but registering the car as well as getting insurance for the car. These are the types of things that people in second language situations are not only able to do but sometimes must do. In a foreign language situation things are obviously different. Because the target language is the distance and not used in the learners` society learners will often be restricted to what are called pedagogical tasks. These should be extremely familiar to you because they are exactly what you did your whole life in school. They are tasks which really have no purpose in the real world like reading a text and answering a barrage of annoying questions about it, but have value in pedagogy or learning. Of course in the foreign language environment we can get real-world tasks through things like role plays and simulations, but they often lack authenticity.

-Conceptual fluency = knowing how thoughts are encoded - how meaning is conveyed

 I think is what we spent most of our time talking about in class and really this is what all the other ones come down to. To understand this idea we need to first introduced the idea of cognitive linguistics, which stands in diametric opposition to the principles of generative linguistics. Cognitive linguistics claims that linguistic structures do not come from some sort of underlying representation which is the same for every speaker, but which is altered to fit the surface demands of the linguistic situation, as is claimed in generative linguistics. Cognitive linguistics, in turn, claims that linguistic forms are generated from an underlying conceptual structure, which varies from person-to-person to a limit extent and from society to society to a much, much greater extent. A simple example should make this a little bit clearer.

(1) The tree stood tall in the field.

(2) The field spread out beautifully under the tree.

 In generative linguistics these two sentences have the same underlying structure and therefore the same semantic structure or meaning. Cognitive linguistics sees these two structures, however, as being constructed from two very different conceptual structures, and their meanings therefore are different. And cognitive linguistics meaning comes not from the language itself but from the conceptual structure which is underlying the language structure. To put it as simply as possible: thought is language.

 Now, what this means for us is that in a second language situation, where learners have access to more real-world type tasks as well as much more direct contact with actual speakers of the language, they will adopt the conceptual structure all of the speakers of that language. The simple truth is that different speakers all of different languages think differently in that they employ different conceptual structures to deal with the same situations. To be an effective language learner, as we have been claiming second language access allows one to be, one needs to be able to like a speaker of that language. In a foreign language situation where a learner has little or no access to native speakers and might never actually perform very many functional tasks it will be very difficult to figure out how speakers all that language structure their cognition/ thoughts. As a result foreign language learners end up using the forms of the foreign language what with their own conceptual structures, which do vary from those of the target language speakers.

-Metaphorical competence = literal -vs- metaphorical meanings and understanding

 This difference expands on what was mentioned above. What it basically claims it is that speakers of languages not only have an underlying cognitive or conceptual structure from which language is created, by thought is by no means as straightforward as we might imagine. While meanings are sometimes literal in that they are based on a one to one connection between the conceptual structure and the linguistic structure, this is not always the case. According to this idea, much of our human thought is actually metaphorical in nature. Interestingly, or sadly if you are a language learner, these metaphorical underpinnings all of thought are highly individualistic and vary not only from person-to-person but on a societal basis. Lakoff (1987) cites the importance of ICMs (Idealized Cultural Models) in being able to understand how other people speak, and in turn think. A simple example of one of these ICMs for English speakers would be the metaphor of heat as anger (heat = anger). Native speakers of English make extensive use off this metaphor in their day-to-day communication. Again, the argument goes that in the second language learning situation the second language learners because of their very exposure to the language will be able to understand some of this metaphorical structure within the thought of the target line which speakers. Foreign language learners often will not.