16.3510, Review: Bilingualism/Socioling: Myers-Scotton (2005)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-3510. Sat Dec 10 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.3510, Review: Bilingualism/Socioling: Myers-Scotton (2005)

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1)
Date: 07-Dec-2005
From: Shiv Upadhyay < upadhyay at yorku.ca >
Subject: Multiple Voices: An Introduction to Bilingualism 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 18:29:19
From: Shiv Upadhyay < upadhyay at yorku.ca >
Subject: Multiple Voices: An Introduction to Bilingualism 
 

AUTHOR: Myers-Scotton, Carol
TITLE: Multiple Voices
SUBTITLE: An Introduction to Bilingualism
PUBLISHER: Blackwell Publishing
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-1933.html 

Shiv R. Upadhyay, Department of Languages, Literatures, and 
Linguistics, York University, Toronto

''Multiple Voices: An Introduction to Bilingualism'' is written by veteran 
linguist and author Carol Myers-Scotton. The stated goal of the book 
is to serve ''as a textbook for courses that are particularly concerned 
with bilingualism as a socio-political phenomenon in the world'' (p. x). It 
is intended for ''upper-level undergraduates ... or beginning-level 
Master's degree students'' (p. x). Its treatment of bilingualism as a 
multidisciplinary phenomenon and the detailed but easy-to-understand 
discussions of various aspects of bilingualism make this book a solid 
and welcome contribution to the field.

In Chapter One, Myers-Scotton introduces a number terms and 
concepts that are relevant to the study of bilingualism. The author also 
addresses questions that are likely to interest the reader. She argues 
that the study of bilingualism is warranted because it investigates the 
competence of humans, that is their ''genetic potential'' (p. 12), to 
become bilingual and the human experience of living with two or more 
languages. The chapter ends with an outline of various aspects of 
bilingualism to be discussed in the chapters to follow.

In Chapter Two, the author begins by answering some basic questions 
about what language is and how it is perceived. In the course of 
answering these questions, the author discusses mutual intelligibility 
and socio-political basis as criteria generally used to identify two 
languages as the same or different and cites a lot of actual examples 
from all over the world to illustrate her discussion. The rest of the 
chapter examines various questions about dialects, including how 
standard dialects are identified, how the term dialect is understood 
and used, how dialects differ from one another, and how regional and 
social dialects are identified.

Chapter Three addresses several sociolinguistic aspects of 
bilingualism. They include social factors that motivate bilingualism and 
various considerations that go into assessing a speaker's proficiency 
in bilingualism. The author defines bilingualism as ''the ability to use 
two or more languages sufficiently to carry on a limited casual 
conversation'' (p. 44) and identifies and explains two sets of conditions 
under which bilingualism is promoted, namely close proximity and 
displacement conditions. 

Chapter Four discusses three models of community organization 
which the author uses to explain various contexts of multiculturalism in 
which speakers either maintain their L1 or shift to L2.  In the context of 
horizontal multiculturalism, in which speakers are generally 
monolingual and ''live in their own geographic spaces'' (p. 71), they 
are likely to keep their L1 and even ''resist bilingualism'' (p. 72). On the 
other hand, in communities with vertical multiculturalism, in which 
people come in contact with speakers of other languages, they are 
likely to shift to L2 or become ''very proficient'' in it if it is the ''urban 
lingua franca'' (p. 72).  In communities that are organized in terms of 
social networks, horizontal multilingualism is a possible outcome if 
people have ''strong ties within their home network'' (p. 73).  In 
networks with weak ties, people tend to learn L2 in order to connect 
with L2 speakers. Similarly, in communities where ethnolinguistic 
vitality (measured in terms of sociological variables) is high, speakers 
are likely to maintain their L1. In the rest of Chapter Four, the author 
discusses in detail the notion of diglossia, the domains in which the 
languages of a bilingual community are distributed, actual cases of 
language maintenance and shift from all around the world, language 
shift by young speakers to a dominant language, and the separation 
of cultural maintenance and language maintenance.

Chapter Five discusses how ideologies and attitudes are relevant to 
the decisions that individuals and nation states make about whether 
they want to be bilingual or monolingual. While both attitudes and 
language ideologies are viewed as ''assessments'' that are held 
unconsciously, the latter are generally constructed and are more likely 
to be brought to consciousness because of their reference to group 
interests. In her discussion of the link that language attitudes and 
language ideologies have with nationalities, the author views 
language as ''an important part of the collective awareness of a group'' 
(p. 111). Because of its status as a visible language and its 
instrumental basis, language users as well as nation states 
can ''mobilize to protect or advance their language'' (p. 112). The 
author explains that the existence of a separate language does not 
necessarily mean that it will be used to claim a separate nation state. 
The author also briefly talks about the concept of linguistic 
marketplace and goes on to discuss in detail how group identities are 
formed in bilingual contexts. The rest of this chapter is devoted to the 
discussion of various aspects of language attitudes and ideologies. 
The author discusses how speakers express their attitudes in terms of 
such theoretical constructs and frameworks as ethnolinguistic vitality, 
matched guise test, and accommodation theory, citing findings from 
studies carried out using these frameworks. In the last section of this 
chapter, the author defines language ideologies as ''patterns of belief 
and practice, which make some existing arrangements appear natural 
and others not'' (p. 135) and discusses such questions as how they 
play a role in the globalized world, when local languages are ignored, 
and when a language group symbolically dominates another 
language. 

Chapter Six is on the social motivations for language use in 
interpersonal interactions. The fundamental claim supported in this 
chapter is that by using a certain linguistic variety, speakers 
indicate ''both their view of themselves and their relationships with 
other participants in the conversation'' (p. 143).  The author talks 
about the indexical nature of linguistic choices that speakers make 
and explains that such choices are pragmatically significant since they 
are based on ''the social and psychological features or attributes'' (p. 
149) that are associated with the language speakers choose to speak. 
The author also points out that the social meaning of linguistic choices 
that speakers make generally comes from the situation of language 
use. In the next three sections of this chapter, the author discusses 
various findings from studies associated with the Matched Guise Test, 
the Accommodation Theory, and the Markedness Model to show that 
speakers communicate social meanings when they switch from one 
dialect or language to another. The author concludes by contrasting 
the Accommodation Theory and Markedness Model with Conversation 
Analysis. While the first two use a deductive method of analysis, the 
third uses an inductive one. Analysts who work within the first two 
frameworks bring to their analysis speaker motives and intensions 
whereas those who work within the third framework reject them. The 
author raises the question of how Conversation Analysts ''view 
cognitive resources'' (p. 174).

Chapter Seven deals with the issue of how cultural differences affect 
intercultural communication in bilingual and multilingual contexts. The 
author discusses with real examples from studies of Asian and African 
cultures that classify societies on the basis of whether they are 
predominantly individualistic or collectivistic, whether they are high- or 
low-context cultures, and whether people form relationships of 
equality or hierarchy. Collectivistic and high-context cultures both 
favor indirectness in speech as a way to maintain harmony whereas 
individualistic and low-context cultures favor directness in speech as it 
allows individuals to express their opinions. Cultures are also 
classified in terms of how much equality or hierarchy individuals 
emphasize in their relationships. Culturally induced language behavior 
also involves politeness, which is conceptualized differently in different 
cultures. To show how culturally defined politeness affects one's 
language behavior, the author explains how requests are made 
differently in Western and non-Western cultures. The author also 
discusses how the power differential is differently viewed and used in 
language and how cross-cultural conflicts are managed in different 
cultural groups.

Chapter Eight focuses on lexical borrowing in bilingual contexts. The 
author defines lexical borrowing as ''incorporating words from one 
language (the donor language) in another (the recipient language)'' 
(p. 211) and talks about two categories of borrowings, namely cultural 
and core. When a language borrows words for objects and concepts 
that do not exist in it, such words are viewed as cultural borrowings. 
Core borrowings take place when a language borrows words whose 
equivalents already exist in the language. The author identifies and 
explains three types of indirect borrowings: calques (loan translation), 
loanshifts (borrowed words that are given a different meaning in the 
recipient language), and loanblends (words that are created by 
blending words from the donor and recipient languages). The author 
then discusses the phonological and morphological integration of 
borrowed words into the recipient language and various hypotheses 
of why nouns are the most frequently borrowed category. Finally, the 
author makes the point that borrowed words are ''evidence of earlier 
cultural contacts'' (p. 230).

Chapter Nine addresses the question of what happens to grammars in 
bilingual contacts. After defining and illustrating several technical 
terms, the author discusses codeswitching. She defines codeswitching 
as ''the use of two languages in the same conversation'' (p. 239). The 
author then introduces the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) as a model 
for classic codeswitching, a bilingual phenomenon which 
involves ''elements from two (or more) languages varieties in the same 
clause, but only one of the varieties is the source of the 
morphosyntactic frame for the clause'' (p. 241). Classic codeswitching 
is contrasted with composite codeswitching, a bilingual 
phenomenon ''in which even though most of the morphosyntactic 
structure comes from one of the participating languages, the other 
language contributes some of the abstract structure underlying 
surface forms of the clause'' (p. 242). Crucial to the MLF model is the 
distinction between content morphemes and system morphemes. 
Content morphemes are words that assign thematic roles; verbs and 
nouns are identified as ''prototypical content morphemes'' (p. 245). 
System morphemes are words that do not assign thematic roles; 
prototypical system morphemes are ''all affixes and function words that 
stand alone (e.g. determiners and clitics)'' (p. 245). 

Chapter Nine also talks about two main groups of researchers who 
are interested in studying codeswitching. The main concern of one 
group of researchers is to uncover ''constraints on points in a 
sentence where codeswitching can occur on the basis of surface-level 
linear differences between the languages involved'' (p. 250). The 
other group of researchers focuses on ''looking for explanations at a 
more abstract level than linear structure'' (p. 252). The author also 
mentions a model based on Chomsky's Minimalist Program that some 
researchers in the second group employ to account for codeswitching, 
but she comments that codeswitching cannot be adequately explained 
using this model. In addition, she argues that, while the status of singly 
occurring words from the Embedded Language remains controversial, 
such words ''resemble Embedded Language phrases in codeswitching 
more than they resemble established borrowings'' (p. 254). Another 
section of Chapter Nine talks about the T-4 model that the author 
along with her associate Janice Jake developed in order to 
explain ''some of the codeswitching data that the MLF model covers'' 
(p. 267) more precisely. Toward the end of the chapter, the author 
discusses pidgins and creoles but elaborates on the latter since ''their 
structures are more complex'' (p. 278) and are ''related to the 4-M 
model'' (p. 278). The author argues that the substrate language plays 
a ''major role in providing a morphosyntactic frame for the developing 
creole'' (p. 285). 

Chapter Ten surveys bilingualism from the psycholinguistic 
perspective. The author points out that, while the question of ''how the 
bilingual's languages are organized in the mind'' (p. 197) remains 
unsettled, the more current position holds that ''bilinguals have two 
distinct memories and semantic systems'' (p. 297). On the theme of 
bilingual activation, the author states that, while in the past it was 
viewed that a bilingual's languages were not activated simultaneously, 
a generally agreed-upon view now is that both languages are always 
activated to varying degrees. The author also points out that findings 
from lexical decision tasks suggest that bilinguals have simultaneous, 
rather than selective, access to their languages. The author discusses 
how various models of language production vary in their answer to the 
question, ''At what level is the phonological form of a word... in place?'' 
In discussing memory, the author reports that researchers agree that 
some structures in the brain are modified as a result of learning and 
experience and that there are ''two general memory systems, a short-
term memory system and a long-term memory system'' (p. 311). The 
author finally discusses the effects of aphasia on bilinguals and the 
patterns of language recovery. 

Chapter Eleven begins by addressing two questions about ''the 
relation between childhood language acquisition and later L2 
acquisition'' (p. 324). The author views as normal those bilinguals who 
learn to speak two or more languages when they are young because 
children are genetically predisposed to ''acquire human languages'' (p. 
325). She supports the argument that humans are equipped with an 
innate ability to acquire language by alluding to the evidence that 
shows that ''children all over the world go through similar stages when 
they acquire the grammatical systems of their specific languages'' and 
that both monolinguals and young bilinguals ''go through similar 
stages of acquisition'' (p. 326). The author states that ''actual 
exposure to a language in use'' (p. 326) is necessary for children to 
acquire the language and that bilinguals may face a different socio-
cultural context of language acquisition from that faced by 
monolinguals. She discusses practical and theoretical reasons for 
studying child bilingualism and the problems facing such studies. In 
another section, the author explains the positive answers researchers 
have offered to the questions of whether child bilinguals form two 
separate language systems and whether ''switching between 
languages'' is ''constraint-governed in a grammatical sense'' (p. 331). 
The author also discusses the questions of whether being an early 
bilingual is an advantage or a disadvantage and whether early 
acquisition affects some systems the most.

The rest of Chapter Eleven is devoted to various aspects of late 
second language acquisition. Although the author cites several 
studies to point out that researchers do not agree with the idea of the 
Critical Age Hypothesis, she concludes that researchers agree 
that ''late learners are much less successful in language learning than 
young children'' (p. 350). The final section of this chapter explains 
various answers that have been offered to questions about second 
language acquisition (SLA). SLA researchers are shown as broadly 
divided into two groups, namely Universal Grammar (UG) proponents 
and those who are instruction-centered. According to UG proponents, 
first language acquisition shares ''distinct similarities'' (p. 356) with 
second language acquisition. They argue that learners of a second 
language ''have some access to the same innate language faculty 
(UG)'' (p. 356) that enables children to acquire their L1 naturally. On 
the other hand, those who are instruction-centered argue that first 
language acquisition and second language acquisition are quite 
different and that UG is not actively accessible to second language 
learners. Instruction-centered researchers are however divided on the 
issue of whether explicit learning or implicit learning is the best way for 
learners to learn a second language. The author also gives a critical 
assessment of these two approaches to second language acquisition 
and, citing from a 2005 study by a researcher, concludes by pointing 
out three main themes that have dominated the current research on 
second language learning: the age factor, second language 
processing, and language transfer.

Chapter Twelve is on language policy and globalization. In the 
introductory section, the author discusses the rise of the nation state 
and the problems resulting from fixing national borders. She also 
addresses the question of who plans language policies and discusses 
the problems faced by language planners. The author identifies four 
main socio-political developments today that relate to language policy: 
immigration, education for immigrants and indigenous minorities, the 
rise of English as an international lingua franca, and the formation of 
the European Union. She points out that the issues of language rights 
and endangered languages come up within the context of these four 
socio-political developments.

In the succeeding sections of Chapter Twelve, the author discusses 
status planning, corpus planning, and acquisition planning. The 
discussion of status planning includes problematic language situations 
in Canada, Australia, Cameroon, India, and South Africa. Similarly, the 
discussion of corpus planning includes examples of language reform 
carried out in Asia and Turkey. In discussing acquisition planning, the 
author points out two potentially contradictory situations that 
acquisition planners can face. First, they are aware of the link 
between national economic development and literacy rate and of a 
commonly held belief among educators that it is easier to make 
children literate through their L1. Second, language planners are also 
aware that education in the official language promotes in minority 
children a sense of belonging in the nation. The author identifies four 
main types of bilingual programs and discusses bilingual or 
multilingual situations in Latvia, Bolivia, and Canada to illustrate the 
difficulty involved in acquisition planning. Her discussion also includes 
a brief history of bilingual education in the United States. She 
concludes by saying that ''most Anglo-Americans are likely to support'' 
(p. 405) a bilingual education program that aims at moving non-Anglo 
speakers to the use of English. Chapter Twelve also discusses the 
status of English as an international lingua franca and the case of 
Cambodia to illustrate how English is replacing French. In the last 
section of this chapter, the author places English, French, and 
German in a diglossic relationship with other European languages 
within the context of the European Union.

Chapter Thirteen is very brief, and it reminds the reader of the main 
themes covered in the book. The author concludes by listing ''five 
most important points'' (p. 414) that the reader is expected to take 
away from the book.

EVALUATION

''Multiple Voices: An Introduction to Bilingualism'' is written by an 
author who has contributed to the study of bilingualism over a long 
period of time. While the book is written with a socio-political focus, it 
also provides detailed discussions of the grammatical and cognitive 
aspects of bilingualism. Because of its coverage of multiple 
perspectives on bilingualism, the book is expected to serve students 
and scholars in a variety of disciplines.

There are several features that add to the value of the book. One of 
them is that each chapter begins with a real story of a person from a 
different part of the world whose life is linked to bilingualism or 
multilingualism. These stories not only serve as an interesting 
beginning of a chapter but also help to show that bilingualism is a real 
human phenomenon with socio-cultural and socio-political 
consequences. Another feature, which is valuable to students in 
particular, is that important concepts and terms are put in bold so that 
the reader would pay attention to them. Another feature that I view as 
helpful is that each chapter ends with a summery and a list of terms 
and concepts that readers, particularly students, would do well to 
remember. Another feature that I found interesting is the use of rather 
informal tone of voice as illustrated by these examples: ''Just for your 
information, there are two sets of signs that are relevant to your life.'' 
(p. 145);'' ''That is, for each of you, unmarked choices would be 
considered not only expected, but also appropriate, for certain 
interaction types in your community and marked choices would be 
unexpected, given the interaction type'' (p. 179); ''Your author 
(Meyers-Scotton, 2001; 2000) offers another explanation for creole 
formation ...'' (p. 285). The use of pronoun 'you' and pronominal 
adjective 'your' in these sentences can create a friendly image of the 
author, which may foster learning particularly in beginning-level 
readers. In addition, the writer provides in easy-to-understand 
language detailed discussions of various topics and issues in 
bilingualism with abundant citations from past and latest studies.

While these features add to the value of the book, a few more would 
have enhanced its usefulness as a textbook. A set of study questions 
at the end of each chapter would be good particularly for beginning-
level students. Also, a list of further studies would benefit particularly 
those who wish to acquire a further and more detailed knowledge of 
certain aspects of bilingualism. In addition, it would be useful to have a 
glossary of important terms and concepts covered in the book. 
Perhaps, the author would consider these suggestions for the second 
edition of the book, which I hope will come out soon given its high 
value both as a text and resource book.

To conclude, I view ''Multiple Voices: An Introduction to Bilingualism'' 
as a very valuable addition to the pool of books on the study of 
bilingualism. Given its multidisciplinary approach, the sufficiently 
elaborated discussions of bilingual topics and issues, and the 
inclusion in these discussions of many relevant and up-to-date 
studies, this book is an excellent choice as a textbook for a 
bilingualism course. This book will also serve well students, instructors 
and scholars in a variety of disciplines who are interested in any of the 
many aspects of bilingualism.

REFERENCES

Crystal, David, ed. (1998) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Romaine, Suzanne (1999) Bilingualism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Shiv R. Upadhyay is a faculty member in the Department of 
Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics at York University, Toronto. 
His research interests are in sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse 
analysis, language variation and change, language gender, and 
language acquisition. He has recently investigated linguistic politeness 
in Nepali print media and revisited the link between linguistic 
indirectness and politeness. He is currently working on the 
sociolinguistic variation of gender agreement in Nepali and the 
grammatical competence of university-level ESL students.





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