MP-Lingualism - It's not what you think.

[Anthea Fraser Gupta]

"Reluctant to employ the word bilingualism in any context that does not
include equal ability in two or more languages, of which one is one's
mother tongue (mother tongue employed in its strictest sense),"

Such a definition would mean that there are almost no bilinguals in the
whole world.  'Balanced bilingualism' would require total parallel lived
in two languages, which not many people experience.  This would entail
bilingualism from birth, which this definition precludes. A definition
with such stringent (and perhaps contradictory) requirements isn't of
much use.

"Quite frankly I am tired of being told that I live in a bilingual
world, when the majority of those who claim to be bilingual can barely
hold a comfortable conversation in their second tongue."

Well it depends where you are, I suppose. But as you are in Hong Kong I
am surprised you don't feel as if you are in a bilingual world. A large
proportion of the population of Hong Kong negotiate English, Cantonese
and Mandarin on a daily basis.

 "Indeed, anyone who can say hello and good-bye in more than one tongue,
nowadays, calls himself bilingual. The term is simply no longer
meaningful. "

On the contrary, in my experience. In the general (nonlinguist)
population people seem to think that in order to be bilingual one has to
be pretty near 'perfect' in both languages.

"For example, is a nation that can read in two languages, but can only
speak in one bilingual?"

I don't understand this. Nations don't read, and I can't imagine how it
could be the case that everyone in a given country could read a language
no-one spoke. Does this mean 'are people who...". The answer to this
question would be 'yes'.  Many of us can no doubt read Latin and/or Old
English (etc.), but can't speak them, though I suppose if time travel
becomes a possibility one could give it a go.

 "is a nation that can barely tell you how to find your way to the next
street corner in the local, wide-area language, and barely knows what is
written on the back or front of his own t-shirt in the same wide-area
language, bilingual?"

Again, I find it hard to imagine a nation talking.  Does this mean "is a
person who can barely tell you how to find your way to the next street
corner in the local, wide-area language, and barely knows what is
written on the back or front of his own t-shirt in the same wide-area
language, bilingual?" The answer to this question might be 'no' or
'yes', depending on your working definition. My definition of bilingual
(a common one) is the (deliberately) vague 'able to hold a conversation
in more than one language'. So such a person could of course be
bilingual in languages other than this target language.  And if the
person can tell me how to find my way to the nearest cup of coffee then
I would say they were bilingual. Literacy is irrelevant -- lots of
people know languages who are totally illiterate or are illiterate in
that language (I myself know a bit of Bengali but can barely write my
name).

 "Is a nation in which everyone can tell you how to get to the next
street corner in the wide-area language, but forces you to say the same
thing in four different ways in that same language, before communication
is finally achieved, bilingual? Only poorly so. " Same problem of nation
and person. Could some of these hypothetical nations and languages have
names?


"People feel close when communication is easy, and they know what to
expect. This is rarely the case in multiethnic urban settings, where
everyone speaks a different language, and few can speak the
wide-community language very well."

How multiethnic settings work depend on local dynamics of racism, class,
prejudice, and privilege. I don't see that generalisation is possible.

"Human beings are creatures of habit, and in the absence of habit there
is anarchy. Language is a part of that habit, and if the habit is not
developed, maintained and well understood by most, it becomes useless as
a means of healthy social interaction."

All the multilingual society's in which I have experience have
patterned, non-anarchic ways of negotiating multilingualism.  I like the
excitement and variety of that negotiation. It's not anarchy.

Anthea

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Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr)
School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT
<www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg>
NB: Reply to a.f.gupta at leeds.ac.uk
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