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

[Aurolyn Luykx]

Hamo,
I'm sure you'll get several responses to this one...

> Reluctant to employ the word bilingualism in any
> context that does not  include equal ability in two
or more languages...

Then you'll end up with a VERY small number of people
you could consider "bilinguals"! I myself (a native
English speaker) have been fluent in Spanish for about
15 years, am married to a non-English speaker, and
carried out most of my professional and social life in
Spanish for close to a decade, and yet I certainly
wouldn't consider that I have equal ability in the two
languages. Am I bilingual? You bet.

What's the usefulness of drawing such a narrow
definition of bilingualism, one that would not apply
to most people who do in fact use 2 languages to
communicate? Certainly determining degrees of fluency
can be analytically useful, but I don't see the sense
of using such determinations to build a conceptual
fence between the "true" bilinguals and all those who
supposedly can't claim such a designation.

> 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.

I totally disagree with the idea that
less-than-complete fluency in the L2 is "useless", and
I think most L2 speakers would too. Difficult, shaky,
or negotiated understandings are not perfect of
course, but they are not the same as 0% understanding.
And who's to say what constitutes "healthy social
interaction"? I don't think creating (or assuming)
insurmountable communicative barriers between people
who don't share native-level fluency in a common
language would do much to promote healthy social
interaction. I've had lots of pleasant and useful
social interactions with patient interlocutors who had
to make quite an effort to understand me (and vice
versa). And it certainly didn't feel "unhealthy."
Aurolyn

--- hsmr at gol.com wrote:

> MonoPlus-Lingualism
>
> 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), and
> equally dissatisfied with the term multilingualism
> used in the
> bilingual context that I have just defined,  I have
> decided to coin a
> new term -- mono-plus lingualism (mp-lingualism) for
> short.
>
> 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. 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. Even my own
> definition of bilingualism breaks down, when one
> considers David
> Balosa's and my discussion about wardrobes and
> language carefully.
>
> MP-lingualism captures the notion that there are
> many degrees of
> language acquisition and use, and that one cannot
> meaningfully compare
> across language communties until one has first
> defined what level and
> type of acquisition is being compared.
>
> For example, is a nation that can read in two
> languages, but can only
> speak in one bilingual? 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? 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.
>
> Is the world becoming more mp-lingual? Yes. Is it
> bringing the world
> closer together? Probably not. 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.
>
> 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.
>
> R. A. Stegemann
> EARTH's Manager and HKLNA-Project Director
> EARTH - East Asian Research and Translation in Hong
> Kong
> http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/earth/
> Tel/Fax: 852 2630 0349



		
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