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

[Bernard Spolsky]

Which is why, following the Council of Europe, it makes more sense to speak
about plurilingual proficiency than to use the term bilingual.
Bernard

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Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 2:44 PM
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Subject: MP-Lingualism - It's not what you think.


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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