Blackwell Reference Online

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Approaching bilingualism and multilingualism from a communication perspective sheds light on a phenomenon which otherwise would appear static and asocial. Merriam-Webster's online thesaurus defines bilingualism as “the ability to speak two languages: the frequent oral use of two languages,” and multilingual as “of, containing, or expressed in several languages” and “using or able to use several languages.” The apparent simplicity of these definitions is, however, deceptive for a number of reasons. First, they fail to make the distinction between bilingualism as a collective characteristic defining nations and bilingualism as a person's competence in one or more languages. As we will see below, the distinction is crucial to our understanding of bilingualism as the product of the interplay between individuals and their context. Second, defining bilingualism at a national level entails, in itself, a number of difficulties. Since there are approximately 5,000 languages distributed in 200 countries, most would be characterized by a state of relative bilingualism. For a state to qualify as bilingual does not, however, follow from a simple head count. A key question, here, is: how do we distinguish a language from a dialect? Normally, languages are not mutually intelligible. Dialects, however, as varieties of one language differentiated by grammar, vocabulary, and accent may or may ... log in or subscribe to read full text