Blackwell Reference Online

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While English remains the best-researched language in the field of communication impairment in children and adults, cross-linguistic and multilingual studies have been expanding rapidly in the last two decades. These studies contribute to our understanding of both the underlying processes of communication impairment and the various factors that affect those processes. First of all, cross-linguistic and multilingual studies evaluate and challenge theoretical claims about typical communication development and impairment as proposed with reference to English only. Secondly, they examine whether and how differences in specific languages or language combinations result in differences in patterns of communication impairment. Thirdly, they investigate whether the same impairment manifests itself in different ways from one language to another or from monolingual speakers to multilingual speakers, and whether language differences account for more variance than individual differences among speakers of the same language/language combinations. And finally, they inform assessment and intervention suitable for monolingual populations speaking languages other than English or bilingual and multilingual speakers.In this chapter, we review cross-linguistic and multilingual studies of communication development and impairment, focusing on pragmatics, discourse and sociolinguistics. Given that these ... log in or subscribe to read full text