BILINGUALISM

views updated

BILINGUALISM. The capacity to make alternate (and sometimes mixed) use of two languages, in contrast to monolingualism or unilingualism and MULTILINGUALISM. In the social context of languages like English, especially in England and the US, the traditional tendency has been to consider the possession and use of one language the norm. Bilingualism, however, is at least as common as monolingualism; about half the world's population (some 2.5 bn people) is bilingual and kinds of bilingualism are probably present in every country in the world. See CANADIAN LANGUAGES, CODE-MIXING AND CODE-SWITCHING, HIGHLAND ENGLISH, IRISH ENGLISH, MAORI ENGLISH, WELSH ENGLISH.

More From encyclopedia.com