Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
bilingualism [Lat. ‘two’, ‘tongue, language’]
1 A speaker’s competence in two or more languages and their use in everyday communication (Cf. also 
multilingualism). Depending on the kind and extent of the competence in both languages, a distinction can be made between: (a) the mastery of different, but only partially differentiated dialects or varieties vs distinct languages; (b) the acquisition of bilingual competence within a family (e.g. in mixed marriages) vs the acquisition in school or at work; (c) the (simultaneous or successive) acquisition of two languages in child- or adulthood; (d) directed vs non-directed language acquisition; (e) different competence in both languages (dominance of one language) vs ‘genuine’ bilingualism (which is less common), where passive as well as active competence in both languages is actually equal (‘coordinate bilingualism’ according to Weinreich 1953).
2 Apart from these questions of individual bilingual competence (individual bilingualism), the existence of two or more languages within a society (societal bilingualism) and their communicative functions are also of interest ( diglossia).
References
Alatis, J.E. and J.J.Staczek (eds) 1985. Perspectives on bilingualism and bilingual education. Washington, DC.
Beardsmore, H.B. 1982. Bilingualism: basic principles. Clevedon.
Bialystok, E. (ed.) 1991. Language processing in bilingual children. Cambridge.
Döpke, S. 1992. One parent—one language. An interactional approach. Amsterdam and Philadelphia.
Ervin, S. and C.E.Osgood. 1954. Second language learning and bilingualism. JASP 49 (suppl.). 134–46.
Hamers, J.E and M.Blanc. 1988. Bilinguality and bilingualism. Cambridge.
Hoffmann, C. 1991.
An introduction to bilingualism. London.
Houwer, A. de. 1990. The acquisition of two languages from birth: a case study. Cambridge.
Hyltenstam, K. and L.K.Obler. 1989. Bilingualism across the lifespan: aspects of acquisition, maturity and loss. Cambridge.
Mackey, W.F. 1987. Bilingualism and multilingualism. In U.Ammon et al. (eds). Sociolinguistics: an international handbook on the science of language and society. Berlin and New York. 799–813.
Meisel, J. (ed.) 1990. Two first languages: early grammatical development in bilingual children. Dordrecht.
Schreuder, R. and B.Weltenss (eds) 1993. The bilingual lexicon. Amsterdam and Philadelphia.
Seliger, H.F. and R.M.Vago (eds) 1991. First language attrition. Cambridge.
Weinreich, U. 1953. Languages in contact: findings and problems. New York. (Repr. 1966.)
Williams J. and G.Snipper. 1990. Literacy and bilingualism. London.
Journal
Literacy and Bilingualism
aphasia, language acquisition, language contact, literacy, psycholinguistics
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