Advances in the Study of Bilingualism

Fred Genesee

Advances in the Study of Bilingualism illustrates the power of cross-disciplinary research paradigms in unravelling the complexities of bilingualism. Most researchers of bilingualism work within one, or sometimes two, research paradigms – for example, linguistics and psycholinguistics, psycholinguistics and educational psychology, or behavioural and neuro-cognitive. But, the true 

richness of the phenomena associated with bilingualism can only be revealed 

by researchers who, collectively, use different and multiple approaches of inves-

tigation. As an object of scientific investigation, language even in its simplest 

monolingual forms stands out because of the diversity of perspectives that 

can and have been brought to bear on it. Surely, this reflects the central role 

that language plays in human society as well as in human development and 

functioning. The complexity of the research endeavour when it comes to 

understanding bilingualism is magnified, in turn, by the fact that human 

development itself is remarkably complex – entailing cognitive, social, emo-

tional, and educational aspects of development, among others, not to mention 

functional differences between infants/toddlers, children, adults, and people 

of advanced age. All of these dimensions of human development and functioning implicate different questions and issues, different methodologies, different technical and analytic approaches, and different challenges. This is no less true for the study of bilingualism. In fact, the study of bilingualism implicates the sum total of the complexity of monolingualism along with unique 

aspects of becoming and being bilingual.