Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition
This research covers a wide area. It deals not only with issues of linguistics and language pedagogy, but also covers studies of how the human brain handles language, and social issues relating to minority languages and language policy.
Second language research investigates the human ability to acquire new languages in addition to those which have developed from birth. Bilingualism concerns aspects of two or more languages – both in individuals and societies. It is an interdisciplinary field in which researchers use a number of different methods, including experimental studies in language laboratories, social anthropological field studies, and pedagogic methods.
The Swedish Central Bank's Jubilee Fund is financing a programme on advanced second language use. People who have learnt Swedish well enough to be perceived as native speakers maintain nuances in their language use that separate them from people with Swedish as their mother tongue, and our research seeks to explore the reasons behind this phenomenon. We study individual factors such as natural language talent, but also whether there is a critical age for language learning. In collaboration with several language departments, we study grammatical and lexical difficulties in advanced learners of French, English, Spanish and Italian.
Other projects include the study of polyglots – individuals who can learn up to 50-60 languages – and bilingual people with dementia. We also carry out sociolinguistic studies which reveal attitudes towards people who speak with an accent. In transnational multilingualism, we study the relationship between a lingua franca, global English, and an indigenous language. Regular field studies are conducted in countries in southern Africa, where Portuguese and English are the dominant languages in school, in order to study the effects of this situation on the pupils, and the countries' language policy, etc.
Web editor:
Paul Parker
Last updated:
November 23, 2011
Source: Communications Office
