For students wanting to study bilingualism from a mostly psycholinguistic perspective, François Grosjean's Studying bilinguals is a good choice. It is aimed at students in linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, and possibly speech and language therapy. The cover's claim that the book would also be interesting to those studying sign language and the Deaf is perhaps overly optimistic, given the limited space dedicated to this specific topic.
Studying bilinguals resulted from a special-options seminar on bilingualism given by Grosjean at the University of Oxford in 2004, and it covers Grosjean's work over the past two and a half decades, since the publication of his influential book Life with two languages (1982). The book is divided into six parts covering four main areas of bilingualism. Parts I, ‘The bilingual person’, and II, ‘Language mode’, concern the bilingual speaker and what it means to be bilingual. Parts III, ‘The base-language effect’, and IV, ‘Spoken word recognition in bilinguals’, cover the perception and production of spoken language by bilinguals. Part V, ‘Biculturalism, bilingualism and deafness’, covers the bilingualism of the Deaf, and the final part, ‘Methodological issues in bilingualism research’, covers methodological and conceptual issues in the field. Each part consists of two or three chapters, the majority of which are reprints or part-reprints of earlier publications. The book is therefore a compilation of Grosjean's previously published work, with only a few chapters or parts of chapters written specifically for the book.
As is often the case with compilations of previously published work, the re-use of publications inevitably leads to some repetition and overlap. Studying bilinguals does not escape this problem. Many of the main issues and concepts (such as the base-language effect, language mode, code-switching and code-borrowing) are dealt with over and over again. In itself, this is not necessarily a bad thing, as repetition of the core issues in various ways and contexts may actually help the student understand them better. However, for the more experienced scholar it may become rather tiresome at points. Another shortcoming of such compilations is that they are, by definition, not the most up to date, unless supplemented wisely by chapters covering more recent research.
After a brief ‘Introduction’, outlining the structure of the book, chapter 2, ‘A wholistic view of bilingualism’, sets out the problems inherent in the ‘monolingual (or fractional) view of bilingualism’, a view which was prevalent for a long time, and opposes it to the more current ‘bilingual (or wholistic) view of bilingualism’ (9). Grosjean argues that the fractional view of bilingualism has been responsible for the focus on studying balanced bilinguals and the fact that they have usually been compared to the monolingual ideal. According to the wholistic view, a situation of balance between the two languages of a bilingual is unlikely, given that bilinguals use their languages for different purposes and situations and therefore will have different needs and uses of their languages. Grosjean argues that advances in the field of bilingualism are likely to be made when we start investigating bilingualism by studying real bilinguals (rather than searching for the ‘true’ or ‘balanced’ bilingual), in real situations (where two or more languages may be used both separately and together) which meet speakers' real communicative needs (which are likely to differ for each language), and not in relation to the ‘ideal’ bilingual (11). Chapter 3, ‘The complementarity principle and language restructuring’, delves a bit deeper into the differing, situation-dependent needs of the bilingual. As a result of the complementarity principle, one should expect bilinguals to have different fluency levels in each language rather than behave like two perfect monolinguals, with fluency levels equal to monolinguals in each of their languages. Another effect of the complementarity principle is that it may cause the weaker language of a bilingual to restructure itself under the influence of the stronger language.
Chapters 4, ‘The bilingual's language mode’, and 5, ‘Manipulating language mode’, belong to the second part of the book. Language mode is defined as ‘the state of activation of the bilingual's languages and language processing mechanisms at a given point in time’ (39). In these two chapters, Grosjean argues that it is important to control for language mode – although he argues that this is rarely done adequately – given that it influences the bilingual's language behaviour in various ways (such as the amount and type of mixing, the frequency of base-language changes, and the ease of processing of the languages). Chapter 5 presents some studies where language mode has been experimentally manipulated, and it elaborates on the reasons why language mode (in particular the monolingual mode) is so difficult to control for.
Part III explores the base-language (also called ‘host’ or ‘matrix’ language) effect in perception and production. Chapters 6, ‘The base-language effect in speech perception’, and 7, ‘Base-language effect and categorical perception’, present evidence for the existence of a base-language effect in perception, using different experimental paradigms such as the Phoneme-Triggered Lexical Decision Task (PTLD), gating studies, categorical perception studies, and naming studies. All in all, the evidence points to a strong effect of the base language on perception. As for production, there appear to be different effects of the base language for segments and for prosody, as described in chapter 8, ‘Is there a base language effect in speech production?’. This chapter, the first section of which is reprinted from Grosjean & Miller (Reference Grosjean and Miller1994), examines whether the phonetic aspects of the base language carry over into the guest language. At the segmental level, it appears that there are no effects of the base language on code-switching (as measured by means of voice onset time), with the switch fully adopting the phonetic properties of the guest language. It is a shame, though, that Grosjean does not discuss any of the evidence from studies that appeared after publication of the Grosjean & Miller (Reference Grosjean and Miller1994) article, such as Toribio, Bullock, Botero & Davis (Reference Toribio, Bullock, Botero, Davis, Gess and Rubin2005), which contradict findings of a seamless switch from base language to the guest language.
As for the prosodic level, Grosjean presents some evidence that the code-switch does not always adopt the prosodic pattern of the guest language. Short code-switches may in fact be fully prosodically integrated into the base language (i.e. showing a base-language effect), whereas longer code-switches may carry the guest language prosody. Although this finding is rather intriguing, Grosjean acknowledges that the prosodic data come from a rather limited pilot study, and this finding needs to be substantiated by further research. I would like to add here that the evidence appears to be based on a visual inspection of only three intonation contours involving code-switching and one involving a lexical borrowing. Any interpretation of these can only be tentative in nature. Furthermore, the term prosody appears to be used here to refer only to intonation; no other prosodic effects, such as those pertaining to rhythm, stress, or duration, have been investigated. It might be useful for future research to examine a wider range of prosodic and segmental aspects in code-switching and borrowing.
Spoken word recognition in bilinguals is examined in a series of experiments testing the role of a range of variables on perception. Chapter 9, ‘The gender marking effect in bilinguals’, explores the effect of the gender-marking variable on perception, whereas chapter 9, ‘The role of guest-word properties’, tests the role of variables associated with phonotactics, interlanguage neighbour proximity, and language phonetics (concerning the question of whether the guest word is pronounced in the guest language, i.e. as a code-switch, or in the base language, i.e. as a borrowing). Findings show that these are all important factors at various stages in processing. Finally, chapter 11, ‘The Léwy and Grosjean BIMOLA [Bilingual Model of Lexical Access] Model’, proposes a model of word recognition in bilinguals. This chapter is a slightly revised version of a paper by Léwy & Grosjean, which has remained unpublished. The version published in the book has not been adapted to the readership of the book, which we can assume to constitute students who do not necessarily have a background in computational modelling. As it stands, the chapter leaves the reader with more questions than answers, and those without knowledge in computational modelling might struggle to understand what is actually being proposed here. An overview of the various existing models of bilingual word recognition and the problems associated with them would have been a wiser choice to round off this part of the book.
In part V, Grosjean directs his attention to the issue of deafness. In chapter 12, ‘The bicultural person: A short introduction’, he outlines what it means to be bicultural, arguing that one can be bilingual without being bicultural and vice versa, and that individuals vary in the extent to which they identify with one or more cultures. In chapter 13, ‘The bilingualism and biculturalism of the Deaf’, Grosjean discusses the similarities and differences between Deaf or bimodular bilinguals and hearing bilinguals. Even though many similarities exist, there are some interesting aspects that are specific to being a Deaf bilingual, such as the fact that (i) there is little recognition of bilingual status; (ii) Deaf bilinguals remain bilingual throughout their lives and often from generation to generation; (iii) Deaf bilinguals may have a deficit in certain (i.e. oral) language skills; and (iv) there are differences in language mode (i.e. they will mostly be communicating with other Deaf bilinguals and thus be more often at the bilingual end of the continuum). Grosjean also outlines some differences between the biculturalism of the Deaf and that of the hearing. Finally, he argues for the importance for Deaf children of being able to grow up bilingual in sign language and oral language.
The final part of the book concludes with two chapters which argue that conflicting results in different disciplines studying bilingualism (e.g. psycholinguistics, language development, linguistics and neurolinguistics) may in part be caused by methodological problems and that a proper dialogue between the various scholars might help advance the field. Chapter 14, ‘Methodological and conceptual issues’, discusses a range of methodological issues that are problematic, such as those pertaining to ‘bilingual participants, language mode, stimuli, and tasks as well as models of bilingual presentation and processing’ (240). Chapter 15, ‘Imaging bilinguals’, discusses how to bridge the gap between neuroscientists and language scientists on a number of such methodological issues.
On the whole, this is a well-structured and well-written book that should appeal to those who want to get a good overview of Grosjean's major contributions to bilingualism research during the last twenty-five years. Many of the fundamental issues tackled by Grosjean – in particular that of language mode – have hugely influenced the field and as such cannot be ignored. The book's value lies in the fact that it gathers Grosjean's contributions in a single volume in a sensible and logical fashion. What appears to be a missed opportunity is that the information given is neither supplemented by more up-to-date findings nor supported by wider data sets.
