Written by leading experts in the field, The Blackwell Guide to Research Methods in Bilingualism and Multilingualism focuses on the methodology of research in this rapidly growing field.
This book contains reports of research on bilingualism in infants and children as well as perspectives from those involved in cross-linguistic research on language development, literacy development in bilingual children, and psycholinguistic research on bilingualism in adults. It offers a fresh multidisciplinary perspective and next steps for research on childhood bilingualism.
The Handbook of Bilingualism provides state-of-the-art treatments of the central issues that arise in consideration of the phenomena of bilingualism ranging from the representation of the two languages in the bilingual individual's brain to the various forms of bilingual education, including the status of bilingualism in each area of the world.
This volume is an up-to-date, concise introduction to bilingualism and multilingualism in schools, in the workplace, and in international institutions in a globalized world. The authors use a problem-solving approach and ask broad questions about bilingualism and multilingualism in society, including the question of language acquisition versus maintenance of bilingualism. Key features: - provides a state-of-the-art description of different areas in the context of multilingualism and multilingual communication - presents a critical appraisal of the relevance of the field, - offers solutions of everyday language-related problems - international handbook with contributions from renowned experts in the field.
In the past 30 years, the study of bilingualism processing has been conducted independently by two fields, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. This volume merges these two fields, addressing one of the tough problems dividing researchers in bilingualism, conceptually as well as methodologically. Joel Walters proposes a new approach to bilingualism processing - the Sociopragmatic-Psycholinguistic (SPPL) Model- which presents language as a social phenomenon. The author accomplishes this by identifying and organizing evidence from a wide range of linguistic disciplines, merging sociopragmatics, discourse analysis, and ethnography with social cognition, psycholinguistics, and neuroscience. By extension, the author offers convincing explanations of how related fields can profit from a comprehensive bilingual processing model. As a result, Joel Walters delivers a well-organized, comprehensive model that is thought through at every level.
This book appeals to graduate students, scholars in the fields of linguistics, bilingualism, second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics. It is useful to researchers for its comprehensiveness and methodological acumen and may be appropriate as a supplementary textbook for graduate-level courses in bilingualism or for seminars on similar topics.
