when communicating with others: “Which language should be used?” and “Should the other language be brought in?” The answer to the first question leads to language choice, that is, choosing a base language for the exchange. As concerns the second question, bringing in or not the other language, if the answer is “no,” then the bilingual is in a monolingual mode. This is the mode when speaking to monolinguals, reading in a particular language, listening to just one language, etc. If, on the other hand, the answer is “yes,” as when the bilingual is speaking to another bilingual who shares his/her languages and who accepts to change base language from time to time and intermingle them (e.g., code-switch and borrow), then the bilingual is in a bilingual mode. Here, both languages are activated but the base language more so than the other language. Other examples of when the bilingual mode is required are listening to two bilinguals who are mixing languages, interpreting from one language to another, doing a study that requires the two languages, either overtly or covertly, and so on. In between these two endpoints of the continuum, bilinguals can find themselves in various intermediary modes, depending on the situation, the topic, the interlocutors, etc.
The other variable that is influenced by language proficiency, language use, and functions of languages, is language dominance. For a long time, researchers asked themselves whether dominance was based on just proficiency, or use, or both, or whether it depended on basic skills such as reading and writing a language, or even whether it concerned when the languages were acquired. Silva-Corvalán and Treffers-Daller (2016) studied dominance extensively and came to the conclusion that a dominant language is that in which a bilingual has attained an overall higher level of proficiency at a given age, and/or the language which s/he uses more frequently, and across a wider range of domains. As we see, all three factors are mentioned in their definition.
A final factor that needs to be included when describing bilinguals at a particular point in time concerns biculturalism. Are the bilinguals being described also bicultural and, if so, what impact does it have on their bilingualism (Grosjean 2015). Chapter 10 is dedicated to biculturalism but it worth mentioning here that bilingualism and biculturalism are not automatically coextensive. You can find bilinguals who are not bicultural (e.g., those bilinguals who have lived in just one culture, such as many Dutch people), biculturals who are not bilingual (e.g., British people who have migrated to the United States), as well as people who are both bicultural and bilingual. Biculturals can be characterized in the following way: They take part, to varying degrees, in the life of two or more cultures; they adapt, in part at least, their attitudes, behaviors, values, languages, etc., to these cultures; and they combine and blend aspects of the cultures involved. Being bicultural has a real impact on language knowledge and language use in bilinguals. One example that comes to mind concerns concepts in the bilingual lexicon. So called translation equivalents, such as French “pain” and English “bread” may share the same concept in bilinguals who are not bicultural, but certainly not if they are bicultural. The same is true of French “café” and English “coffee.”
Language History
One can describe a bilingual at a particular point in time, as we have just seen, but one also needs to describe that person’s bilingualism over time. We need to know which languages were acquired and when, whether the cultural context was the same or different, what the pattern of proficiency and use was over the years, how much language separation or language intermingling took place, which language(s) went through restructuring under the influence of another language, and whether some languages became dormant or even entered attrition. In addition, we need to find out about the bilingual’s moments of language stability and moments of language change where a language may suddenly acquire new importance, as when a person immigrates. These transition periods, which can last several years, are important in order to understand the evolution of a person’s bilingualism.
A crucial factor in language history is the age of acquisition of each language. We need to know whether the person acquired both languages simultaneously as an infant (something that is relatively rare; see Chapter 3), or whether one language was acquired first followed by another a few years later, or in adolescence, or even in adulthood. We also want to know about the context in which each language was acquired, such in the family, outside the home, in the classroom, etc. Information is also needed as to the age at which individual skills started to be acquired in each language (speaking, reading, etc.), how many years were spent in formal learning of a language, etc.
The question of language dominance is also something to examine in a person’s language history. One should be careful not to assume that a first language or “mother tongue” is automatically the dominant language. People’s personal language history may show quite different bilingual configurations at different moments in time. Thus, Grosjean (2010) describes how his dominance has changed four times over a stretch of some fifty years, with two periods, both some ten years long, where the second language was his dominant language.
Finally, information is needed on how people became bicultural, if that is the case. Did it happen in the family when they were young children, or when they came into contact with a second culture in school, or when, as adolescents, already anchored in a culture, they pursued their studies in another culture, or even when they emigrated as adults? And information on the evolution of their biculturalism over their lifespan will also be required.
Self-report Questionnaires
As the preceding section has shown, describing a bilingual fully, at a particular point in time, and over a life time, is particularly demanding. One approach that has been used is to ask bilinguals to fill in self-report questionnaires that aim at obtaining the kind of information we described. If used along with various verbal tasks, such as picture naming, word and sentence perception and production, etc., they allow us to have a good description of those who interest us (see de Bruin 2019, for a critical review). Three major self-report questionnaires are now available in the field for adults, while other, smaller ones, examine specific behaviors (e.g., language choice and code-switching), or are aimed at describing the bilingualism of children (these are filled in by parents or caretakers).
The three self-report questionnaires are the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q) proposed by Marian, Blumenfeld, and Kaushanskaya (2007), the Language and Social Background Questionnaire (LSBQ) proposed by the York University Lifespan Cognition and Development Laboratory (Anderson et al. 2018), and the Language History Questionnaire (LHQ3) proposed by Li, Zhang, Yu, and Zhao (2020). Since they have very similar acronyms, and to facilitate reading, I will use Q-A for the LEAP-Q, Q-B for the LSBQ, and Q-C for the LHQ3. I examined each questionnaire keeping in mind the factors I discussed above, those pertaining to bilinguals at a particular point in time, and those that concern their language history, and will briefly summarize what I found. This is not meant to be a critical review but simply a way of illustrating how one goes about obtaining extensive biographical language data from bilinguals, and the diversity one can find among the tools available.
Concerning the first aspect – bilinguals at a particular point in time – all three questionnaires request some biographical information, and they all ask questions regarding the first three factors I outlined: Language proficiency, language use, and functions of languages. It should be noted though that Q-A does not ask about writing proficiency, nor does it ask many questions about the languages used in domains such as work, school, shopping, religion, etc. As concerns different language behaviors in different language modes (e.g., language switching or mixing in certain situations), both Q-B and Q-C ask at least one question whereas Q-A does not. The latter, however, is the only one to ask about language dominance. As for biculturalism, Q-B does not ask any questions, and both Q-A and Q-C ask about cultural identity but nothing on bicultural conduct, such as adapting ones behavior, attitudes, and even personality to different cultural situations. It should be noted that two of the three questionnaires (Q-A and Q-C) ask about the bilingual’s degree
