As bilingual individuals enter the educational system and the clinical landscape, they struggle with intricate, often painful questions of identity, culture, and assimilation. Professionals working with these individuals need to complement their knowledge of specific cultural issues with the psychological processes that all bilingual speakers share.
As bilingual individuals enter the educational system and the clinical landscape, they struggle with intricate, often painful questions of identity, culture, and assimilation. Professionals working with these individuals need to complement their knowledge of specific cultural issues with the psychological processes that all bilingual speakers share. The Bilingual Mind: Thinking, Feeling, and Speaking in Two Languages fills a critical gap in the cross-cultural literature by illuminating the bilingual experience in both its social and clinical contexts.
Rafael Javier makes a convincing, empirically founded case for what he terms the bilingual mind, with its own particular approach to cognition, memory, and emotional and social development. From this framework, he proceeds to salient but seldom examined questions such as:
What are the effects of bilingualism on cognitive development?
Is some degree of language shifting always present in bilingual thinking?
Do interpreters improve or compromise communication?
What assessment instruments are best suited to bilingual individuals?
What are the key issues in providing appropriate treatment interventions to bilingual patients?
How can professionals be better trained to work with this population?
Given the prevalence of -- and controversies surrounding -- bilingualism today, the author intends his text to benefit a wide range of therapists, education professionals, and scholars. The Bilingual Mind will prove as valuable to the frontline clinician and the evaluator as to the linguistic student and the policymaker designing the future of bilingual services.
The Island
Acknowledgment
1. Bilingualism and Social Context: An Introduction
Linguistic Communities
Fear of Bilingualism?
Traditional Solution to the Bilingual Problem
Current State of Affairs and the Bilingual Phenomenon
The Challenge
2. Is There a Bilingual Mind?
The Bilingual Process in the Context of the Cognitive Development
No Single Theory can Explain Cognitive Development in a Bilingual Context
Evidence of the Bilingual Mind?
3.The Bilingual Linguistic Organization
The Coordinate-Compound Linguistic Organization Controversy
Compound Linguistic System
Coordinate Linguistic System
The Language Independence Phenomenon
Psychological/Psychoanalytic Observation
Psycholinguistic Studies
Neurological Evidence
Conclusion
4.Language Switching As a Communication
Factors Affecting Switching
Structural Linguistic Factors
Extralinguistic and Affective Factors
Role of Stress in Code-Switching
Effect of Stress on Learning
Conclusion
5.Bilingual Memory and the Language of Affect
Neurological Aspects of Memory
Unit for Regulating Tone and Waking and Mental States
Unit for Receiving, Analyzing and Storing Information
Unit for Programming Regulation and Verification of Activity
Developmental Factors in Memory Formation
Memory of Traumatic Event in Children: Can Memory be Falsified?
Memory Organization in the Bilingual Context
Bilingual Memory for Meaningful Information
Investigation of Bilingual Personal Memory
Concluding Thoughts
6.Communication Through Interpreters
Communication Process
Components of Communication
Distinguishing Characteristics of Interpretation versus
Translation Process
Challenges to Accurate Interpretation
Methods of Interpretation
Training of Interpreters
Common Errors
Omission
Additions
Condensation
Substitutions
Role Exchange
Conclusion
7.Issues in Assessing the Bilingual Individual
Personal Motivation/Specific Needs of the Referring Person
Linguistic Challenges in the Assessment Process
Validity of the Assessment Instruments
Factors to be Considered in Assessing a Bilingual Individual
Selection of Basic Assessment Instruments
8.Treatment of the Bilingual Patients
Memory Organization in Bilingual Patients
Nature of Memory Inaccessibility in a Bilingual Context
Technical Considerations
Conclusion
9.Future of Bilingualism: What Should be Our Response?
Traditional Response
There is No Easy Solution to the Bilingual Dilemma
There Are Signs of Hope
Only a Flexible Model Makes Sense
References
Index