The Bilingual Mind
A lot of my work is with people who are bilingual, or multi-lingual.
Using two languages puts a lot of cognitive constraints on the human mind. It can look very fast and easy, but there’s actually a lot of mental work that goes into using the right one in the right context. Selecting the right language is a big cognitive task.
Something my research has shown is that bilingual people learn to associate specific people to the specific language they should use with them. By forming these type of memories, it can lighten the cognitive load. Memory is a basic requirement for language development.
Right now, about 40 per cent of Canadians speak more than one language, a number that has risen with time. Even though there are so many people who are bilingual, we still do not have very clear theories on the brain’s architecture when it comes to bilingualism.
We still have so much to learn about the way people organize different languages in their mind. We’re not walking around with two boxes in our brain, where we open one box to use one language, and open another box to use a second language.
The bilingual mind is not simplistic. It’s more context-dependent than that. We need more research that focuses bilingual people, and to develop theories, tools and assessments that are appropriate for them.
Monika Molnar is an assistant professor at Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Rehabilitation Sciences Institute.