Life as a Bilingual: Knowing and Using Two or More Languages

Life as a Bilingual: Knowing and Using Two or More Languages - François Grosjean

About half the world's population knows and uses two or more languages in everyday life, and an increasing number of parents are raising their children bilingual. This makes a resource on what it means to become and be bilingual all the more necessary. This book brings together a selection of posts from the author's highly successful Psychology Today blog, grouped by topic into 15 chapters. The topics covered include, among others, what it means to be bilingual, the extent of bilingualism, how someone becomes bilingual, how bilingualism is fostered in the family, the bilingual mind and brain, and bilingualism across the lifespan. It also includes the author's lively interviews with other experts, delving into their research and their own experience as bilinguals. Written in a highly engaging, readable style, this book is suitable for anyone who wants to better understand those who live with two or more languages.

Life as a Bilingual: Knowing and Using Two or More Languages - About the Author

François Grosjean received his degrees up to the Doctorat d'Etat from the University of Paris, France. He started his academic career at the University of Paris 8 and then left for the United-States in 1974 where he taught and did research in psycholinguistics at Northeastern University, Boston. While at Northeastern he was also a Research Affiliate at the Speech Communication Laboratory at MIT. In 1987, he was appointed professor at Neuchâtel University, Switzerland, where he founded the Language and Speech Processing Laboratory. He has lectured occasionally at the Universities of Basel, Zurich and Oxford. In 1998, he cofounded Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press).

His domains of interest are the perception, comprehension and production of speech, bilingualism and biculturalism, sign language and the bilingualism of the Deaf, the evaluation of speech comprehension in aphasic patients, as well as the modeling of language processing.