The Bilingual Mind And What It Tells Us about Language and Thought

The Bilingual Mind And What It Tells Us about Language and Thought by Aneta Pavlenko

If languages influence the way we think, do bilinguals think differently in their respective languages? And if languages do not affect thought, why do bilinguals often perceive such influence? For many years these questions remained unanswered because the research on language and thought had focused solely on the monolingual mind. Bilinguals were either excluded from this research as 'unusual' or 'messy' subjects, or treated as representative speakers of their first languages. Only recently did bi- and multilinguals become research participants in their own right. Pavlenko considers the socio-political circumstances that led to the monolingual status quo and shows how the invisibility of bilingual participants compromised the validity and reliability of findings in the study of language and cognition. She then shifts attention to the bilingual turn in the field and examines its contributions to the understanding of the human mind.

The Bilingual Mind And What It Tells Us about Language and Thought by Aneta Pavlenko - About the Author

Aneta Pavlenko is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Temple University, Philadelphia and President of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL). Her book Emotions and Multilingualism (Cambridge University Press, 2005) won the 2006 Book of the Year Award of the British Association of Applied Linguistics.

• The book merges psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic approaches and will appeal to readers from a variety of backgrounds
• Every chapter is supplemented with tables that summarize the key studies in the area, which is useful for readers unfamiliar with the research, providing a cheat-sheet with information on studies that are not easily accessible
• Discussion of scholarly research is interweaved with case studies of famous bi- and multilinguals, such as Nabokov and Chagall; these studies link academic research to everyday life, making the book more lively and accessible