Essential Concepts for
Researching Bilingualism and
Bilingual Education
Dr Anwei Feng
Email: Anwei.Feng@durham.ac.uk
School of Education, Durham University
Two Questions
 Why is it important to study
bilingualism and bilingual
education?
 What do we need to know to
study the issues related to
bilingualism and bilingual
education?
Common (Mis)perceptions
 Issues related to bilingualism and
bilingual education are perhaps
basically linguistic issues. So let’s
leave them to the ‘language
people’ or linguists.
 Concepts related to the notions
are easy and only relevant to
minority groups.
Why Important?
Activity 1 – Discuss whether and, if yes, why it is
important to study bilingualism and bilingual
education and what counter-arguments there are.
Importance
Counter Arguments
•Response to globalisation
•Intercultural communication
•Minority education
•Language provision policies
•FL education
•Personal needs
•For nation-building
•For social stability and racial
harmony
• etc.
•Cause of underachievement
•Potential catalyst for
Quebec-style separationism
•Detrimental to cognitive
development
•High cost
•Split personality
•Identity and emotional
problems
• Etc.
What do we need to know?

A revisit to WHY question tells us research
into these issues is interdisciplinary.
 SLA for sure




Psychology (bilingualism and emotions)
Sociology (language and society)
Politics (language and politics)
Cultural studies (intercultural
communication)
An Example
If you wish to discuss the case of CMI versus EMI
schools in Hong Kong, what literature will you
need to review in order to gain a relatively full
view of the phenomenon?
 Language and politics
 Language and identity
 Mother tongue education and empowerment
 Effectiveness of each model
 Emersion: total or partial
 Strong form or weak form
 Bilingualism and intelligence
 Bilingualism and economic development
 Globalisation and language policy
Another Example
If you wish to discuss Putonghua education
in Hong Kong schools, what literature will
you need to review in order to gain a
relatively full view of the phenomenon?
 Language and national identity
 Bilingualism and economic development
 Bilingualism, biculturalism and/or
interculturalism
 Language and power
 Effectiveness of Putonghua education
 A weak form
 A strong form
How complex concepts can be?
Activity 2 – What is “bilingualism”?
 Write a simple definition or key words
to “bilingualism”
Bilingualism 1
Common definition - The use of two
languages by individuals
 ‘use’ can range from native speaker
competence to incipient ability to survive
with a foreign/second language
 ‘two’ is not accurate as the term is used
also to refer to tri- or multi-.
 ‘language’ may include formal language,
variety of language, or even dialect
 ‘individual’ is not accurate as the term is
often used to refer to societal phenomena
Bilingualism 2
If they are difficult to define, can we describe
BILINGUALISM?
 (Baker’s (2001) dimensions, p.3)
 Ability (how proficient – incipient 
receptive  productive  native-like)
 Age (simultaneous, sequential, late )
 Balanced (equally fluent in two)
 Development (Additive – Subtractive;
Ascendant – Recessive)
 Contexts (Home, school, etc.)
 Circumstantial (forced to learn for survival
because of circumstances) or Elective (choose
to learn to add another language competence)
Societal Bilingualism
Diglossia – Situation where two languages, or
varieties of a language (High-variety Vs Lowvariety) are used for different purposes in a
society (Fishman, 1972; Baker, 2001)



High variety (language or dialect) – Often used
in formal domains
Low variety (language or dialect) – Used in
informal domains
*The term is useful for analysis of language use
in multilingual situations and power
relationship between HV users and LV users
Diglossia and Bilingualism
Four language situations
Diglossia
+
Individual Diglossia and
bilingualism bilingualism
Bilingualism
without diglossia
+
-
Diglossia
without
bilingualism
Neither
bilingualism nor
diglossia (a
political fiction)
Diglossia with bilingualism
 Diglossia with bilingualism: exists and
is stable if other factors support
 Examples?
 Most cities in China (H - Putonghua; L Local dialect or language)
 In London (H – RP English; L – Cogney or
any other ethnic minority language)
 In Singapore (H – English; L – ethnic
minority language?)
 In Hong Kong?
 Etc.
Diglossia without bilingualism
 Diglossia without bilingualism
 Examples:
 Switzerland (German, French,
Italian, Romansch speech
communities in different area)
 India (power group speak English,
masses their own languages)
Bilingualism without diglossia
 Bilingualism without diglossia
(unstable and likely to lead to
creolisation?):
 Examples:
 Wales (bilinguals use either Welsh
or English in any domain)
 In Ireland (same situation)
 Some places in North America
 Hong Kong?
Neither/Nor
 Neither/nor: monolingual states –
political fiction?
 Examples:
 Cuba (forced monolingual state by
exterminating minority languages)
 The Dominican Republic (forced?)
 Natural ones (non-existent?)
Limitations
 Difficult to categorise some communities
into the ‘cells’ (Boyd and Latomaa, 1999)
 Multilingual societies/states (i.e.
politically unified): using more than one
official language
 Bilingualism without diglossia may not be
unstable.
 Stability of diglossia with bilingualism
may be affected by increasing
communication with otherness.
Bilingual Education
 Write several words to show your
working definition of the term.
 Write a few examples of bilingual
education according to your definition
Are they defined as bilingual
education?
 A classroom with both local students and
students from other countries using the
local language as MoI?
 A classroom dominated by minority
students but taught in the majority
language?
 A classroom dominated by students of the
majority group but taught in a foreign
language?
 A classroom mainly taught in the native
language with a second/foreign language as
a school subject?
Are they defined as bilingual
education?
 A classroom taught simultaneously by
two teachers in two different
languages?
 A classroom taught in a foreign
language but gradually changed to be
taught in a local majority language?
 Etc.
Introductory Texts
 C. Baker (2006) Foundations …
 J. Cummins (2000) Language, power,
and pedagogy. …
 J. Edwards (1994) Multilingualism …
 A. Feng (2007) Bilingual education in
China …
 A, Pavlenco & A. Blackledge (2004)
Negotiation of identity …
 A, Pavlenco (2006) Bilingual minds …
Durham Module
Bilingualism and Bilingual Education
Thanks