Bilingualism

by Joel Walters

In the past 30 years, the study of bilingualism processing has been conducted independently by two fields, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. This volume merges these two fields, addressing one of the tough problems dividing researchers in bilingualism, conceptually as well as methodologically. Joel Walters proposes a new approach to bilingualism processing--the Sociopragmatic-Psycholinguistic (SPPL) Model--which presents language as a social phenomenon. The author accomplishes this by identifying and organizing evidence from a wide range of linguistic disciplines, merging sociopragmatics, discourse analysis, and ethnography with social cognition, psycholinguistics, and neuroscience. By extension, the author offers convincing explanations of how related fields can profit from a comprehensive bilingual processing model. As a result, Joel Walters delivers a well-organized, comprehensive model that is thought through at every level.

This book appeals to graduate students, scholars in the fields of linguistics, bilingualism, second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics. It is useful to researchers for its comprehensiveness and methodological acumen and may be appropriate as a supplementary textbook for graduate-level courses in bilingualism or for seminars on similar topics.

336 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2004