Bilingualism: Dominant language or mother tongue?

S. El Harch, 2015

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Bilingualism: Dominant language or mother tongue?

Bilingualism is a linguistic phenomenon that has instigated a panoply of theories

and hypotheses about its nature. Meanwhile bilingualism has continued to be

interpreted in juxtaposition with mother tongue which gave rise to contradictions

in attempting to define the concept.

Researchers argue that given the fact that bilingual children do not always speak

necessarily the language of their mothers, the word mother tongue which refer to

a child’s first language (L1) is a misnomer. Researchers report about cases

where children speak their fathers’ first language rather than their mothers’, say

English rather than French, when they grow up in an English-speaking

environment. It is also reported that children may have some tendencies towards

the use of certain languages for certain purposes, such as playing, talking about

some topics etc.

Therefore, instead of talking about a child’s mother tongue, we should rather

speak of a child’s dominant language. This is because a language is likely to

change in dominance according to place and time. In the example mentioned

above, should the child move to France, the mother’s home country, the

dominant language will consequently be French.

Bilingualism: Dominant language or mother tongue?

S. El Harch, 2015

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Approaches to understand bilingualism which take monolingualism as a norm to

achieve this are impervious to the dynamic nature underlying bilingual speech.

This view considers bilinguals to be two monolinguals operating under one

nervous system. Hence, they are expected to achieve an equal level of mastery

in both languages without any interference. Opponents of this view have

dismissed it as a myth.