Applied Linguistics 27/2: 220–240 � Oxford University Press 2006
doi:10.1093/applin/aml013
Reconceptualizing Multicompetenceas a Theory of Language Knowledge
1JOAN KELLY HALL, 2AN CHENG, and 1MATTHEW T. CARLSON1The Pennsylvania State University, 2Oklahoma State University
Over the last decade or so, the concept of multicompetence has attracted
significant research attention in the field of applied linguistics and in particular
in the study of multiple language use and learning. We argue that while
research efforts concerned with multicompetence have been useful in advancing
a more positive view of second language learners, they have been less successful
in transforming understandings of language knowledge. One reason for their
lack of success is the fact that these efforts have been mired in a state of
theoretical confusion arising from a continued reliance on three assumptions.
These assumptions include (1) a view of L1 and L2 language knowledge as
distinct systems; (2) the presumption of a qualitative distinction between
multicompetence and monocompetence; and (3) the assumption of homo-
geneity of language knowledge across speakers and contexts. Our intent here is
to redress these theoretical inadequacies by making a case for a usage-based
view of multicompetence. We do so by drawing on empirical evidence and
theoretical insights from other areas concerned with language and language
development that expose the theoretical flaws in current research efforts on
multicompetence. We then use these new understandings of language to
reconsider findings on the language knowledge of multiple language users and
to offer new directions for research on multicompetence.
MULTICOMPETENCE: HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
In the last decade or so, the field of applied linguistics has seen a significant
migration toward new understandings of both language and learning
(e.g. Firth and Wagner 1997; Hall 2003; Kramsch 2000; Lantolf 2000).
One concept in particular, multicompetence, has attracted some significant
attention in the field for reconceptualizing language knowledge. The term
was first used by Vivian Cook (1991) in the early 1990s to address what
he perceived to be formal linguistics’ inability to address the language
competence of users of more than one language. As conceptualized by
Chomsky (1965), linguistic theory was to be concerned with the linguistic
knowledge of ‘an ideal speaker-listener in a completely homogeneous speech
community’ (Chomsky 1965: 4). The intent behind the theoretical construct
of an ideal native speaker was to allow linguistic science to focus solely
on the nature of language as independent from any performance factors
or nonlinguistic cognitive constraints. Cook, however, contended that
such a construct idealized the monolingual speaker and, in so doing,
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
ignored the fact that most individuals know more than one language.
An adequate theory of linguistic knowledge, Cook argued, needs to capture
the language knowledge of multilinguals, and, to do so, Cook introduced
the term multicompetence, defining it as ‘the compound state of mind with
two grammars’ (Cook 1991: 112). For Cook, this competence is ‘a language
supersystem’ (Cook 2003a: 2) that differs in distinct ways from the language
knowledge of monolinguals.
To support his initial proposal of multicompetence as a unique state of
mind, Cook drew on three bodies of evidence. The first came from research
on bilingualism claiming cognitive differences between monolingual and
bilingual language users. Early studies, for example, revealed that bilinguals
did better on tasks requiring more analyzed linguistic knowledge (Bialystok
1991, 2001) and scored higher on tests of divergent thinking, which value
such traits as flexibility, originality, and fluency (Cummins 1979; Diaz 1985).
Findings also showed bilinguals to be more metalinguistically aware and
more flexible in their use of language learning strategies (Galambos and
Goldin-Meadow 1990; Nayak et al. 1989). More recent studies revealed that
bilinguals are more sensitive and responsive to their interlocutors than their
monolingual counterparts (Nicoladis and Genesee 1996). While this
particular body of research only indirectly addressed the language knowledge
of multiple language users, Cook argued that it supported his claim of
a qualitative distinction between the language knowledge of users of more
than one language and that of monolinguals.
A second body of research that Cook drew on in support of the notion of
multicompetence was concerned with documenting the components of
language learners’ interlanguage (IL) (Selinker 1972). The concept of IL was
initially proposed to capture what was considered to be the distinct system
of language that learners of a second or foreign language develop as they
move from beginning to more advanced stages of knowledge of the target
language.1 Findings from various studies (e.g. Beretta 1989; Corder 1978;
Ellis 1985; Selinker and Douglas 1987; Tarone 1983) revealed that in
addition to containing linguistic structures from each of the two languages,
IL contained structures that are of neither language, but are, instead, unique
to the learner’s IL. Earlier research characterized these unique components
as deficiencies in the L2 user’s language knowledge. However, later research
(e.g. Coppetiers 1987) examining the language knowledge of advanced L2
learners revealed that no matter how advanced L2 users are in the L2, their
L2 knowledge is different from that of native speakers of that language.
Thus, IL could not be considered a deficient or developing version of L2 but,
instead, must be treated as a legitimate system in its own right. Cook
(1992: 562) claimed that these findings provided strong evidence for his view
that ‘the grammar of the L2 in a multicompetent speaker is not the same as
the apparently equivalent grammar in a monolingual.’
A third body of research that Cook drew on in support of his notion of
multicompetence documented L2 system influences on L2 users’ first
JOAN KELLY HALL, AN CHENG, and MATTHEW CARLSON 221
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
language systems. An early study by Flege (1987), for example, demonstrated
that L2 phonology components affected language users’ L1 phonological
systems, specifically in voice onset time of certain sounds. Cook’s own study
(1999) showed how L2 users’ grammaticality judgments of their L1 differed
from those of their monolingual counterparts. Encouraged by this work
demonstrating L2 effects on L1 knowledge, research in this area has
burgeoned in the last few years, with analytic attention given to L2 effects on
all language systems, including phonology (e.g. Leather and James 1996),
morphosyntax (e.g. Pavlenko and Jarvis 2002), lexicon (e.g. Laufer 2003),
semantics (e.g. Pavlenko 2003), pragmatics (e.g. Cenoz 2003), and
conceptual representations (e.g. Kecskes and Papp 2000). On the whole,
these findings have shown that L2 systems have the potential to influence
L1 systems at all stages of bilingualism.
It is apparent that, over the last decade or so, the concept of
multicompetence has helped to, in Cook’s (2002a: 19) words, ‘alter[s] the
perspective of SLA research.’ It has done so largely by bringing to the
foreground a view of L2 users as ‘successful multicompetent speakers, not
failed native speakers’ (Cook 1999: 204), with differences in the L2 users’
language knowledge perceived to stem not from any deficiency in the L2
user as a nonnative speaker, but rather from differences between the
multilingual and monolingual mind. In addition to helping to reshape
the ideological landscape of L2 pedagogy,2 such a view has also encouraged
further research in those areas that led Cook (1991) to propose the notion of
multicompetence in the first place. His recent volume (2003b) summarizes
the state of the art with respect to one of these strands, the influence of
the L2 on the L1.
While these research efforts have indeed been useful in advancing a more
positive view of second language learners, we submit that they have been
less successful in transforming understandings of language knowledge.
One reason for their lack of success in this respect is the fact that these efforts
have been mired in a state of theoretical confusion arising from a reliance,
howsoever tacit and unconscious, on three assumptions. This reliance
continues in spite of findings from the research concerned with multi-
competence that, at the very least, challenge the assumptions. The first
assumption that continues to influence multicompetence-inspired research
efforts is the treatment of L1 and L2 language knowledge as distinct systems.
Deriving from this is the second unexamined assumption: the presumption
of a qualitative distinction between multicompetence and monocompetence.
Third is the assumption of homogeneity of language knowledge across
speakers and contexts.
The work presented in Cook’s 2002b and 2003b volumes provides several
examples of the continued influence of a view of language knowledge
as discrete, homogeneous systems. Indeed, the title of the 2003b volume,
Effects of the Second Language on the First asserts the existence of a two-system
framework for describing and understanding bilingual language knowledge.
222 MULTICOMPETENCE AS A THEORY OF LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
Cook elaborates on this view in the background chapters to each of his
edited volumes (Cook 2002a: 10–13; 2003a: 6–11). Citing evidence mainly
from semantic representation in bilinguals, Cook (2003a: 10) suggests an
‘integration continuum’ to account for what he considers to be three possible
logical relationships between the first and the second language in the
bilingual mind. They are: total separation, interconnection, and total
integration into a single mental super system containing components of
each language system in addition to components that are not specific to
either system.
This discrete systems perspective is carried through, either explicitly or
implicitly, in most if not all of the volumes’ contributions. For example, both
Fabbro (2002) and Dewaele (2002) take a systems view of language in their
proposal to investigate the brains of speakers of two languages in order to
specify more accurately the locations of the two language systems. Fabbro
looks at the question of whether L1 and L2 are represented in common
or different cerebral structures, with a specific focus on the cerebral
organization of languages in bilinguals who acquired L2 subsequent to L1.
Dewaele’s study sets out to identify possible neurobiological causes for
synchronic variation in the fluency of L2 production. In a similar vein,
although Pavlenko (2003: 58) asserts that multilinguals’ linguistic repertoires
should be understood as ‘a unified, complex, coherent, interconnected,
interdependent ecosystem’, she proposes to examine ‘which L2 influence
processes take place in which language areas’ (Pavlenko 2003: 58) in the
bilingual mind. In doing so, she treats L1 as distinct from L2 and thus
suggests a two-system view of bilingual language knowledge. The perspective
is apparent as well in the terms used to theorize the system interactions
in the bilingual mind. For example, Pavlenko (2000, 2003) speculates that
systems in the bilingual mind are capable of borrowing, transferring, or shifting
components. Similarly, Pavlenko and Jarvis (2002) and Cenoz (2003) suggest
the term bidirectional transfer to explain what they argue is a two-way
movement between the two systems, and from a more negative perspective,
Porte (2003: 107) writes of the possible ‘erosive consequences of L1
deprivation’ to the L1 system that can arise from an encroaching L2 system.
This view of bilingual language knowledge as comprising two separate
systems has had the unfortunate consequence of limiting investigatory
concerns in multicompetence-related research largely to documenting
structural effects presumed to arise from interaction between the two
systems in the bilingual mind.3 Balcom (2003), for example, looks specifically
at the influence of the L2 system on L1 lexico-syntactic rules and
representations. For Cook et al. (2003), the concern is with capturing the
influence of L2 cues on L1 syntactic knowledge. Jarvis (2003) is also
concerned with documenting changes to L1 and, in keeping with a systems
view, interprets the changes to his L2 user’s L1 language system as
undergoing either ‘item-specific L2 influenced deviant structural change’
or ‘system-level deviation’ (2003: 99). The two-system view of bilingual
JOAN KELLY HALL, AN CHENG, and MATTHEW CARLSON 223
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
language knowledge is also embodied in Kecskes and Papp’s (2003) proposal
for a Common Underlying Conceptual Base (CUCB), a concept that draws
heavily on the initial formulation of multicompetence. According to these
scholars, L2 influence on L1 is not possible until a CUCB develops following
sufficiently intense exposure to the L2, and once developed, is responsible
for the operation of both language systems. By suggesting that there is
a threshold of proficiency in L2 that must be reached for the L2 to affect
the L1, they are, in effect, proposing that there must be two systems in place
before interaction between them can occur.
This view of two language systems in one mind has led Cook (1992, 1995,
2003a) and others (e.g. Kecskes and Papp 2000; Jessner 2003) to claim
a unique, qualitative distinction between multicompetence and monocompe-
tence. Because it is presumed to cover L2 knowledge in all stages of
development in addition to L1 knowledge, multicompetence is considered to
be dynamic and variable. In contrast, Cook argues, because it involves just
one language-specific system, monocompetence is considered to be a stable
and finite state of knowledge, which ‘all human beings attain’ (2003a: 4).
Despite the asserted qualitative distinction between monocompetence and
multicompetence, however, research efforts continue to use the first as
a basis of comparison for the second. Cook (2002a), for example, readily
admits that the comparison of L2 users’ language systems to that of the
native speakers is ‘indeed a useful research technique’ (Cook 2002a: 21), as
long as such a comparison does not lead to an ideological conclusion such as
treating L2 users as deficient native speakers. In other words, although we
should appreciate ‘the ways in which L2 users go outside the bounds of
monolinguals’ (Cook 2002a: 21) and recognize the ultimate achievements of
L2 users, and although multicompetence is seen as a qualitatively distinct
state of mind, monocompetence is still considered to be a valuable yardstick
against which L2 users’ language knowledge can be evaluated. Consequently,
in most if not all of the research concerned with multicompetence, the ideal
monolingual native speaker becomes the norm for assessing the language
knowledge of individuals considered to be multicompetent.4 Such research,
in our opinion, is an empty exercise. For, if a unique state of mind is
assumed for multicompetence, comparing the knowledge of multiple
language users to that of monocompetent users, at the very least, begs the
question, that is, uses the premise of uniqueness to support the findings of
difference.
Such confusion is also evident in the concepts used to refer to individuals
who know more than one language. We find, for example, terms such
as ‘ambilingual balanced bilingual’ and ‘balanced bilingual’ (Herdina and
Jessner 2002: 118) that evidently use the monolingual native speaker as
a measuring stick. Herdina and Jessner use the first term to refer to
individuals with ‘native-like competence’ (ibid.) in both languages and the
second term to refer to individuals with two language systems that are each
‘below a native speaker proficiency level’ (Herdina and Jessner 2002: 119).
224 MULTICOMPETENCE AS A THEORY OF LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
The nod to the native speaker norm is also apparent in Cook’s (2002a: 6)
admonition against paying too much attention to the ‘select handful of
specially gifted individuals’ who can pass for native speakers in their
languages.
Related to the notion of a multilingual as possessing two or more separate,
internally consistent language systems and the argued qualitative distinction
between monocompetence and multicompetence, the third assumption
continuing to influence current multicompetence-inspired research is the
assumption of homogeneity of language knowledge across speakers and
contexts. This assumption is most evident in the operationalization of
language users into groups of monolinguals and bilinguals (e.g. Cook et al.
2003; Dewaele and Pavlenko 2003; Kecskes and Papp 2003; Pavlenko 2003),
and in at least a few cases, into groups of monolinguals and trilinguals (e.g.
Hoffman and Ytsma 2003; Cenoz et al. 2001), based solely on identification
with a specific language code, for example, English, Spanish, German,
Japanese, etc. This is so despite Cook’s (1991, 1996) and others’ (e.g. Herdina
and Jessner 2002; Kecskes and Papp 2003) criticism of Chomsky’s
idealization of the native speaker and despite compelling empirical evidence
from research in both linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics extending
well over four decades that reveals the extent to which individuals’
language knowledge varies according to class, education, age, gender, region,
and so on.5
To recap, by seeking to understand ‘the compound state of mind with two
grammars’ (Cook 1991: 112) of individuals who use more than one
language, multicompetence research has succeeded to some extent in freeing
the multilingual from traditional models of language knowledge based on an
idealized monolingual user. However, in trying to make a case for a positive
view of multilingual knowledge, it has failed to use the findings on
multilinguals’ language knowledge to reconsider some primary theoretical
assumptions framing these efforts. Specifically, it has left intact the notion of
language as discrete systems, with that of the monolingual defined as being
finite and stable, and thus, qualitatively distinct from the multilingual, which
is viewed as dynamic and variable. It has also held on to a narrow view of
language knowledge as homogeneous and stable across speakers and
contexts. These lingering assumptions, we suggest, have had the unfortunate
consequence of cloaking what could otherwise be a transformative and
influential concept of language knowledge.
In the discussion that follows, we redress these theoretical inadequacies
with the ultimate goal of making a case for a usage-based view of
multicompetence with significant implications for research concerned with
multiple language use and development. We do so by drawing on empirical
evidence and theoretical insights from other areas concerned with language
and language development that expose more fully the theoretical flaws in
current research efforts on multicompetence.
JOAN KELLY HALL, AN CHENG, and MATTHEW CARLSON 225
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
A USAGE-BASED ACCOUNT OF LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE
Current theoretical insights and empirical support from fields such as
psycholinguistics (e.g. Bates 1999, 2003; Bates et al. 1998; Elman 1999;
MacWhinney 2001), child language development (e.g. Snow 1999; Tomasello
2003a), and functional and cognitive linguistics (e.g. Bowerman and
Levinson 2001; Bybee and Noonan 2002; Bybee and Hopper 2001b;
Hopper 1998; Ochs et al. 1996; Tomasello 2003b) provide compelling
evidence for a usage-based view of language knowledge. Specifically, findings
show language knowledge to be comprised of dynamic constellations of
linguistic resources, the shapes and meanings of which emerge from
continual interaction between internal, domain-general cognitive constraints
on the one hand and one’s pragmatic pursuits in his or her everyday worlds
on the other, that is through language use. That is to say, particular
grammatical and other linguistic elements of language knowledge are not
a priori components belonging to stable, acontexual systems. Instead, they
emerge as relatively automatized structures or schemas of expectations that
are used to both represent and respond to the human experience. As our use
of language changes, the substance of our language knowledge also changes.
Crucial to the specific shaping of individual language knowledge are the
distribution and frequency with which we encounter specific components
in our everyday interactions with others. The more frequent and reliable
the appearance of particular patterns is, the more likely the patterns will be
stored and remembered.
Research from neurobiology and psycholinguistics supports this usage-
based account of language with findings suggesting that the shape and
substance of language knowledge rely in part on a set of general constraints
from which grammar emerges as a ‘solution to mapping hyperdimensional
meanings onto a low-dimensional channel that is heavily constrained by
the limits of human information processing’ (Bates et al. 1998: 590). Elman
(1999) operationalizes the constraints into two types. Architectural constraints
refer to the inherent structuring of the brain that makes possible the
processing of information. Also giving shape to language knowledge are what
Elman calls chronotopic constraints. These constraints are defined in terms of
the timing of external events, such as when input is presented, and
of internal developmental events, such as those involving the maturation of
cognitive capabilities. Because they depend in part on language input,
chronotopic constraints highlight the crucial role language use plays in giving
shape to language knowledge.
We find additional evidence pointing to the malleable, activity-sensitive
nature of language knowledge in research on child language development
(e.g. Rowland et al. 2003; Lieven et al. 2003; Tomasello 1999, 2003a).
Findings here make visible the intimate links between the social-contextual
conditions of language use and the shape and substance of language
development. More specifically, they reveal that the shape of children’s
226 MULTICOMPETENCE AS A THEORY OF LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
language knowledge is tied to their repeated experiences in regularly
occurring communicative activities with their primary caregivers. In these
interactions, children are provided with a considerable amount of input in
which the caregivers make the more important cues salient to the children
through the use of nonverbal cues such as gazing and gesturing, and verbal
cues such as cue repetition and tone and pitch changes. They are also
provided with verbal instructions that direct them to perceive or notice these
cues and make connections between them and their contexts. Children make
such connections by interpreting and interacting with the intentions of their
caregivers, thereby grounding language structure in concrete, historically-
situated contexts of language use. These actions, along with the frequency
with which particular forms appear in the input and the degree to which
their form–function relationships are transparent and consistent, give shape
to children’s emerging language knowledge.6
Further corroborating a usage-based view of language knowledge is
research in functional and cognitive linguistics (e.g. Bybee 2003; Langacker
1987, 1991, 2000). Analyses of large corpora of natural data reveal that
rather than culminating in an unchanging, static end state, ‘the fixing of
linguistic groups of all kinds as recognizable structural units is an ongoing
process’ (Bybee and Hopper 2001a: 2), resulting in grammars that are
‘variable and probabilistic’ (ibid.: 19). A prime influence on the continual
re-structuring of language knowledge is frequency of use. According to
Bybee (2003), frequency has two main effects. The first is a processing effect
whereby the specific meanings of frequent words become generalized
and their phonetic shape reduced with use. For example, the meaning of
‘going to’, a pervasive phrase in English, extends beyond its original meaning
of movement (He is going to the store), to include intention (I’m going to do
that for him) and the future (He’s going to call tonight). In addition, it
becomes phonetically reduced to ‘gonna’, resulting in less muscular effort
when processing on-line. At the same time, frequency of use affects the
structural properties of words and phrases by ensuring the retention of those
constructions most frequently used. Moreover, the more frequent their use,
the more entrenched the constructions become and the more likely it is that
they will be preserved and accessed as whole units. This is so regardless of
how seemingly irregular they are. This is the storage effect. Boyland’s (2001)
study on the use of hypercorrect forms of the English pronouns ‘you and I’
as objects illustrates the connection between frequency of use and the
entrenching of structural aspects of language knowledge. Her corpus of data
reveals, among other things, that the phrase ‘you and I’ is the most
frequently used conjoined phrase with the pronoun I. Because of its frequent
use, she argues, it has become processed as one unit and thus is accessed by
speakers as a complete element. That is, in the process of communicating,
rather than generating two separate pronouns with a conjunction, speakers
use the phrase as a single unit. Thus, they are more apt to use ‘you and I’
JOAN KELLY HALL, AN CHENG, and MATTHEW CARLSON 227
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
after prepositions such as ‘between’ and ‘from’ rather than the grammatically
prescribed forms ‘you and me’.
Frequency of use also affects language knowledge in that the more
different the types of language use speakers are exposed to and participate in,
the wider the range of options they are likely to have encountered and
stored (Thompson and Hopper 2001). This effect of frequency and diversity
of exposure is illustrated in Frisch et al. (2001). In their study examining
patterns of acceptability judgments of words, the authors found that English
speaking subjects’ experiences with language changed their intuitive
judgments about the language. Those with more language experiences,
defined as those with larger vocabularies, judged low probability words
as more acceptable than did subjects with smaller vocabularies and,
concomitantly, fewer experiences. Such judgment differences occur, they
argue, because those with a greater diversity of language experiences are
more likely to have robust memory representations of words that are
considered to be low-probability, having encountered and used them more
often. Thus, they are more likely to find them acceptable. Findings such
as these provide compelling evidence of the interrelationship between
language knowledge and language use and of the crucial role frequency
plays in both the shape and substance of language knowledge. They
also demonstrate that individual understandings of language do not stand
apart from, but rather arise from language use. In other words, rather than
a prerequisite to performance, language knowledge is an emergent property
of it, developing from its locally-situated uses in culturally-framed
and discursively-patterned communicative activities. Language structures,
as conventionally conceptualized, are simply post-hoc observations of the
continually shifting patterns and schemas we employ to negotiate specific
contexts of action.
Also providing persuasive empirical support of the flexible nature of
language knowledge, and at the same time, evidence against an assumption
of homogeneity of language knowledge across speakers and contexts is the
substantial body of sociolinguistic research on language variation (for up-to-
date reviews of this research see, e.g. Coupland and Jaworski 2006; Fitch and
Sanders 2005; and Wardhaugh 2002). Findings here reveal quite convin-
cingly that language knowledge varies not only diachronically over the
lifespan of an individual, but also synchronically. Specific differences
in individual knowledge have been tied to a wide range of social identities
and contexts including social class, race, region, gender, ethnicity, and
communicative practice. By making apparent the conditional, context-
dependent nature of language knowledge, such research provides compelling
support for a view of language knowledge as dynamic and malleable,
constituted by ‘a massive collection of heterogeneous constructions, each with
affinities to different contexts and in constant structural adaptation to usage’
(Bybee and Hopper 2001a: 3, emphasis in the original).
228 MULTICOMPETENCE AS A THEORY OF LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
A USAGE-BASED VIEW OF MULTICOMPETENCE
The account of language knowledge presented above transforms the
theoretical base on which much multicompetence-inspired research has
rested in at least three ways. First, it makes a fundamental move from the
view of language knowledge as static, internally coherent and uniform
systems, and instead, takes the dynamism in language knowledge of
multilinguals to be the inherent nature of all language knowledge and not
simply a product of certain destabilizing forces, for example, multilingualism.
More specifically, it reveals multiple language users’ knowledge to be
essentially flexible, comprised of dynamic constellations of resources the
shapes of which are emergent from interaction between internal
architectures and cognitive processes on the one hand and social experiences
on the other as a species-specific means ‘to serve the many complex goals
of human society and culture’ (Bates 2003: 243). The language knowledge of
multilinguals, then, is not a super system of grammar in the sense of abstract
rules, but, as Ford et al. (2003: 122), observe, ‘a minimally sorted and
organized set of memories of what people have heard and repeated over
a lifetime of language use, a set of forms, patterns, and practices that have
arisen to serve the most recurrent functions that speakers find need to fulfill.’
As we have argued above, while showing evidence of the dynamic
properties of language knowledge, multicompetence-inspired research has
attempted to explain the dynamic properties of language knowledge with
reference to inherently stable systems that are somehow destabilized with
the advent of multicompetence. A usage-based perspective offers a solution
to this contradiction by turning the problem around, seeing language
knowledge as an inherently dynamic set of patterns of use which, in turn,
is subject to a variety of stabilizing influences that are tied to the constancy
of individuals’ everyday lived experiences, and more generally, to more
encompassing societal norms that value stability. Evidence of the power
of such norms may be seen, for example, in prescriptivist grammars and
in the amount of variation permitted in various registers. What is important
from a usage-based perspective is the fact that the source of any apparent
stability in language knowledge has its roots in socioculturally contextualized
activity rather than in a mentalist notion of a monocompetent native
speaker, whose competence may be jarred loose by the acquisition of a
second language.
A second way a usage-based view of language knowledge helps to
transform the theoretical underpinnings of multicompetence research is by
making clear that all language knowledge is socially contingent and dynamic
no matter how many language codes one has access to. The differences across
users based not on number of languages, but on amount and diversity of
experiences and use. Thus, while it is true, as Cook (1991, 1992) asserts,
that the language knowledge of multilinguals is not the same as that of
monolinguals, the differences in language knowledge are not qualitative
JOAN KELLY HALL, AN CHENG, and MATTHEW CARLSON 229
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
or linked to differences in number of linguistic codes, that is monolingualism
versus multilingualism. Rather, they are tied to the pragmatic variation in the
use of language within and across social experiences in which individuals are
engaged, variation that exists even within a single language code. As noted
earlier, the more frequent and varied the communicative contexts are in
which individuals engage, the wider the range of forms and functions they
are likely to have experienced, and the wider and more encompassing their
understandings about language are likely to be. This variability, as Frisch
et al.’s (2001) study revealed, is not a matter of language code since the
subjects in their study were all English speakers, but of experiences using
language. From this, we can conclude that language knowledge is always
provisional and sensitive to renegotiation and renewal, a conclusion that
belies the idea that there is, or indeed, can ever be, a homogeneous
monolingual native speaker. Thus, even monolinguals—as conventionally
defined in the literature on multicompetence—can be considered to be
multicompetent.
It is not the case then that multiple languages per se confer special
knowledge capabilities that set multiple language users’ knowledge apart
from that of monolingual speakers. Indeed, monolingual users rely on the
same kind of cognitive and social processes that multilinguals do in
constructing language knowledge. What lead to differences in their
knowledge are the amount and quality of exposure to variable linguistic
forms, and, more generally, the unique social contexts and pragmatically-
based communicative activities that individuals encounter in the process of
becoming multilingual. This being the case, we should find differences in
language knowledge among individuals with different communicative
repertoires regardless of the language variety they use. The knowledge of
individuals with more diverse communicative experiences—even within a
single language—is likely to differ from the knowledge of those with fewer
and less diverse experiences. What gives rise to the differences in language
knowledge are the particular circumstances within which an individual
experiences and uses language. Taking social activity rather than language
code as the starting point not only belies the qualitative distinction asserted
to exist between the language knowledge of monolinguals and multilinguals,
but it also makes apparent that there can be no end-state to knowledge
development, no culminating point at which language knowledge can be
considered to be a complete, finite state of mind. Finally, it exposes the
inadequacy of a similarly monolithic view of language as stable and
homogeneous across speakers and contexts.
The view of language knowledge as fundamentally dynamic and socially
contingent helps to shed new light on findings from research on
multicompetence. For example, it helps to explain more fully several
findings on the differences found in language knowledge as revealed via tests
of grammaticality judgments across monolingual and multilingual users
as well as differences in metalinguistic and socio-pragmatic skills
230 MULTICOMPETENCE AS A THEORY OF LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
(e.g. Goetz 2003; Kecskes and Papp 2000). Rather than arising from
differences in code, as originally proposed, it is more likely that they come
about as a result of multilingual users’ increased and more varied
communicative experiences. Although not directly concerned with language
knowledge, a recent study (Ruffman et al. 1998) comparing metalinguistic
abilities across age groups rather than language code supports this view by
revealing that children who had more language experiences with older
siblings showed greater increases in their metalinguistic abilities than did
children with fewer language experiences.
Locating the source of knowledge in activity can also help explain
differences in L1 knowledge found in L2 users with different learning
experiences, as reported, for example, by Kecskes and Papp (2000). In the
discussion of their findings, Kecskes and Papp suggest that the differences may
be due to a hypothetical threshold of language proficiency in the other
language that learners need to reach before that knowledge can affect L1 skills
and before they can gain the advantages claimed to exist for bilinguals.
Although they do not explicitly define the threshold, they suggest that it is
composed of a certain, specifiable amount of knowledge of language system
components. From a usage-based view of multicompetence, any attempt to
operationalize such a threshold in this way is pointless, for, as argued above,
language knowledge is not composed of a-contexual, stable system
components. A more likely source of differences between groups of learners
is in the learning experiences themselves. What the learning of additional
languages provides to learners is involvement in and access to new practices
and, in the case of classroom-based language learning, to new instructional
practices. The more frequent and varied the practices are in which learners
participate, the more expansive their language knowledge is likely to be as
compared to those with fewer and less varied experiences. Understanding
individual learners’ language knowledge in this way provides, we suggest, a far
more satisfactory explanation for the differences in language knowledge found
across groups of language learners such as those found by Kecskes and Papp.
IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH CONCERNEDWITH MULTICOMPETENCE
Our reconsideration of multicompetence in light of current research on
language has several implications for how we both conceptualize and design
research concerned with language knowledge of multiple language users.
First, it makes apparent the need for new terms and concepts that more
adequately address what language users do with and know about language.
Terms such as interlanguage, transfer, shift, and interference to describe cross-
linguistic influences suggest the existence of autonomous systems with
identifiable borders.7 Likewise, the term native speaker suggests the existence
of system masters—individuals who have reached a complete state of system
knowledge.8 Because these terms have had a long history in both traditional
JOAN KELLY HALL, AN CHENG, and MATTHEW CARLSON 231
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
linguistics and second language learning theories, their meanings and
underlying assumptions about language may be too entrenched, too
institutionalized to allow them to address current concerns or take on new
meanings that help explain current findings.
What are needed, we suggest, are new concepts and terms that capture
contemporary understandings of language knowledge as emergent and
provisional constellations of structures, whose shapes and boundaries are as
malleable and porous as the social actions in which they are grounded. For
example, like Pavlenko (2000), we suggest replacing the notion of language
groups with that of communities of practice (Chaiklin and Lave 1993;
Lave and Wenger 1991). Communities of practice are social groups composed
of individuals who come together for shared purposes that are organized
around, for example, social, familial, or professional goals. Locating
theoretical and conceptual concerns with language knowledge in commu-
nities of practice rather than in groups defined by language codes moves the
focus away from a-contextual language systems and toward communicative
activities comprising particular communities of practice. Likewise, it defines
individual language knowledge not in terms of abstract system components
but as communicative repertoires9—conventionalized constellations of semiotic
resources for taking action—that are shaped by the particular practices
in which individuals engage, be they interpersonal, that is, practices that
involve others, or intrapersonal, that is, practices such as thinking, planning,
and self-reflecting that involve just the individual (Vygotsky 1986). Terms
like reorganization, redirection, expansion, and transformation, then, become
useful in describing the continual evolution of individuals’ language
knowledge as they move into different contexts and appropriate different
means for taking action.10
To capture individual differences in individual communicative repertoires
we suggest the term communicative expertise (cf. Kasper 2004; Wenger 1999).
Research on expertise (Sternberg and Horvath 1995; Sternberg 1998) reveals
three findings. First, it is best understood as a prototype representing
the typical case of a category and comprising three clusters of features.
These are domain knowledge, which includes both knowing about and
knowing how; efficiency in using domain knowledge to take action and
solve problems; and insight in arriving at solutions in ways that are both
appropriate and innovative. Second, the substance of these features is
context- or domain-sensitive rather than context- or domain-general. That is,
there is no stable set of features that defines expertise across domains.
Third, expertise is not a fixed end-state but ‘is in a process of continual
development’ (Sternberg 1998: 11).
Although studies of expert performance do not make the connection,
we consider the research on expertise to be consistent with findings on
language knowledge as flexible and activity-dependent and, therefore,
it can help us to understand at least some of the variation in the language
knowledge that individuals develop and draw on to participate in their
232 MULTICOMPETENCE AS A THEORY OF LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
social worlds. To refer to those individuals who are considered skilled
participants in a variety of communicative domains or practices as
instantiated within particular communities of practice, we suggest the term
multi-contextual communicative expert. We suggest this in lieu of terms such as
native speaker, bilinguals, and multilinguals, as they fail to capture the fact
that differences in language knowledge between individuals and groups
is not a matter of code but is, instead, tied to the quality and variety of
individuals’ experiences in multiple communicative contexts.
In making apparent that questions of knowledge cannot be separated from
questions of use, a usage-based view of multicompetence also has
implications for the design of studies concerned with multiple language use
and language learning. Research goals, for example, can no longer be to
reach an understanding of the language knowledge of multiple language
users divorced from real world contexts of use, but rather to understand it
as it is constructed by individuals-in-society-in-history (Newman and Holzman
1993). It is not a matter of investigating whether there are differences in
individuals’ language knowledge, as there surely will be differences. Rather,
it is a matter of examining the varying shapes and substance of individuals’
language knowledge as they are developed within specific contexts of action
that in turn are tied to specific communities of practice, with the ultimate
aim of understanding ‘the relationships between human action, on the one
hand, and the cultural, institutional, and historical situations in which this
action occurs on the other’ (Wertsch et al. 1995: 11).
New research goals call for a reconsideration of how and why we select
research participants. As noted earlier, studies of multicompetence have
typically constituted groups based on language code (e.g. English, Italian, or
Japanese) and number of codes. For instance, individuals with one code are
grouped together and labeled native speakers, while those with two or more
codes are grouped together and given the labels of bilinguals, trilinguals, or
multilinguals. Such groupings have persisted despite the many difficulties
noted in finding ‘like-minded’ participants. Grosjean (1998), for example,
observes that in research on bilingualism, bilingualism appears to be taken
to mean different things, with research participants varying, for example, by
manner of acquisition, degree of affective involvement, and context of use.
To remedy what conventionally have been considered to be distractions,
some (e.g. Grosjean 1998) have called for researchers to control for such
variation, and others (e.g. Balcom 2003; Jarvis 2003; Pavlenko 2003) to
increase comparative studies between monolinguals and bilinguals. In
contrast, since a usage-based perspective considers language knowledge
to be fundamentally variable, differences within and across communities
are treated as central concerns, i.e. phenomena to be explored and
understood rather than controlled or ignored. The question of participant
selection then becomes a matter of choosing to study those individuals-in-
society-in-history associated with specific communities of practice about
whose language knowledge we are interested in learning more.
JOAN KELLY HALL, AN CHENG, and MATTHEW CARLSON 233
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
New research goals call for additional, differently constructed research
methods that go beyond clinical or experimental elicitation data, such as
metalingual judgment tests, which, arguably, have been a hallmark of much
multicompetence-inspired research. We need methods such as ethnographies
of communication and discourse and conversation analyses that consider
naturally occurring contexts of action to be the primary source of data on
language knowledge. While means for collecting and analyzing data may
vary across these methods, their collective concern is with understanding
how individuals use their language knowledge to construct their commu-
nicative activities and how, at the same time, these activities serve to
construct individual knowledge (Hall 2003). We also need longitudinal
studies through which we can uncover the conventional or typical
instantiations of communicative activities and the wider sociohistorical
and political forces that give shape to them. On the more micro level,
by following individuals’ language use over time, we can discern how
individuals develop their specific communicative repertoires as participants
in their social worlds and how they use these repertoires to negotiate
their social identities and larger cultural discourses. In the end, what we
are after is not an understanding of language systems apart from individuals
or their contexts of use. Instead, we seek to understand the means by
which language users’ and learners’ involvement in the various constella-
tions of their practices is constituted and the particular forms of language
knowledge that emerge from such activity.11
There are at least three current research efforts in the broad field of applied
linguistics that, although traditionally considered to be outside the main
purview of multicompetence-inspired research, embody the perspective
articulated here and, as such, illustrate useful directions for future research
on multicompetence. The first draws on a language socialization paradigm12
and is concerned mainly with describing and chronicling the development
of individuals’ communicative repertoires as they participate in specific
contexts of action associated with particular communities of practice. The
second joins a situated learning perspective with conversation analytic
methods to investigate the particular communicative repertoires developed
by specific communities of language learners both within and outside of
the classroom.13 The third addresses the larger sociohistorical influences
on individual language knowledge through in-depth analyses of the
communicative repertoires shaping and shaped by particular communities
of practices specifically in non-western contexts.14 Although these research
efforts do not directly address the phenomenon of multicompetence, their
research agendas, especially their detailed research plans (e.g. their design,
including research questions and participant selection, and their data analysis
methodologies) can offer points of entry, cases for reference, and/or
lenses for data analysis to researchers aiming to develop, sustain, and
enrich a line of research that studies multicompetence from an emergent,
context-sensitive usage based perspective.
234 MULTICOMPETENCE AS A THEORY OF LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
CONCLUSION
Without a doubt, Cook’s initial proposal of the term multicompetence in the
early 1990s made a significant, positive contribution to the field of applied
linguistics as it helped to highlight the inadequacies of a view of L2 users as
deficient communicators or failed native speakers and offered scholars and
practitioners a useful means for viewing the knowledge of multiple language
learners from a perspective of difference rather than deficiency. With regard
to ideology, the impact of this insight has been substantial. However,
multicompetence research has yet to have an equal impact on theoretical
understandings of language. We have argued that this lack of influence is
due in part to the fact that findings on multilinguals’ language knowledge
have not been used to redress several key assumptions on which the initial
concept of multicompetence was based.
We have proposed a usage-based approach to multicompetence as a way of
accounting for the findings, not only of multicompetence research but also
of language variation and of recent findings for monolinguals in the domains
of functional and cognitive linguistics, in a more unified way. This view sees
language knowledge as provisional, grounded in and emergent from
language use in concrete social activity for specific purposes that are tied
to specific communities of practice. In addition to occasioning the need for
new concepts and terms that can capture contemporary understandings of
language knowledge, this shift in theoretical vision occasions the need for
differently designed studies on multicompetence, including new criteria for
selecting research participants and new methods of collecting and analyzing
data. It is our hope that the usage-based perspective on multicompetence
offered here will contribute to the development of a coherent research
agenda through the joint efforts of researchers interested in exploring the
multicompetent mind.
Final version received 5 June 2006
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank our colleagues Soojung Choi, Hanae Katayama, and Nicole Mills for their help with
earlier drafts of this paper. We also thank the anonymous reviewers and the journal editors for
their many helpful comments.
NOTES
1 Note, however, that IL was not
proposed as a ‘state of mind’ (see
Bialystok and Sharwood-Smith 1986),
as Cook conceptualizes multicompe-
tence, but rather as a dynamic and
developing L2 grammar that, while
JOAN KELLY HALL, AN CHENG, and MATTHEW CARLSON 235
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
separate from the L1 grammar, took
the L1 grammar as its starting point
and increasingly approximated the L2
grammar.
2 See, for example, Braine (1999) on
the non-native educator, and Cook
(1999) and Gomes de Matos (2002)
on the L2 learner.
3 We note, however, that SLA research
in general has documented transfer
effects at multiple levels of both
formal and functional linguistic
knowledge. See Odlin (2003) for a
review of this research.
4 For multiple examples, see the studies
in Cook (2003).
5 The significance of language variation
to our reconceptualization of multi-
competence is discussed in more detail
in the next section.
6 Tomasello (1999: 109) summarizes the
dialectic interaction between frequency
of exposure and pragmatic predictabi-
lity in language development: ‘To
acquire language the child must live in
a world that has structured social
activities . . .. For children, this often
involves the recurrence of the same
general activity on a regular or routine
basis so that they can come to discern
how the activity works and how the
various social roles in it function . . . if a
child were born into a world in which
the same event never recurred, the
same object never appeared twice, and
adults never used the same language
in the same context, it is difficult to
see how that child—whatever her
cognitive capabilities—could acquire a
natural language.’
7 We note that the term ‘crosslinguistic
influence’ has also been proposed
(Odlin 2003) as a way of avoiding
some of the problematic connotations
of ‘transfer’, but it does not solve the
problem addressed here, that of the
limiting influence of the systems view
of multilingualism.
8 For a fuller critique of the term native
speaker, see Rampton (1990).
9 This term has its roots in Dell Hymes’
(1962, 1972) early work on commu-
nicative competence.
10 We draw in large part from
Sternberg’s (e.g. 1985, 1998) work
on expertise and intelligence in
suggesting these terms.
11 Tony Crowley (1996: 28) notes that
such an approach would ‘seek and
analyse . . . the modes in which
language becomes important for its
users not as a faculty which they all
share at an abstract level, but as a
practice in which they all participate
in very different ways, to very
different effects, under very different
pressures, in their everyday lives.
12 See Watson-Gegeo (2004) for a
comprehensive review of this
research as it relates to SLA.
13 See Mondada and Doehler (2004) for
an example of classroom-based
research and Brouwer and Wagner
(2004) for a look at contexts of
learning outside the classroom.
14 See Makoni, Brutt-Griffler, and
Mashiri (in press) for an articulate
example of this direction.
REFERENCES
Balcom, P. 2003. ‘Cross-linguistic influence of L2
English on middle constructions in French’ in
V. J. Cook (ed.): Portraits of the L2 User. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Bates, E. 1999. ‘Plasticity, localization and
language development’ in S. Broman and
J. M. Fletcher (eds): The Changing Nervous
System: Neurobehavioral Consequences of Early
Brain Disorders. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Bates, E. 2003. ‘On the nature and nurture of
language’ in E. Bizzi, P. Catissano, and V. Volterra
236 MULTICOMPETENCE AS A THEORY OF LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
(eds): Frontiere della Biologia. [Frontiers of biology].
Il Cervello di Homo Sapiens [The brain of homo
sapiens]. Roma: Giovanni Trecani [http://crl.
ucsd.edu/~bates/papers/pdf/bates-inpress.pdf].
Bates, E., J. Elman, M. Johnson,
A. Karmiloff-Smith, D. Parisi, and
K. Plunkett. 1998. ‘Innateness and emerg-
entism’ in W. Bechtel and G. Graham (eds):
A Companion to Cognitive Science. Oxford: Basil
Blackwood.
Beretta, A. 1989. ‘Attention to form or meaning?
Error treatment in the Bangalore Project,’ TESOL
Quarterly 23/2: 283–303.
Bialystok, E. 1991. ‘Metalinguistic dimensions
of bilingual language proficiency’ in E. Bialystok
(ed.): Language Processing in Bilingual Children.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bialystok, E. 2001. ‘Metalinguistic aspects of
bilingual processing,’ Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 21: 169–81.
Bialystok, E. and M. Sharwood Smith. 1986.
‘Interlanguage is not a state of mind: An
evaluation of the construct for second language
acquisition,’ Applied Linguistics 6: 101–17.
Bowerman, M. and S. Levinson. 2001. Language
Acquisition and Conceptual Development.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Boyland, J. 2001. ‘Hypercorrect pronoun case in
English? Cognitive processes that account for
pronoun usage’ in J. Bybee and P. Hopper
(eds): Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic
Structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Braine, G. 1999. Non-Native Educators in
English Language Teaching. Mahwah: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Brouwer, C. and J. Wagner. 2004. ‘Development
issues in second language conversation.’ Journal
of Applied Linguistics 1/1: 29–47.
Bybee, J. 2003. ‘Cognitive processes in grammati-
calization’ in M. Tomasello (ed.): The New
Psychology of Language, Volume 2. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Bybee, J. and P. Hopper. 2001a. ‘Introduction
to frequency and the emergence of linguistic
structure’ in J. Bybee and P. Hopper (eds):
Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bybee, J. and P. Hopper. 2001b. Frequency and
the Emergence of Linguistic Structure. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Bybee, J. and M.Noonan. 2002. Complex Sentences
in Grammar and Discourse. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Cenoz, J. 2003. ‘The intercultural style hypothesis:
L1 and L2 interaction in requesting behavior’ in
V. J. Cook (ed.): Effects of the Second Language on
the First. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Cenoz, J., B. Hufeisen, and U. Jessner. 2001.
Crosslinguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisi-
tion. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Chaiklin, S. and J. Lave. 1993. Understanding
Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Chomsky, N. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cook, V. J. 1991. ‘The poverty-of-the-stimulus
argument and multicompetence,’ Second
Language Research 7/2: 103–17.
Cook, V. J. 1992. ‘Evidence for multicompetence.’
Language Learning 42/4: 557–91.
Cook, V. J. 1995. ‘Multi-competence and the
learning of many languages,’ Language, Culture
and Curriculum 8/2: 93–98.
Cook, V. J. 1999. ‘Going beyond the native
speaker in language teaching.’ TESOL Quarterly
33/2: 185–209.
Cook, V. J. 2002a. ‘Background to the L2 user in
V. J. Cook (ed.): Portraits of the L2 User. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Cook,V. J. 2002b. Portraits of the L2User. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Cook,V. J. 2003a. ‘The changing L1 in the L2 users
mind’ in V. J. Cook (ed.): Effects of the Second
Language on the First. Clevedon: Multilingual
Matters.
Cook, V. J. 2003b. Effects of the Second Language
on the First. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Cook, V. J., E. Iarossi, N. Stellakis, and
Y. Tokumaru. 2003. ‘Effects of the L2 on the
syntactic processing of the L1’ in V. J. Cook (ed.):
Effects of the Second Language on the First.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Coppetiers, R. 1987. ‘Competence differences
between native and near-native speakers,’
Language 63/3: 545–73.
Coupland, N. and A. Jaworski. 2006. The
New Sociolinguistics Reader. Houndmills, UK:
Palgrave.
Corder, S. P. 1978. ‘Language-learner language’
in J. C. Richards (ed.): Understanding Second and
Foreign Language Learning: Issues and Approaches.
Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Crowley, T. 1996. Language in History. London:
Routledge.
Cummins, J. 1979. ‘Linguistic interdependence
and the educational development of
JOAN KELLY HALL, AN CHENG, and MATTHEW CARLSON 237
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
bilingual children,’ Review of Educational Research
49: 222–51.
Dewaele, J. 2002. ‘Individual differences in L2
fluency: The effect of neurobiological correlates’
in V. J. Cook (ed.): Portraits of the L2 User.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Diaz, R. M. 1985. ‘Bilingual cognitive develop-
ment: Addressing three gaps in current research,’
Child Development. 56: 1376–88.
Ellis, R. 1985. ‘A variable competence model of
second language acquisition,’ IRAL 23: 47–59.
Elman, J. 1999. ‘Origins of language: A conspiracy
theory’ in B. MacWhinney (ed.): The Emergence
of Language. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Fabbro, F. 2002. ‘The neurolinguistics of L2 users’
in V. J. Cook. (ed.): Portraits of the L2 User.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Firth, A. and J. Wagner. 1997. ‘On discourse,
communication, and (some) fundamental
concepts in SLA research,’ The Modern Language
Journal 81: 285–300.
Fitch, K. and R. Sanders. 2005. Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Flege, J. E. 1987. ‘The production of new and
similar phones in a foreign language: Evidence
for the effect of equivalence classification,’
Journal of Phonetics 15: 47–65.
Ford, C., B. Fox, and S. Thompson. 2003. ‘Social
interaction and grammar’ in M. Tomasello, (ed.):
The New Psychology of Language, Volume 2.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Frisch, S. A., N. R. Large, B. Zawaydeh, and
D. B. Pisoni. 2001. ‘Emergent phonotactic
generalizations in English and Arabic’ in
J. Bybee and P. Hopper (eds): Frequency and
the Emergence of Linguistic Structure. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Galambos, S. J. and S. Goldin-Meadow. 1990.
‘The effects of learning two languages on
metalinguistic awareness,’ Cognition 34: 1–56.
Goetz, P. 2003. ‘The effects of bilingualism
on theory of mind development.’ Bilingualism,
Language and Cognition 6/1: 1–15.
Gomes de Matos, F. 2002. ‘Second
language learners rights’ in V. J. Cook (ed.):
Portraits of the L2 User. Clevedon: Multilingual
Matters.
Grosjean, F. 1998. ‘Studying bilinguals:
Methodological and conceptual issues,’
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 1/2: 131–49.
Hall, J. K. 2003. Teaching and Researching Language
and Culture. London: Pearson.
Hanks, W. 1996. Language and Communicative
Practices. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Herdina, P. and U. Jessner. 2002. A Dynamic
Model of Multilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual
Matters.
Hoffman, C. and J. Ytsma. 2003. Trilingualism
in Family, School and Community. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Hopper, P. J. 1998. ‘Emergent grammar’ in
M. Tomasello (ed.): The New Psychology of
Language, Volume 1. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Hymes, D. 1962. ‘The ethnography of
speaking’ in T. Gladwin and W. C. Sturtevant
(eds): Anthropology and human behavior.
Washington DC: Anthropology Society of
Washington.
Hymes, D. 1972. ‘Models of the interaction of
language and social life’ in J. J. Gumperz and
D. Hymes (eds): Directions in Sociolinguistics: The
Ethnography of Communication. New York: Holt,
Rinehart, and Winston.
Jarvis, S. 2003. ‘Probing the effects of the L2 on
the L1: A case study’ in V. J. Cook (ed.): Effects
of the Second Language on the First. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Jessner,U.2003. ‘A dynamic approach to language
attrition in multilingual systems’ in V. J. Cook
(ed.): Effects of the Second Language on the First.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Kasper, G. 2004. ‘Participant orientations in
German conversation-for-learning,’ Modern
Language Journal 88/4: 551–67.
Kecskes, I. and T. Papp. 2000. Foreign Language
and Mother Tongue. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Kecskes, I. and T. Papp. 2003. ‘How to demon-
strate the conceptual effect of L2 on L1? Methods
and techniques’ in V.J. Cook (ed.).
Kramsch, C. 2000. ‘Second language acquisition,
applied linguistics, and the teaching of foreign
languages,’ The Modern Language Journal 84/3:
311–26.
Langacker, R. W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive
Grammar: Volume I. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Langacker, R. W. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive
Grammar: Volume II. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Langacker, R. W. 2000. ‘A dynamic usage-
based model’ in M. Barlow and S. Kemmer
(eds): Usage-Based Models of Language. Stanford,
CA: CSLI.
238 MULTICOMPETENCE AS A THEORY OF LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
Lantolf, J. P. 2000. Sociocultural Theory and Second
Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Laufer, B. 2003. ‘The influence of L2 on L1
collocational knowledge and on L1 lexical diver-
sity in free written expression’ in V. J. Cook (ed.):
Effects of the Second Language on the First.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Lave, J. and E. Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning:
Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Leather, J. andA. James. 1996. ‘Second language
speech and the influence of the first language’
in W. C. Ritchie and T. K. Bhatia (eds): Handbook
of Second Language Acquisition. San Diego:
Academic Press.
Lieven, E., H. Behrens, J. Speares, and
M. Tomasello. 2003. ‘Early syntactic creativity:
A usage-based approach,’ Journal of Child
Language 30: 333–70.
MacWhinney, B. 2001. ‘Emergentist approaches
to language’ in J. Bybee and P. Hopper (eds):
Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Makoni, C., J. Brutt-Griffler, andP.Mashiri. (in
press). ‘Mother tongues in search of speakers:
Crossing ethnic boundaries in Southern Africa,’
Language in Society
Mondada, L. and S. P. Doehler. 2004. ‘Second
language acquisition as situated practice:
Task accomplishment in the French second
language classroom,’ Modern Language Journal
88/4: 501–18.
Nayak, R., N. Hasen, M. Krueger, and
B. McLaughlin. 1989. ‘Language-learning
strategies in monolingual and multilingual
adults,’ Language Learning 40: 221–44.
Newman, F. and L. Holzman. 1993. Lev Vygotsky:
Revolutionary Scientist. London: Routledge.
Nicoladis, E., and F. Genesee. 1996. ‘A long-
itudinal study of pragmatic differentiation in
young bilingual children,’ Language Learning
46: 439–64.
Ochs, E., Schegloff, E., and S. Thompson. 1996.
Interaction and Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Odlin, T. 2003. ‘Cross-linguistic influence’
in C. Doughty and M. Long (eds):
Handbook on Second Language Acquisition.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Pavlenko, A. 2000. ‘L2 influence on L1 in late
bilingualism,’ Issues in Applied Linguistics 11/2:
175–205.
Pavlenko, A. 2003. ‘‘I feel clumsy speaking
Russian’: L2 influence on L1 in narratives of
Russian L2 users of English’ in V. J. Cook (ed.):
Effects of the Second Language on the First.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Pavlenko, A. and S. Jarvis. 2002. ‘Bidirectional
transfer,’ Applied Linguistics 23:190–214.
Porte, G. 2003. ‘English from a distance:
Code-mixing and blending in the L1 output
of long-term resident overseas EFL teachers’ in
V. J. Cook (ed.): Effects of the Second Language on
the First. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Rampton, M. B. 1990. ‘Displacing the ‘native
speaker’: Expertise, affiliation and inheritance,’
ELT Journal 44/2: 338–43.
Rowland, C., J. Pine, and E. Lieven. 2003.
‘Determinants of acquisition order in wh-
questions: re-evaluating the role of caregiver
speech,’ Journal of Child Language 30: 609–35.
Ruffman, T., J. Perner,M.Naito, L. Parkin, and
W.A.Clements.1998. ‘Older (but not younger)
siblings facilitate false belief understanding,’
Developmental Psychology 34: 161–74.
Selinker, L. 1972. ‘Interlanguage,’ IRAL 10:
219–31.
Selinker, L. and D. Douglas. 1987. ‘LSP and
interlanguage: Some empirical studies,’ English
for Specific Purposes 6/2: 75–85.
Snow, C. 1999. ‘Social perspectives on the
emergence of language’ in B. MacWhinney
(ed.): The Emergence of Language. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Sternberg, R. 1985. Beyond IQ: A Triarchic Theory
of Human Intelligence. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Sternberg, R. 1998. ‘Abilities are forms of
developing expertise,’ Educational Researcher 27:
11–20.
Sternberg, R. and J. Horvath. 1995. ‘A prototype
view of expert teaching,’ Educational Researcher.
24: 9–17.
Tarone, E. 1983. ‘On the variability of
interlanguage systems,’ Applied Linguistics 4:
143–63.
Thompson, S. A. and P. J. Hopper. 2001.
‘Transitivity, clause structure, and argument
structure: Evidence from conversation’ in
J. Bybee and P. Hopper (eds): Frequency and
the Emergence of Linguistic Structure. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Tomasello, M. 1998. The New Psychology of
Language, Volume 1. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
JOAN KELLY HALL, AN CHENG, and MATTHEW CARLSON 239
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from
Tomasello, M. 1999. The Cultural Origins of Human
Cognition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Tomasello, M. 2003a. Constructing a Language:
A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tomasello, M. 2003b. The New Psychology of
Language, Volume 2. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Vygotsky, L. S. 1986. Thought and Language.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wardhaugh,R. 2002. Introduction to Sociolinguistics.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Watson-Gegeo, K. A. 2004. ‘Mind, language, and
epistemology: Toward a language socialization
paradigm for SLA,’ Modern Language Journal
88/3: 331–50.
Wenger, E. 1999. Communities of Practice: Learning,
Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Wertsch, J. V., P. del Rio, and A. Alvarez.
1995. ‘Sociocultural studies: History, action
and mediation’ in J. V. Wertsch, P. del Rio,
and A. Alvarez (eds): Sociocultural Studies of
Mind. New York: Cambridge University Press.
240 MULTICOMPETENCE AS A THEORY OF LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE
at State University of N
ew Y
ork at Albany L
ibrary on September 1, 2012
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/D
ownloaded from