So What Makes a Person Bilingual, Anyway?

Defining a complicated term, plus four case studies (meet my family!)

After I released a newsletter a few weeks ago about the paradox of language learning in America, I got some interesting feedback from a reader.

“Good article, but it feels like you skipped a step,” they wrote. “How much language do you need to know to qualify as bilingual? If I took French classes decades ago and still remember some, does that make me bilingual?”

This is a GREAT question. And I’ll just answer it right off the bat: it’s a little bit of a gray area. And it’s complicated even more by the bajillions of terms that we use to categorize bilinguals.

We call bilinguals who are good at listening but not as good at speaking passive bilinguals (or receptive bilinguals). Bilinguals who can speak, on the other hand, are productive bilinguals. People who learned their second language (L2) the same time as their first (L1) are considered simultaneous bilinguals, while people who acquired their L2 later in life are sequential bilinguals. Bilingualism can be elective - by choice - or it can be circumstantial.

And this isn’t even the half of it. Some terms serve specific purposes: for example, “emergent bilingual” was coined to shy away from the terms “limited English proficient” and “English language learners” in schools. But you can also be labeled an incipient bilingual, an ascendant bilingual, a recessive bilingual, and more.

(It’s worth noting that some scholars are increasingly in favor of rejecting two concepts — semilingualism and balanced bilingualism — and I generally agree with this conclusion.)

So, there are a plethora of ways in which we can categorize people who have skills in multiple languages. How do we make bilingualism mean anything at all?!

Defining bilingualism

Instinctively, in search for some kind of standard, we look to fluency to define when exactly someone can be considered bilingual. But this can also be a surprisingly sticky subject.

Grosjean (2012) reminds us that most bilinguals don’t have equal fluency in their languages (rejecting the idealized “balanced bilingual”). Some might have “non-native accents” in one of their languages, or are illiterate in one or more of their languages. Does this disqualify them from being considered bilingual?

Because of this dilemma, many scholars prefer another criteria for defining bilingualism: language use. If a person is using two or more languages in their daily life — even if it’s in varying capacities — this could be grounds to categorize them as bilingual.

And when it comes to how bilinguals use language, it’s really quite a dynamic process (Garcia, 2009). There are some domains of life in which one language is used over the other. And there are plenty of instances when bilinguals switch up their languages even mid-sentence or mid-word. (I recall saying as a kid, “我在看ing!” — Chinese for “I’m looking” + an English “-ing,” maybe to emphasize the continuity of it all.)

The reality is that bilingualism exists on a wide and vast spectrum. So I thought we needed some examples. And what better examples than my immediate family?

Below, you’ll find one of the members of my family, a brief summary of their language practices & language learning history, and a poll to answer the question: Are they bilingual?

(These are ranked from easy to hard. Believe me, it will get harder to decide!)

4 case studies (featuring, The Ericson Family)

I-Lin

I-Lin was born in Taiwan and grew up speaking both Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien. She learned enough English in school to successfully pass the TOEFL, but really put it to use once she immigrated to the United States in her 20s.

As a classically trained singer, she also took classes in French, Italian, and German, but doesn’t remember much now and never really uses those languages. She speaks Mandarin with her friends and family daily (less so Taiwanese Hokkien, but it occasionally appears, depending on the person). She also uses plenty of English to go about daily life in the States.

My answer:

Yes! Maybe a trick question, because at least three languages were mentioned (Mandarin, English, and Taiwanese Hokkien… plus a LOT of languages that she studied) — so wouldn’t she be multilingual?! If you want to get picky, multilingual could be a more accurate characterization of her language use, but many scholars just use “bilingual” as a blanket term for anyone who speaks 2+ languages. So, my mom would definitely be part of the bilingual category.

Rebecca

Rebecca grew up speaking Mandarin with her mom, her maternal extended family, and her mom’s Mandarin-speaking community. She also grew up speaking English in the States. In high school, she took three years of Spanish, but never uses it in the context of interaction today.

While she has a Chinese minor from her undergraduate work, she still heavily questions her literacy skills; she is able to send texts and read simple messages in Chinese, but would have very poor comprehension of a Chinese news article. She doesn’t use Mandarin much in her everyday life except for when she talks to her mom on the phone or throws a phrase in while chatting with other Mandarin-speaking friends (although she would really, really like to use it more).

My answer:

Yes! While this situation is complicated by the fact that she doesn’t use Mandarin a lot in her daily life, it seems to be a result of her immediate context of language users, not an inability to participate should the opportunity arise. So I would definitely categorize her (…myself) as bilingual.

John

John was born and raised in the midwest United States as an English speaker. He spent a summer in Colombia as a child where he picked up some Spanish, and also took Spanish classes in junior high. He studied German in college to fulfill a music performance degree requirement. Spanish and German don’t come up much in his daily life today, though.

After marrying I-Lin, John decided to learn some Mandarin to be a good language learning role model for his future kids (thanks Dad!). He got more serious about putting the language to use when he, I-Lin, and their first child (James) lived and worked in Taiwan for a year. Today, he almost always uses English, but will frequently crack a joke or two in Mandarin at the dinner table, and is surprisingly good at eavesdropping on I-Lin’s Chinese conversations.

My answer:

Yes (controversial)! I don’t even know if my dad would agree with this, but I would tentatively categorize him as a passive bilingual. (Maybe passive plus?) He doesn’t hold many Mandarin conversations with people but can exchange greetings and small talk with pretty minimal issues. He also spends a good amount of time listening to Mandarin — perhaps even on a daily basis — and I think he has more receptive language skills than he would give himself credit for. So, he’s using Mandarin fairly regularly, even if it’s not the most “advanced.” Surprise, Dad!

James

James has Down syndrome and autism and, while not completely non-verbal, he expresses himself through a fairly limited set of words and phrases. The vast majority of those phrases are English, with a handful of exceptions in Mandarin, no doubt a result of being cared for by his Mandarin-speaking mother.

Recently, when John and Rebecca were participating in a Mandarin conversation, James interjected with a Mandarin phrase of his own, indicating that he likely has a distinction in his mind between English speech and Mandarin speech. He also recalls many of the Chinese songs that were taught to him in childhood, and can still sing along happily to “兩隻老虎“ (a kid’s song called Two Tigers).

My answer:

Yes (more controversial)! This has been an ongoing conversation in my family for a few months now, with my mom and dad questioning my brother’s bilingualism and me saying that I really think he knows more Mandarin than we give him credit for.

It’s certainly hard to know for sure because of his limited speech overall, but the fact that James is able to still participate in the bilingual events of our family (like Mandarin songs — John and I-Lin are both musicians) makes me believe that he can be categorized as a passive bilingual. And regardless, bilingualism clearly is part of our family identity and dynamic. I think it would be misguided to exclude him from being a part of that.

(I still have much to learn about bilingualism and disability, and have only started reading about this specific issue very recently. I attribute this in part to the fact that my field — applied linguistics — seems fairly uninterested in dealing with issues of L2 learning and disability. Would love to hear from the lurking applied linguists in this newsletter to get more perspective — I know you’re there!!)

Bilingualism: More broad than you might think

Not everyone might agree with my conclusions about my bilingual family. And that’s ok! But bilingualism looks really different, and is always influenced not just by individual fluency, but also by family practices, community norms, social expectations, and more.

So, sorry to disappoint, but it’s hard to make a clear cut-off for who gets to be called bilingual and who doesn’t. But maybe that’s a more accurate characterization of how language lives, breathes, and moves in our lives and our world, anyway. And that’s all the more beautiful!

Thanks for reading this week’s edition of Everybody Talks. If you’ve been around for a bit, you might have noticed that the URL has changed from rebeccaericson.substack.com to everybodytalks.substack.com. Gasp! This is because I felt like it was a better representation of this newsletter, and my last name is changing in about two months anyway (!!!). The links should still be working with no problems, but let me know if you encounter any errors.

See you next week!