Bi- and multilingualism as a metaphor for research

Abstract

I would like to begin by thanking the editors of the journal, and in particular Carmen Silva-Corvalán, for inviting such a wonderful group of commentators, united in their commitment to spirited yet courteous academic debate and diverse in their academic allegiances, theories, and methodologies. I also thank the commentators for the kindness and generosity of their comments, which offered rich material for reflection. Reading the comments for the first time, I became concerned that a coherent response that addresses the Emotion Stroop Effect in the same breath as the textual explorations of the “third space” may be all but impossible. I thought about the resemblance between the academic enterprise and the phenomenon of bi- and multilingualism, with academic paradigms establishing their own regimes of truth and creating languages that are often mutually incomprehensible. For some, true answers can only come from quantifiable empirical data, others look for veracity in texts and personal testimonies. Some take for granted that “monolingual controls” are a necessary component of solid research on bilingualism, while others doubt the meaningfulness of such a comparison, reminding us that languages are artificial constructions (Makoni and Pennycook, 2007) and questioning the very existence of crosslinguistic influence (Hall, Cheng and Carlson, 2006). And so we proceed with our parallel lines of research inspired by similar questions about the human condition and yet carried out in ways so distinct as to be incompatible.

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