BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 36, 3-15 (1989) Neurolinguists, Beware! The Bilingual Is Not Two Monolinguals in One Person FRANCOIS GROSJEAN UniversitP de Neuchritel, Switzerland Two views of bilingualism are presented-the monolingual or fractional view which holds that the bilingual is (or should be) two monolinguals in one person, and the bilingual or wholistic view which states that the coexistence of two languages in the bilingual has produced a unique and specific speaker-hearer. These views affect how we compare monolinguals and bilingual% study language learning and language forgetting, and examine the speech modes-monolingual and bilingual-that characterize the bilingual’s everyday interactions. The im- plications of the wholistic view on the neurolinguistics of bilingualism, and in particular bilingual aphasia, are discussed. 0 1989 Academic Press, Inc. This paper is divided into three parts. In the first, a particular view of bilingualism, termed the monolingual view, is discussed and criticized. It holds that bilinguals are (or should be) two monolinguals in one person and that they can therefore be studied like any other monolingual. In the second part, a different, more recent, theory is examined. The bilingual (or wholistic) view holds that the bilingual is NOT the sum of two complete or incomplete monolinguals; rather, he or she has a unique and specific linguistic configuration. This view is described and discussed with reference to three different domains: the comparison of monolinguals and bilinguals, language learning and forgetting, and the speech modes- monolingual and bilingual-that bilinguals find themselves in during their everyday interactions. In the third part, the implications of this view on the neurolinguistic study of bilingualism are discussed. The assessment of the linguistic and communicative abilities of bilingual aphasics before and after injury is examined, and suggestions for the examination of patients are proposed. This paper was written while the author was on leave at the Universite de NeuchPtel, Switzerland. Its preparation was supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation (BNS-8404565) and the Department of Health and Human Services (RR 07143). Requests for reprints should be addressed to: FranGois Grosjean, Laboratoire de traltement du langage et de la parole, Universite de NeuchAtel, 2OCQ Neuchltel, Switzerland. 3 0093-934X/89 $3.00 Copyright 0 1989 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.4 FRANCOIS GROSJEAN (1) THE BILINGUAL IS NOT TWO MONOLINGUALS IN ONE PERSON A strong version of the monolingual (or fractional) view of bilingualism is that the bilingual has (or should have) two separate and isolable language competencies; these competencies are (or should be) similar to those of the two corresponding monolinguals; therefore, the bilingual is (or should be) two monolinguals in one person. This view, which is prevalent among many researchers, educators, and bilinguals themselves, is a result of the strong monolingual bias that has been prevalent in the language sciences. Monolinguals have been the models of the “normal” speaker- hearer, and the methods of investigation developed to study monolingual speech and language have been used with little, if any, modification to study bilinguals. This monolingual view of bilingualism has had a number of negative consequences (Grosjean, 1985a). The first is that bilinguals (which we define as those people who use two or more languages in their everyday lives) have usually been described and evaluated in terms of the fluency and balance they have in their two languages. The “real” bilingual is seen as the person who is equally and fully fluent in two languages; he or she is the “ideal,” the “true,” the “balanced,” the “perfect” bilingual (see Bloomfield, 1933; Thiery, 1978). All the others, who in fact represent the vast majority of people who use two languages in their everyday lives, are “not really” bilingual or are “special types” of bilinguals; hence the numerous qualifiers found in the literature: “dominant,” “un- balanced,” “semilingual,” “alingual,” etc. This search for the “true” bilingual has used traditional language tests as well as psycholinguistic tests which are constructed around the notion of “balance”; invariably the “ideal” bilinguals are the ones who do as well in one language as in the other. All others are somehow “less bilingual” and are put into an indeterminate category. A second consequence of the monolingual view is that language skills in bilinguals have almost always been appraised in terms of monolingual standards. The tests used with bilinguals are often quite simply the tests employed with the monolinguals of the two corresponding language groups. These tests rarely take into account the bilingual’s DIFFERENTIAL NEEDS for the two languages or the DIFFERENT SOCIAL FUNCTIONS of these languages (what a language is used for, with whom, where, etc.; see Fishman, 1965). Many monolingual tests are quite inappropriate to evaluate the language skills of bilinguals; others need to be adapted substantially. A third effect of the monolingual view is that the cognitive and de- velopmental consequences of bilingualism have received close scrutiny. Because this view considers bilingualism as the exception, when, in fact, half of the world’s population is bilingual, it has long been held that theBILINGUAL% NOT TWO MONOLINGUALS 5 knowledge and use of two languages will have profound (negative or positive) effects on a person’s psychology and cognitive functioning. And yet, despite innumerable studies, the “effects” literature has never been able to factor out the sole bilingualism variable from a host of other linguistic and sociocultural factors: the language used to test the bilinguals; the use they make of their languages; their