Bilingualism in the Spanish-Speaking World
Linguistic and Cognitive Perspectives

An introduction to bilingualism in the Spanish-speaking world, looking at topics including language contact, bilingual societies, code-switching and language choice.

Jennifer Austin (Author), María Blume (Author), Liliana Sánchez (Author)

9780521115537, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 April 2015

248 pages, 18 b/w illus. 3 maps 12 tables
25.5 x 17.9 x 1.5 cm, 0.65 kg

'Austin, Blume and Sánchez take a careful, fair, and insightful look at the social, biological and linguistic implications of bilingualism. [This book] gently but decisively takes us well beyond Bloomfield's myth of the perfect bilingual, while portraying and elucidating the rich diversity of ways of being bilingual for individuals and communities.' Ana Pérez-Leroux, University of Toronto

Bilingualism has given rise to significant changes in Spanish-speaking countries. In the US, the increasing importance of Spanish has engendered an English-only movement; in Peru, contact between Spanish and Quechua has brought about language change; and in Iberia, speakers of Basque, Galician and Catalan have made their languages a compulsory part of school curricula and local government. This book provides an introduction to bilingualism in the Spanish-speaking world, looking at topics such as language contact, bilingual societies, bilingualism in schools, code-switching, language transfer, the emergence of new varieties of Spanish, and language choice - and how all of these phenomena affect the linguistic and cognitive development of the speaker. Using examples and case studies drawn primarily from Spanish/English bilinguals in the US, Spanish/Quechua bilinguals in Peru and Spanish/Basque bilinguals in Spain, it provides diverse perspectives on the experience of being bilingual in distinct cultural, political and socioeconomic contexts.

Introduction
1. What does it mean to be bilingual?
2. Bilingual brains, bilingual minds
3. Bilingual development and bilingual outcomes
Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Sociolinguistics [CFB], Linguistics [CF], Language [C]