How to frame bilingualism in context: Putting people and places in mind

Rethinking Multilingual Experience through a Systems Framework of Bilingualism: Response to Commentaries

“…Kroll et al (2022) commented that we did not adequately discuss sociocultural phenomena such as language identity, although we disagree that the Systems Framework of Bilingualism, which is fundamentally motivated by social factors including identity, would fail to incorporate them. For example, Kroll and colleagues indicate societal factors, which potentially exert distal influence on individual-level outcomes, impact perceived identity.…”

“…Gullifer and Anderson's commentary also reinforces our point that significant practical challenges arise when curating and analyzing complex datasets relevant to a socioecological view of multilingualism. Related to this, Kroll et al (2022) noted that different types of data (e.g., qualitative vs. quantitative) can vary dramatically in their perceived relevance and prevalence across disciplines (e.g., psycholinguistics vs. sociolinguistics), making it tricky at best to align knowledge across disciplines. Kroll and colleagues' commentary also taught us that we must strive for greater precision and clarity when integrating across a wealth of disciplinary experimental or theoretical traditions that address inherently complex phenomena such as language.…”

“…Gullifer and Anderson (2022) asserted that our approach was innovative within the study of multilingualism and that there is merit for adult psycholinguistic researchers to embrace the complexity that is appropriate for the cognitive phenomena of interest (e.g., it helps defend against overly simple scientific stories where complexity is ignored). Kroll, Chan, Cheng, and Scontras (2022) emphasized the historic opportunities and challenges associated with bringing multiple disciplinary perspectives together and commented that our approach is an ambitious attempt to do so. Finally, Luk and Grundy (2022) agreed that it is time for people who study the cognitive and neuroscientific basis of language to embrace socioecological theories, attending to the qualitative differences that characterize multilingualism.…”

“…Especially noteworthy with respect to development is work highlighted in Luk and Grundy's commentary, which described how sociocultural interactions within families reflect a kind of family language policy that has long-lasting impacts on a child's second language behaviors. Shifting to neuroscience, DeLuca (2022; see also Kroll et al, 2022) noted the importance of neuroscientific data, which informs neurocognitive theories of how bilingual experience impacts brain function and structure, and that there can always be convergences and divergence between behavioral and neural data. We fully agree that neural measures will be important to investigate in a manner guided by a Systems Framework of Bilingualism , which could also enrich leading theories and exciting data collection in this area (reviewed in Calabria, Costa, Green & Abutalebi, 2018; Green, 2022; Green & Kroll, 2019; Pliatsikas, 2020).…”

Multilingual and social experience: The Systems Framework of Bilingualism

“…Along similar lines, Luk and Grundy (2023) add to the discussion by reinforcing Titone and Tiv's (2023) position, pointing to two further aspects to be considered: i) bilingual experience is interactional; and ii) outcomes of comparing monolinguals to bilinguals will vary across contexts. Finally, Kroll, Chan, Cheng, and Scontras (2023) remind us of a very important aspect that has been not discussed in depth in the keynote article: bidirectionality. Indeed, Kroll et al (2023) make the point that not only do the findings from psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics need to be placed in a social context, but they need to be understood as holding important consequences for sociolinguistic approaches.…”