Understanding Multilingualism

an Introduction

Schwieter, John W.
Ferreira, Aline
Wei, Li

Written by internationally recognized researchers and educators, Understanding Multilingualism: An Introduction provides detailed coverage of the various dimensions of modern multilingualism. It highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the field by exploring the broad spectrum of different sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and neurocognitive approaches to the study of multilingualism.
The text begins by defining and clarifying the scope of multilingualism studies as a distinctive, interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Subsequent chapters discuss the historical development and theoretical models of multilingualism, how the brain processes multiple languages, the effect of multilingualism on human cognition, how multilingual processing changes over the human lifespan, societal management of multilingualism, multilingual education, and impact of technological advancement on multilingualism. The book concludes by addressing the prospect of a post-multilingual world and methodological issues in studying multilingualism.