Language and Cognition : the Second Language User

Bilingualism has two possible cognitive outcomes. One is that the very knowledge and use of two languages affects cognition, regardless of the languages involved -the macro level. An example of this may be increased metalinguistic awareness (Bialystok, 2001) or delayed onset of Alzheimer’s (Bialystok, Craik, Klein, & Viswanathan, 2004). Another outcome is that the learning of two languages affects cognition because of the characteristics of the languages involved, and how the languages code a given aspect of the world. We may refer to this as the micro level. For instance, suppose a monolingual user of Russian linguistically encodes two different shades of blue where a monolingual user of English has one: In this case a bilingual who speaks both English and Russian may distinguish two colors that monolingual English speakers consider one. An English-Dutch bilingual, however, would not differ from an English monolingual, because these two languages do not have different classifications of blue. While this volume is mostly directed at the micro outcome, the macro outcome (or interactions between the micro and the macro levels) cannot be ruled out.