Suzanne Romaine - Bilingualism

1989. Bilingualism. Oxford: Blackwell. [second revised edition 1995]
[nominated for the British Association of Applied Linguistics Book of the Year]

Preface to Second Edition
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Study of Bilingualism
Chapter 2 The Bilingual Speech Community
Chapter 3 The Bilingual Brain and the Bilingual Individual
Chapter 4 Code-switching and Communicative Competence
Chapter 5 The Bilingual Child
Chapter 6 Bilingualism and Education
Chapter 7 Attitudes towards Bilingualism
Chapter 8 Conclusion
Notes
References
Index

Description

Since it was first published in 1989, Suzanne Romaine's book has been recognized as the most authoritative introduction to the sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics of bilingualism. The new edition has been completely revised to incorporate recent work in this fast developing field. Throughout the book, bilingualism is seen as both a societal and cognitive phenomenon. The book explores various aspects of bilingual behaviour, such as code switching and language mixing, in terms of their social functions within the bilingual speech community as well as in terms of neurolinguistic organization in the individual speaker. The author also assesses the positive and negative claims made for the effects of bilingualism on children's cognitive, social and academic development, and examines the assumptions behind various language policies and programs for bilingual children. In all this, Romaine draws on her own research with Panjabi/English bilinguals in Britain, and Tok Pisin/English bilingual children in Papua New Guinea.

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