A Journey in Languages and Cultures: The Life of a Bicultural Bilingual
François Grosjean
Abstract
The author of this book is known the world over for his work on those who live with two or more languages. He has been called “one of the grand old men of research on bilingualism” because of his holistic view of bilingualism and his many studies undertaken over a span of some fifty years. And yet, little is known about François Grosjean. In what is a very human and at times touching work, he reveals how the vagaries of life took him from being a monolingual child in a small village outside Paris to being bilingual and bicultural in four different countries. He has changed his dominance in Eng ... More
The author of this book is known the world over for his work on those who live with two or more languages. He has been called “one of the grand old men of research on bilingualism” because of his holistic view of bilingualism and his many studies undertaken over a span of some fifty years. And yet, little is known about François Grosjean. In what is a very human and at times touching work, he reveals how the vagaries of life took him from being a monolingual child in a small village outside Paris to being bilingual and bicultural in four different countries. He has changed his dominance in English and French a number of times because of his repeated migrations, and has also acquired, used, and then lost other languages. His life in languages and cultures played a major role in his scholarly work on bilingualism and biculturalism which he describes in a clear and readily understandable prose. Anyone interested in what it means to grow up and to live as a bicultural bilingual will want to follow the author’s own journey through languages and cultures.
Keywords:
bilingualism,
bilingual,
biculturalism,
becoming bilingual,
language dominance,
holistic view,
spoken language,
sign language,
culture,
cultural identity
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2019 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198754947 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: June 2019 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198754947.001.0001 |
