The book is a manual for people who are not familiar to the topic “balanced bilinguals”. The author provides brief explanation about some key aspects of psycholinguistics such as bilingualism, and cognitive approaches. Besides the definitions there are also very updated examples to illustrate the concepts and some controversial aspects about them.
The audience will meet many terms related to the topic Bilingualism:
The origins and production;
Categories and types of bilingualism;
Costs and benefits.
According to the author, an adult is considered balanced bilingual when he or she is considered a native speaker in two linguistic communities and had learnt both languages before puberty ( and had made an effort to maintain the two languages ). However the author establishes a comparison between balanced and dominant. According to the author balanced bilingualism is rare, and most of bilinguals may not be aware of which language is the dominant. By the end of the section the researcher exposes some aspect that may influence the creation of a dominant language for a bilingual.
Source:
Field, John. Psycholinguistics: the Key Concepts, 1st edition, Routledge Press, London, UK, 2004.
