Bilingualism and multilingualism

In this chapter, we present an overview of bi/multilingualism, focusing on the ways in which bi/multilingualism has been understood, researched, and taught. We begin with historical perspectives, including the transdisciplinary “turns” of the past several decades: the social turn, the practice turn, the multilingual turn, and the trans- turn. We next present approaches to researching bi/multilingualism, divided into three central areas of scholarship - psychological, linguistic, and anthropological and sociolinguistic - and we lay out key contributions of each. Thirdly, we outline bi/multilingual approaches to education, highlighting distinctions between programme types and contrasts with non-bilingual approaches to language teaching. We review key outcomes and current debates in bi/multilingual education. Finally, we discuss the role of translation in bi/multilingual learning, both as a practice in which many bi/multilingual children engage at home and as a useful pedagogical tool in the bi/multilingual classroom. We conclude with a brief recapitulation of the theories and research covered in the chapter and consider emerging areas of scholarship.