As bilingual individuals enter the educational system and the clinical landscape, they struggle with intricate, often painful questions of identity, culture, and assimilation. Professionals working with these individuals need to complement their knowledge of specific cultural issues with the psychological processes that all bilingual speakers share.

As bilingual individuals enter the educational system and the clinical landscape, they struggle with intricate, often painful questions of identity, culture, and assimilation. Professionals working with these individuals need to complement their knowledge of specific cultural issues with the psychological processes that all bilingual speakers share. The Bilingual Mind: Thinking, Feeling, and Speaking in Two Languages fills a critical gap in the cross-cultural literature by illuminating the bilingual experience in both its social and clinical contexts.

Rafael Javier makes a convincing, empirically founded case for what he terms the bilingual mind, with its own particular approach to cognition, memory, and emotional and social development. From this framework, he proceeds to salient but seldom examined questions such as:

What are the effects of bilingualism on cognitive development?

Is some degree of language shifting always present in bilingual thinking?

Do interpreters improve or compromise communication?

What assessment instruments are best suited to bilingual individuals?

What are the key issues in providing appropriate treatment interventions to bilingual patients?

How can professionals be better trained to work with this population?

Given the prevalence of -- and controversies surrounding -- bilingualism today, the author intends his text to benefit a wide range of therapists, education professionals, and scholars. The Bilingual Mind will prove as valuable to the frontline clinician and the evaluator as to the linguistic student and the policymaker designing the future of bilingual services.

The Island

Acknowledgment

1. Bilingualism and Social Context: An Introduction

 Linguistic Communities

 Fear of Bilingualism?

 Traditional Solution to the Bilingual Problem

 Current State of Affairs and the Bilingual Phenomenon

 The Challenge

2. Is There a Bilingual Mind?

 The Bilingual Process in the Context of the Cognitive Development

 No Single Theory can Explain Cognitive Development in a Bilingual Context

 Evidence of the Bilingual Mind?

3.The Bilingual Linguistic Organization

 The Coordinate-Compound Linguistic Organization Controversy

Compound Linguistic System

Coordinate Linguistic System

 The Language Independence Phenomenon

Psychological/Psychoanalytic Observation

Psycholinguistic Studies

Neurological Evidence

 Conclusion

4.Language Switching As a Communication

 Factors Affecting Switching

Structural Linguistic Factors

Extralinguistic and Affective Factors

 Role of Stress in Code-Switching

 Effect of Stress on Learning

 Conclusion

5.Bilingual Memory and the Language of Affect

 Neurological Aspects of Memory

Unit for Regulating Tone and Waking and Mental States

Unit for Receiving, Analyzing and Storing Information

Unit for Programming Regulation and Verification of Activity

 Developmental Factors in Memory Formation

Memory of Traumatic Event in Children: Can Memory be Falsified?

 Memory Organization in the Bilingual Context

Bilingual Memory for Meaningful Information

Investigation of Bilingual Personal Memory

 Concluding Thoughts

6.Communication Through Interpreters

 Communication Process

Components of Communication

 Distinguishing Characteristics of Interpretation versus

Translation Process

 Challenges to Accurate Interpretation

 Methods of Interpretation

 Training of Interpreters

 Common Errors

Omission

Additions

Condensation

Substitutions

 Role Exchange

 Conclusion

7.Issues in Assessing the Bilingual Individual

 Personal Motivation/Specific Needs of the Referring Person

 Linguistic Challenges in the Assessment Process

 Validity of the Assessment Instruments

 Factors to be Considered in Assessing a Bilingual Individual

 Selection of Basic Assessment Instruments

8.Treatment of the Bilingual Patients

 Memory Organization in Bilingual Patients

 Nature of Memory Inaccessibility in a Bilingual Context

 Technical Considerations

 Conclusion

9.Future of Bilingualism: What Should be Our Response?

 Traditional Response

 There is No Easy Solution to the Bilingual Dilemma

 There Are Signs of Hope

 Only a Flexible Model Makes Sense

References

Index