ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at central issues in research on bilingualism and multilingualism. The increasing mobility of the population, Internet communication and the spread of English as the language of wider communication have contributed to the development of bilingualism and multilingualism all over the world. The term bilingualism, usually referring to 'two languages', has been the term most widely used because most research has focused on two rather than three or more languages. Individual and social multilingualism are linked to each other insofar as it is more likely that individuals living in a multilingual community speak more than one language in their day-to-day lives than those in monolingual contexts. Neurolinguistics is an area of bilingualism and multilingualism that has undergone important developments recently. Technological developments such as the use of event-related-potentials (ERP), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or positron emission tomography (PET) allow for the analysis of some brain functions that were previously inaccessible.
