ABSTRACT
The past 15 years have witnessed an increasing interest in the cognitive study of the bilingual. A major reason why psychologists, psycholinguists, applied linguists, neuropsychologists, and educators have pursued this topic at an accelerating pace presumably is the acknowledgment by increasingly large numbers of language researchers that the incidence of monolingualism in individual language users may be lower than that of bilingualism. This alleged numerical imbalance between monolinguals and bilinguals may be expected to become larger due to increasing international travel through, for instance, tourism and trade, to the growing use of international communication networks, and to the fact that in some parts of the world (Europe), the borders between countries are effectively disappearing. The statement that bilingualism, rather than monolingualism, is more the norm is particularly persuasive if one adopts a definition of bilingualism that covers not only balanced bilinguals, of which there may be relatively few, but also unbalanced forms, where one of the languages dominates the other. For a long time, the opposite view of bilingualism as a rather exceptional human state has been entertained. A likely reason for this may be that the United States, where the majority of language researchers reside, represents a prototypical bilingualism-as-exception culture. Students attending public high schools are typically required to take foreign language classes but rarely become fluent, and outside of urban settings with a strong minority language presence, there is little opportunity to use languages other than English. English and monolingualism are thus the norm.
