The Bilingual Self or Selves?
Date
2014-03-15Bibliographic citation
International journal of Language Studies, 2014, v. 8, n. 3, p. 107-116
Keywords
Bilingualism
Mercenary Relativism
Split Personality
Linguistic Schizophrenia
Multilingualism
Document type
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Version
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Access rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Abstract
A concise but strong review of the literature on bilinguals? perception of ?self? led to the question of whether bilinguals perceive themselves as different or the same people when they function in different languages. 183 participants (N =183) randomly assigned to two half-groups took both the English and Persian versions of the Self Concept Scale (SCS) in two counter-balanced administration sessions with a time interval of 3 weeks. Results, after data analysis using descriptive and inferential statistics, indicated that Iranian-Americans have a more realistic self concept when they function in English than when they function in Persian. Their average self concepts in English and Persian do not match. Moreover, the female Iranian-American shows a larger discrepancy in her English and Persian self concepts than her male counterpart. This indicates that females are more open to alienation than males. The results of this study lend empirical support to claims made by previous researchers that bilinguals have a kind of split personality. After the filed study, it was concluded that a bilingual is not a unique person who assumes different identities when he functions in the different languages he knows, but that a bilingual possess two different ?guises? or ?selves? which are language-specific and are used in accordance with the language the bilingual speaks at any given point in time.
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bilingual_garcia_IJLS_2014.pdf | 691.2Kb |
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