Chinese bilingualism

Bilingualism is by no means a simple phenomenon. When it involves Chinese it is complicated further because of the huge geographical spread of Chinese communities around the globe. Bilingualism is better seen as a multiparameter, socio-political-linguistic phenomenon, the processing and final results of which may not, and should not, be directly compared to those of the 'standards' produced by native speakers. This article discusses three aspects of Chinese bilingualism. First, it illustrates the cognition and neuro-cognition of language as well as general processing in bilingual people who speak Chinese as either their dominant or subordinate language. Second, it examines young children's acquisition of Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese) together with another language in different contexts. Third, it looks at language use at a pragmatic level in a bilingual population under broad sociolinguistic contexts, discussing sociocultural factors that impact on the bilingual's verbal behaviour. Copyright © 2010 Oxford Handbook.