In letter fluency tasks, monolinguals in the study were also able to respond with more words to the letter cue than bilinguals, but such an effect was not seen in bilinguals with a high vocabulary score.Īlso, monolinguals performed better than bilinguals on verbal fluency in the study. Monolinguals also access words more often than bilinguals in a target language. Comparison with multilingualism Vocabulary size and verbal fluency Īccording to a study on lexical access, monolinguals often maintain a wider vocabulary in a target language relative to a comparable bilingual, and that increases the efficiency of word retrieval in monolinguals.
Īnother explanation is that the nations who speak the English language are both “the producers and beneficiaries of English as a global language” and the populations within these countries tend to be monolingual. One explanation is provided by Edwards, who in 2004 claimed that evidence of the "monolingual mindset" can be traced back to 19th century Europe, when the nation was rising and a dominant group had control, and European mindsets on language were carried forth to its colonies, further perpetuating the monolingual mindset. Crystal (1987) said that this assumption is adopted by many in Western society. The assumption of normative monolingualism is also often the view of monolinguals who speak a global language, like the English language. Monolingualism is thus rarely the subject of scholarly publications, as it is viewed to be an unmarked or prototypical concept where it has the sense of being normal and multilingualism is the exception. This statement reflects the traditional assumption that linguistic theories often take on: that monolingualism is the norm. Suzzane Romaine pointed out, in her 1995 book Bilingualism, that it would be weird to find a book titled Monolingualism.
Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Note that mono glottism can only refer to lacking the ability to speak several languages. In a different context, "unilingualism" may refer to a language policy which enforces an official or national language over others.īeing monolingual or unilingual is also said of a text, dictionary, or conversation written or conducted in only one language, and of an entity in which a single language is either used or officially recognized (in particular when being compared with bilingual or multilingual entities or in the presence of individuals speaking different languages). Monoglottism ( Greek μόνος monos, "alone, solitary", + γλῶττα glotta, "tongue, language") or, more commonly, monolingualism or unilingualism, is the condition of being able to speak only a single language, as opposed to multilingualism.
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