Language Problems and Bilingual Children

Abstract

The notion of ‘problem’ is a highly subjective area. The word and is used in the title of this chapter advisedly, to imply that there exists a body of utterances spoken or written by particular individuals or groups of people, which might result in the person using them being classed as having a language problem. However, the assignment of this label is in general not an objective exercise. While there may be utterances at either end of the ‘normal’-‘disordered’ scale of language development and usage that could relatively incontrovertibly be agreed on as betraying the presence or absence of a language problem, in the considerable grey middleground between these extremes whole areas of usage are to be found where decisions on whether or not the sample is indicative of an underlying problem depend on many factors. It is true that there are aspects of language acquisition and execution which would permit one to talk of the language problems of bilingual children, but by and large judgements are made according to many criteria, very few of which are linked immediately to any objectively quantifiable inherent property of language as a system independent of the context in which it is employed. ‘Problem’ in this view is context-sensitive. What in one instance is branded a problem will be taken as normal in another place, with another person or at another time.