By Kate Elwood / Special to The Japan News

14:00 JST, December 10, 2023

Recently, a Japanese colleague, whom I’ll call Professor Y, communicated with me in English for the first time in our entire working relationship of 20 years. The reason was clear: we were planning an event with various other people and one of them did not understand Japanese. This was a perfectly normal situation, and Professor Y’s English was natural, striking a nice tone of friendly professionality. Nevertheless, it was super-weird.

Francois Grosjean, a well-known researcher of bilingualism, describes three positions along a “language mode” continuum available to a bilingual speaker, based on the degree of activation of the two languages. In position 1, a bilingual speaker is basically in a monolingual mode; in position 2, they are in an intermediate mode; and in position 3, they’re in a full bilingual mode, moving between the two languages. There are a lot of factors affecting the language mode. Obviously, each interlocutors’ proficiency in each of the languages plays a role, as well as how they feel about mixing languages when speaking. The situation also matters, like whether monolinguals are present or how formal the occasion is. Despite both of us being highly proficient bilinguals, Professor Y and I had been firmly in position 1, essentially monolingual to each other, in a conventional Japanese administrative style of communication.

Many people — but not all — describe........

© The Japan News