Entry note: The below essay was written by J.U.C. for his class #ELN101 at LaGuardia College in New York City, dated: 04/23/2018.* | This essay is dedicated to the 2025 International Day of Mother Language.

The essay looks at it from a completely different approach in connection with “Bilingualism” and “Alzheimer’s Disease”. The essay also brings out some potential side effects in the case of “bilingualism” if it has been widely applied and practiced on a local and country level. It is a thought-provoking essay. – Enjoy it!

BILINGUALISM: AN ASSET OR A LIABILITY?

by J.U.C.

[LMGlobal.Org] Bilingualism can be defined in many different ways, so bilingualism can be comparable across studies. It must fit a formal definition of bilingualism. Bilingualism is defined by Wei (2007) as “someone with the possession of two languages…including the many people in the world who have varying degrees of proficiency in and interchangeably use three, four, or even more languages.

In the year 2016, over 5.5 million Americans were said to have Alzheimer’s Disease. One of the people over the age of 64 have Alzheimer’s, and about one in three people over the age of 85 will have Alzheimer’s [Texas Health and Human Services[. Considering this, it is easy to see that this fatal disease contributes to a significant amount of loss of life in the elderly, and a contributor to a reduced life span in the living who are afflicted. This raises the question of how to cure and/or prevent the disease which scientists have been exploring solutions to for many years, without any clear answer to the sickless An interesting aspect of bilingual education as culture is how varied the benefits can be, from cultural diversity, to improved political relations to mental flexibility. This mental flexibility happens to also be ‘an effective preventative measure for Alzheimer’s disease, so a possibility for reductions in Aizheimer’s diagnosis rates could be the widespread implementation of bilingual education, which would be extremely valuable and directly relate bilingualism to an increased lifespan and quality of life.

According to a study by Fergus I.M Craik and Ellen Bialystok (2010) “The present data confirm results from an earlier study, and thus we conclude that lifelong bilingualism confers protection against the onset of AD. The effect does not appear to be attributable to such possible confounding factors as education, occupational status, or immigration. Bilingualism thus appears to contribute to cognitive reserve, which acts to compensate for the effects of accumulated neuropathology.”. The study revealed that bilinguals had an average of diagnosis 4.3 years later than monolingual patients, and started experiencing their symptoms 5.1 years later on average than monolingual patients. Interestingly, if bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve, which compensates for neuropathology in a general way, perhaps bilingualism could be a supplementary treatment for either acquired (head injury, parkinson’s) or innate (ADHD, autism, learning disabilities) neurological disorders.

Even for individuals who will not develop Alzheimer’s, bilinguals possess multiple cognitive advantages. Such advantages include an enhanced ability for ignoring irrelevant information, multitasking, greater mental flexibility for divergent thinking (creativity), increased metalinguistic awareness, and an increased aptitude for learning more languages. 

Bilingualism provides intercultural opportunities which allow for maximum global interactions. In their local communities, they have the ability to signal multicultural forms of group and ethnic identities.

This increased cultural awareness allows for more communicative sensitivity based on common grounds between people, and also leads to more employment opportunities and friendships. They code-switch easily, due to the fact that they are constantly switching between languages in their mind. Their ability to switch between two languages gives them control over mixing the languages together to act appropriately with a range of different people in different settings.

However, every treatment also has its side effects, and bilingualism is arguably not a universally good thing to have. An exploration of the mainly negative aspects is also crucial for an exploration of the mainly positive aspects, hence there will also be an analysis of the potential problems a widespread implementation of bilingualism in the United States could also have.

The downsides to applying bilingual education, or in the medical context, treatment, is elaborated on by Bialystok in a different paper (2009) “It is now well documented that bilinguals generally control a smaller vocabulary in each language than monolinguals… older bilinguals demonstrated a smaller deficit for low-frequency words” and “In a study of younger and older monolinguals and bilinguals, we administered three tasks to assess verbal knowledge and retrieval… In all these tasks, the bilinguals at both ages obtained lower scores than their monolingual counterparts.” Bilingualism applied on a large scale would result in reduced scores on monolingual language comprehension tests, a smaller expressive (speaking) and receptive (hearing) vocabulary, and a reduced retrieval and verbal fluency of words when thinking or speaking monolingually. These deficits could lead to specific disadvantages when competing with monolinguals in a work or social environment.

They have more tip-of-the-tongue experiences, and this difficulty continues into adulthood. Some accents can lead to a social bias, or are referred to as “broken English“, which follows the general tendency towards discrimination and opposition for the bilingually able. They may be viewed as less intelligent due to a reduced fluency in a particular language, or the “tip of the tongue” experiences making them seer slow, when the children hesitate to respond.

Their bilingualism is also blamed if they experience personality or behavior problems, and they suffer from a lack of available bilingual programs.

Is it possible that these reduced test scores would translate to a loss of GDP at a population level if bilingualism was mandatory?

How would the loss of GDP compare to the increase in GDP that would be obtained by the delay of
Alzheimer’s symptoms on a population level vs the cost of bilingual education?

Is there a more cost-effective way to lanes cognitive reserve in individuals without side effects?

These are all questions for further exploration, that must be answered before arriving to a proper conclusion on the amount of impact mandatory national bilingualism would have.

References:

1. “Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia Care.” Texas Health and Human Services, hhs.texas.gov/doing-business-hhs/provider-portals/long-term-care-providers/nursing-facilities-nf/quality-monitoring-program-qmp/evidence-based-best-practices-qmp/alzheimers-disease-dementia-care.
2. Wei, Li. “Dimensions of Bilingualism.” Google Search, Google, www.google.com/search?q=dimensions of bilingualism li wei&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS757US794&oq=dimensions of bilingualism li wei&ags-chrome..6957.5343j0j4&sourceid chrome&ie=UTF-8#.
3. Craik, Fergus I.M., et al. Neurology, American Academy of Neurology, 9 Nov. 2010,
   www.nchi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3033609/
4. Bialystok, E, et al. “Cognitive Control and Lexical Access in Younger and Older Bilinguals.” Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition., U.S. National Library of Medicine, July 2008, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18605874.

[*] Disclaimer:
1. I found this essay in one of the tens of boxes while searching for his papers at home in New York City last summer (2024).
2. J.U.C. has preferred his initials for his web posting since he was 17, which was the case for the posts including in a two parts of interview on bilingualism in the Turkishlibrary.us site in 2018. Thus, I respected his preference on the usage of his name on the web, and that also led me to keep the same approach for naming the “J.U.C. Awards” to honour his Memory in January 2020 as well.
3. His interview on bilingualism in two parts, which was posted to www.turkishlibrary.us in 2018, was the inspiration for me to dedicate the next 2027 J.U.C. Awards on “Bilingualism” along with, in support of the International Day of Mother Language (21 February). -– Bircan Ünver, Mother of J.U.C.

Related: By J.U.C.
2018: A BILINGUAL FIRST GENERATION IMMIGRANT – Part 1 of 2
https://turkishlibrary.us/a-bilingual-first-generation-immigrant/

2018: BECOMING BILINGUAL – Part 2 of 2
https://turkishlibrary.us/becoming-bilingual/

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