Investigating the Connection between the Native and Foreign Languages in a Bilingual Mind.

Abstract

The present work intends to shed light on bilingualism and investigate the connection between the two languages by a bilingual mind and how the language interferes among master students of English at Tiaret University. It also seeks the ability of the bilingual mind to transfer or interfere the two languages and how they are connected in the bilingual student‟s mind. It aims at examining the sociolinguistic situation in Algeria which is well known by its diversity that gives birth to many linguistic outcomes such as bilingualism, diaglossia, borrowing, code mixing, and code switching…etc The study investigates how the bilingual thinks in the native language and produces in another language due to the influence of the European culture and the universal technologies such as the internet. This context is ideal for looking into the meaning and the social significance of bilingualism, and how this linguistic style contributes to language change. Even when you are fluent in two languages, it can be a challenge to switch back and forth smoothly between them. A series of discoveries in the last two decades have changed the way we think that bilingualism and its implications for language and cognition. First, both languages are always active. The parallel activation of the two languages is thought to give rise to competition that imposes demands on the bilingual to control the language not in use to achieve fluency in the target language. Second is that there are consequences of bilingualism that affect the native as well as the second language. Bilingualism is not limited to languages but appear to reflect a reorganisation of brain network that holds implications for the ways in which bilingual negotiates competition more generally. In order to examine this linguistic phenomenon, a questionnaire will be used in the present study for data collection. The results of such questionnaire will be analysed.