Abstract
Do multilinguals have multiple self-concepts, divided by language? Language is a means by which people communicate and mentally organize ideas, and for some these interactions and thoughts can occur in two or more languages. In the last few decades, research has demonstrated that across languages in multilinguals, differences in emotion, personality and opinion are not uncommon (Baki & Škifi 2017, Pavlenko 2006). These differences are attributed to a variety of factors, including the context of language use, age of acquisition, and major life experiences.
Self-concept, defined as the thoughts and feelings one has about oneself in different domains, has been shown to develop throughout a person’s life (Rosenberg 1979, Harter 2012). Despite the sense of self being generally coherent, contradictory self-views can coexist beginning in adolescence, often divided by social and situational contexts (Harter 2012).
Could language itself, and the network of people, places and experiences associated with a language, create its own mental context so that a multilingual would develop differing self-concepts divided by language?
To build on past research and further explore the relationship between language and the self, adult multilingual participants are recruited to fill out a series of surveys regarding their languages, experiences, and self-views. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, the first survey seeks to understand how multilingual adults view and use the languages in their repertoire. On the second survey, translated into four languages (English, French, Korean, and Norwegian), participates rate themselves on six different domains of self-concept. Finally, in the third survey participants share their multilingual experiences.
These three surveys seek to shed new light on the relationship between multilingualism and self-concept with the hypothesis that multilinguals have language-specific self-concepts that correlate with factors that influence the strength of the language’s importance to them, including early age of acquisition, high competence, and personal contexts of use. The results will potentially inform general understanding of multilingual experiences and may have an influence in the future on language educational practices.
Bio
Rebecca Rose Lebens has a bachelor's degree in Linguistics and a master's degree in Cognitive Science. She is currently working on her doctorate at the University of Oslo, researching the relationship between language and self-concept in multilinguals.