Professional Documents
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Li Wei Slides
Li Wei Slides
CREATIVITY
Li Wei
Birkbeck College, University of London
[email protected]
• 2014 A control process model of codeswitching (with David Green). Language,
Cognition and Neuroscience 29,4: 499-511
• 2014 The role of codeswitching in bilingual creativity and selective attention
(with Anatoliy Kharkhurin). International Journal of Bilingual Education and
Bilingualism. DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2014.884211
• 2013 Is multilingualism linked to a higher tolerance of ambiguity? Bilingualism:
Language and Cognition. 16.1: 231-240 (with Jean-Marc Dewaele)
• 2012 Multilingualism, empathy and multicompetence. International Journal of
Multilingualism 9.4: 352-366 (with Jean-Marc Dewaele)
LANGUAGE MODE OF THE BILINGUAL SPEECH
PRODUCTION (GROSJEAN, 1998)
IMPLICATIONS
• (Some) Bilinguals can behave as if they were monolingual by using only one of the
languages they know.
• (Some) Bilinguals can behave as if they were monolingual by using only one of the
languages they know.
• SOME, because there are different types of bilinguals. For some, separation is neither a
possibility nor a need.
• Experience - born into a multilingual family/community vs learning “additional” languages later
in life; living in a multilingual environment vs OLON/OLAT environment
• Multilingual reality: cf. bilinguals, few multilinguals separate languages all the time (Clyne and
others).
DIFFERENT TYPES OF CS
1. “It’s absolutely scandalistic.” (referring to a news story)
2. “Can you open the light?”
3. “lam:a fƏlik bjɪʒe” (referring to a cartoon character) (Khattab 2009: 152)
(Arabic. when Flick comes, with Flick pronounced with an epenthetic vowel, as in Arabic)
4. Girl 1: ¿Dónde estás?
(Spanish. Where are you?)
Girl 2: Upstairs.
Girl 1: ¿Dónde?
(Spanish. Where?)
Girl 2: En mi habitación.
(Spanish. In the bedroom.)
5. Mother: Nei sik muyt-ye a?
(Cantonese. What do you want to eat?)
Son: (1.0) Just apples.
Mother: Just /n/ just apples? Dimgai m sik yoghurt a?
(Cantonese. Why not have some yoghurt?)
6. “There was a guy, you know, que [that] he se montó [got up]. He started playing with
congas, you know, and se montó y empezóa brincar [got up and started to jump] and all that
shit.” (Winford, 2003: 105)
7. Ngaw wei solve di problem
(Cantonese. I will; that/those. I will solve that problem.)
8. Tu peux me pick-up-er?
(French: You can. Can you pick me up?) (Gardner-Chloros, 2009: 97)
9. I'm LAVing PANDELCAGEs.
(Danish. Make, pancake. I'm making pancakes.) (Petersen, 1988)
10. I have cha de/-ed chulai
(de – Chinese case marker. I have checked.)
Traditional de, simplified/de (de – Chinese case marker)
11. She asked me, ‘nei ha m ha-ppy la?’ So I told her, ‘ho m happy la’.
(Cantonese. You NEG. PART. Very PART. Are you happy or not? Very unhappy.)
12. Sho shenme ping!
(Mandarin. What. What shopping)
• Different structural configurations
• Different social motivations/purposes/contexts
• Different cognitive mechanism (?)
COGNITIVE MECHANISMS OF CODESWITCHING
• Cognitive control – differentiation / separation / deactivation
• Language switching and task switching
• Executive systems (cognitive advantages)
• In SLA, some studies have shown that good language learners are more tolerant of
ambiguity, though it remains a controversial issue.
• Multilingual Use questionnaire with 18 questions related to sociobiographical
background, frequency of codeswitching and attitudes towards CS etc.
2,65
Tolerance of ambiguity
2,6
2,55
2,5
2,45
Mono Bi Tri Quadri Penta Sexta+
Number of languages known
Effect of TA on self-reported frequency of
Code-switching (ANOVAs)
2,5
2
Frequency of CS
1,5 Friends
Family
Strangers
1 Colleagues
0,5
0
Low Medium High
Tolerance of ambiguity
EFFECT OF TA ON ATTITUDES TOWARD
CODE-SWITCHING
1,6
1,4
1,2
Negative attitude towards CS
1
Incompetence
Annoying
0,8
Arrogant
BotheredDifference
0,6
0,4
0,2
0
Low Medium High
Tolerance of ambiguity
RESULTS
Participants who know more languages score high on TA.
TA not linked to proficiency
TA not linked frequency of CS (!)
TA linked to attitudes towards CS - High TA less likely to view CS
negatively or to be bothered by being different!
CS AND SELECTIVE ATTENTION, AND CREATIVITY
• with Anatoliy Kharkhurin
• Selective attention was assessed by a version of the standard Eriksen flanker task. Participants
were first presented with a fixation cross for 500 ms, which was immediately followed by a horizontal
array of five equally sized and spaced arrows for 1700 ms. The array was 14.87 cm wide and 1.16
cm high. The stimuli were presented in black on white background using 19” flat monitor.
Participants were instructed to attend to the central arrow and ignore the four flankers. They were to
press the left key for a left facing central arrow and the right key for a right facing central arrow. The
flanking arrows either all pointed in the same direction as the target arrow, or they all pointed in the
opposite direction. The trials on which the flanking arrows pointed in the same direction as the target
arrow were the congruent trials; the trials in which they pointed in the opposite direction were the
incongruent trials. Subjects received a total of 80 trials (40 congruent and 40 incongruent ones) in a
random order, requiring an equal number of left or right responses.
ATTA ACTIVITY 2