Multilingual Metalanguage, or the Way Multilinguals Talk about Their Languages

Abstract

The increase of multilingualism in both natural and formal contexts has provoked a number of studies which have concentrated on providing evidence of multilingual processing and finding out about the differences and similarities between second and third language learning. This paper deals with the use of metalanguage in multilingual students in an introspective study of their problem-solving behaviour in lexical search. The study shows that the multilingual students make use of metalanguage in languages other than the target language during the production process. Furthermore metalanguage was found to have several functions when preceding switches and thus a control function in multilingual processing was identified. A qualitative analysis of the individual use of metalanguage turned out to support the tentative results. From the tendencies found in this study it can be concluded that investigations of metalanguage might form a valuable methodological tool for further research on the roles of, and relationship between, a multilingual’s languages.

Keywords:

• multilingual learning
• metalanguage
• third language acquisition
• introspection
• transfer