A bright future for interdisciplinary multilingualism research

Abstract

Multilingualism is a prevalent reality in today's world. From an individual level to a societal one, multilingualism incorporates many aspects that have been studied extensively by diverse social research disciplines. The present article will explore the potential directions which multilingualism research can take, concentrating mainly on the benefits of the integration of psychological methods in mainstream multilingualism research. We propose that a closer collaboration between psychologists and applied linguists is necessary for the advancement of the field of multilingualism. The integration of the themes and methodologies of the two social sciences will be advantageous to both. The diverse methodological approaches should not be viewed as a hindrance for the development of multilingual research, but rather as an asset. Linguists and psychologists can draw on each other's methodological expertise since many of the research questions asked are comparable and complementary.

Keywords:

• Multilingualism
• interdisciplinarity
• emotions
• language acquisition
• linguistic identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We are aware of the lively, ongoing debate on issues of definition of key concepts within the field of multilingualism research (see Aronin & Singleton, 2012; Garcia & Wei, 2014; Hammarberg, 2010; Stavans & Hofmann, 2015).

2. An approach which ‘can help to reduce the inherent weaknesses of individual methods by offsetting them by the strength of another, thereby maximizing both the internal and external validity of research’ (Dörnyei, 2007, pp. 43–44).