Refining the Perspectives on Language Proficiency:

Bilingualism and True Bilingualism

Abstract

In a world under massive globalisation and, at the same time, under deep boundary
rethinking, the ability of speaking two or several languages has become, over the last
decades, an important individual concern, as well as the main topic of fruitful scientific
research. In this context, bilingualism and bilinguality are interdisciplinary concepts
pertaining to the fields of sociolinguistics, education, philosophy, cultural studies, to
name but a few. This study has as a starting point the broad definitions of the individual
bilingualism provided in the literature in this field, according to which it generally
points to one’s ability of speaking two languages perfectly (Hamers & Blanc 2000,
Bloomfield 1933; Thiery, 1978; Majchrzak 2018). It aims at tracing the reasons behind
the need of refining the terms by introducing the concepts of true bilingualism and true
bilingual, as more notionally meaningful than the old concepts of bilingualism and
bilingual. The modifier true is approached as a dissociation device, which, from the
rhetorical perspective, allows for a disjunction between what was already acknowledged
as bilingualism, and the new definition of the concept. Moreover, the study aims at
answering the following questions: do the new notions, namely true bilingualism and
true bilingual, bring forth new notional content or do they merely rearrange the
existing one? Are the new concepts endowed with explanatory and normative
functions? (cf. Perelman & Tyteca 1992).