Imported Bilingualism:
What do avocado and language learning have in common? 

This joint blog is a contribution to the activities marking the EU Day of Languages, 26^th September 2024.

My full argument for the need to introduce Imported Bilingualism as a new concept in applied linguistics is outlined in the forthcoming article:

Mehmedbegovic-Smith, D. ‘Parents as the agents of Imported Bilingualism: Arguing for two new concepts needed to further develop typology of bilingual families’, Zagreber Germanistische Beiträge – ZGB 33 (2024) Mehsprachigkeit im Bildungskontext eds. Marijana Kresic Vukosav & Irena Horvatic Bilic (forthcoming)

In a recent tutorial with a doctoral student, Katie Mansfield – the author of the joint HLD blog:

Imported Bilingualism: A journey of language and culture – a need for a new concept presented itself while discussing her focus: parents who do not live bilingual lives themselves, but have an interest in languages and want their children to grow up as bilinguals. In the proposal the term used was ‘non-native bilingual families’. In my own work I avoid using negative definitions, meaning: defining something by not being something else. In addition to being a negative definition, ‘non-native bilingual’, also imposes the discourse of deficiency, which too should be avoided in education. Therefore, the title of the proposal which included the term ‘non-native bilingual families’ challenged me instantly to offer an alternative, ‘positive definition’.

I would like to argue that Imported Bilingualism as a new concept, if added to the typology of bilingualism, places the emphasis on foreign language learning and consequent bilingualism as an asset, resource and type of capital, which is of significant importance in terms of raising awareness that every language and every type of bilingualism is a type of capital and therefore of value. If affluent families are prepared to import it via private education in bilingual programmes or through different types of foreign language learning, then migrant communities should look to pass on their home languages to their children and support them in acquiring academic literacy in those languages.

Imported Bilingualism I define as parental commitment to import a language of their choice into the family dynamics when that choice is not a necessity of migration, context they live in or historical circumstance, but a choice parents make to enrich their children’s development for the purposes of: cognitive, education, cultural, social advantages, as well as economic and health advantages.

The reason why I see it as ground breaking to use a concept that comes from economy: ‘Imported’, is to highlight the parallel with making business decision to import certain goods. For example when a business decision is made by a government or companies to import something like avocado, to make an analogy with a healthy diet, it is because this tropical fruit is desired and valued as super food for our health and well-being. People of the UK and EU do not have to import avocado for their survival, but they make a decision to do so, they invest resources and efforts to make avocado an ingredient in their diet, because they are aware of its benefits, not found in eating only locally grown fruit. In that same way some parents commit to importing a language of their choice into their family environment  and making it an ingredient in their linguistic diet and family dynamic with the aim of enhancing the development of their children. Bilingualism through this process takes the features of desired goods by being – carefully selected, imported and utilised.

The main purpose of this stark analogy is to use it as a wake-up call for parents who make decisions to switch to speaking English at home when they move to the UK or other English speaking countries or even switch to English when they still live in their country of origin, which happens in Indonesia and Dubai. These decisions are always based on the best intention to provide conditions for children to acquire proficiency in English as the global language, but at the expense of children using and developing their home language.

My intention is that by highlighting the outlined phenomenon as Imported Bilingualism, one can look to raise awareness of all stakeholders that home languages of immigrant, ethnic minority and indigenous communities which are present in many homes, but not utilised and valued, can deliver the same benefits as imported languages which require bigger investment for families who commit to it.

Image above: Dina in consultation with bilingual students in Dubai

Click here for the joint blog