François Grosjean
The bilingual (or wholistic) view of bilingualism
Grosjean vertritt die Meinung, dass Zwei- und Mehrsprachige nicht doppelt oder mehrfach Einsprachige sind. Sie vereinen in sich nicht die Summe einzelner Kompetenzen in den verschiedenen Sprachen, sondern verfügen über eine Multikompetenz. Dies veranschaulicht er anhand eines Vergleichs aus der Welt des Sports:
“The bilingual or wholistic view of bilingualism proposes that the bilingual is an integrated whole which cannot easily be decomposed into two separate parts. The bilingual is NOT the sum of two complete or incomplete monolinguals; rather, he or she has a unique and specific linguistic configuration. The coexistence and constant interaction of the two languages in the bilingual has produced a different but complete language system. An analogy comes from the domain of track and field. The high hurdler blends two types of competencies, that of high jumping and that of sprinting. When compared individually with the sprinter or the high jumper, the hurdler meets neither level of competence, and yet when taken as a whole the hurdler is an athlete in his or her own right. No expert in track and field would ever compare a high hurdler to a sprinter or to a high jumper, even though the former blends certain characteristics of the latter two. A high hurdler is an integrated whole, a unique and specific athlete, who can attain the highest levels of world competition in the same way that the sprinter and the high jumper can. In many ways, the bilingual is like the high hurdler: an integrated whole, a unique and specific speaker-hearer, and not the sum of two complete or incomplete monolinguals.”