Abstract:

Nowadays bilingualism is becoming a positive value to be promoted and defended in our western social and cultural context. Being understood from a wide perspective, bilingualism may be both a way of wielding the power and resisting it. Nevertheless, the most relevant aspect is understanding the sources of value of bilingualism and the nature of valued bilingual practices, because not all of them get the same recognition from the point of view of dominant languages and social groups. It is suggested that according to present dominant linguistic ideologies, the bilingualism that gets value and recognition in postmodernity is the one that is based on certain linguistic behaviours and practices that can only change very slightly monolingual standardizing ideologies which was hegemonic in modernity.

Author: Monica Heller