Navigating Modes of Communication: Experiences of Being Bilingual

“Stop trying to tell me what to do!” As I screamed into the phone, the room froze silent. I immediately felt regret the moment these words left my lips. The sounds coming from the gentle rustling of leaves outside my window only magnified the echoing silence from my mother. After what felt like an eternity, I could hear her sigh on the other end of the line, her voice quiet and resigned. “I just want what's best for you,” she responded softly in Mandarin Chinese, yet her words were barely audible over my racing heartbeat.

It all started as a casual Sunday afternoon check-in call with my mother, a part of our routine for two years since I left China to attend a boarding school in England. Over the weekend, my friends and I decided to dye our hair red (yes, Little Mermaid style) out of quarantine boredom. I was thrilled at how the impromptu decision turned out and wanted to tell my mother immediately, which obviously didn’t turn out exactly how I expected it to.

My mother’s extensive criticism included, but not limited to, how I looked “crazy”, was being too “inconsiderate”, alongside with concern that I would be perceived negatively or not taken seriously by teachers at school. In retrospect, all of her criticisms can be traced back to underlying cultural values associated with collectivism and conformity to social order, two key values embedded in traditional Chinese culture.

However, from a linguistics perspective, what’s more interesting is how I carried out the conversation. As a bilingual fluent in both Chinese and English, I oftentimes find myself code-switching between two languages when speaking to my mother who understands some English but can’t speak it. According to Laura M. Ahearn, a linguistic anthropologist and professor at Rutgers University, code-switching refers to the shifting from one language to another in a single speech event; moreover, such shift is oftentimes culturally meaningful and can “index particular social relationships, meaning or hierarchies” (Ahearn 147). To linguistic anthropologists, code-switching or code-mixing can be a reflection of the speakers’ moral alignments and changing social identities, as the contrast between one code and the other is oftentimes purposeful, whether it is a conscious decision or not.

In this sense, a seemingly pointless argument with my mother becomes complex and can be critically analyzed as I navigate alignment and dissociation between two distinct speech communities of Chinese and English, both representing different sociocultural values, beliefs, and behaviors. During the call, I find myself often articulating my individual self-descriptions (concepts such as trying to “be myself” or “look cool”) in English, which are ideologically Western individualistic values, while voicing agreement and compliance with my mother in Chinese. Nevertheless, could this shift be universally experienced by all bilingual or multilingual speakers? Do we feel, think, or behave differently when speaking different languages? And most importantly, what prompts these differences?

There has been substantial research in recent years demonstrating bilingualism’s effects on influencing speakers’ perceptions of the self and the world. Hull’s pioneering research into bilingualism and personality asked three groups of first-generation immigrants from Mexico (Spanish), Korea (Korean) and China (Mandarin Chinese) to complete the California Psychological Inventory, a self-assessment instrument used to measure personality aspects, in their native language and English respectively. After conducting in-group between-language analysis, he found significant differences in the responses between the participants’ native language and English. For instance, Spanish speakers scored much higher on “individualistic Anglo cultural values” such as self-acceptance and interpersonal prestige when surveyed in English. On the contrary, when surveyed in Spanish, the same participants scored higher on values like interpersonal harmony and positive impression, which are features of a collectivist, Spanish-speaking culture that emphasize group dynamics (Hull 132).

Moreover, Ukrainian-American professor and linguist, Dr. Pavlenko conducted a study involving over 1000 multilingual participants that reaffirmed Hull’s findings. Participants were asked to complete a web questionnaire with open-ended questions such as “do you feel like a different person when using different languages?”, which gained an overwhelming 65% affirmative response overall (Pavlenko 26). With thematic analysis, Pavlenko determined several sources that contributed to multilinguals’ feeling of self-fragmentation, one of them being language socialization (the learning contexts in which the language was acquired). Growing up, English has primarily been a classroom language for me since I acquired most of my English abilities in an educational setting, while I mainly conversed in Chinese with family and friends. The corollary of my experience is that English became institutionalized as a language of evaluation, in which my command of English was always accompanied by an implicit expectation of judgment on my academic abilities, whether it is grammatical correctness, vocabulary repertoire, or accurateness in pronunciation.

In turn, this has manifested in my higher level of formality when it comes to speaking English and a sense of constant self-awareness that propels me to fixate on how I speak instead of what I speak. On top of that, the formal socialization of English has also translated into a ‘performative’ feeling that I experience when speaking English, where I feel less ‘real’ or ‘natural’ compared to speaking Mandarin due to an ingrained sense of judgment that comes with English-speaking settings that I was socialized in. Pavlenko describes this as a difference in “experienced language emotionality”, suggesting that this is another major contributing factor to the changes in self-perception of multilingual speakers.

Similarly, the command of multiple languages might also translate into changes in conversational expectations that could lead to greater emotionality and intimacy when perceiving and reacting to events. Panayiotou’s study compared Greek and English’s narrative emotivity on Greek-English bilinguals by reading them the same story in two different languages. He discovered that participants interpreted and reacted to the same narration differently depending on the linguistic context, where the Greek story was reported to elicit more sympathy and concern for the protagonist than when the story was read to them in English (Panayiotou 134).

Such phenomenon could be explained by the theory of Cultural Frame Switching, which states that bicultural individuals tend to experience a shift in “values and attributions in the presence of culture-relevant stimuli”, in this case being the language spoken (Ramírez-Esparza, Nairán, et al. 100). The fluent command of a language often requires the speaker to be fully aware of and observe the set of cultural values and expectations in order to become a competent, functional member of its speech community. Therefore, when the bilingual individual code-switches from one language to another, a switch in cultural scripts occurs subconsciously where the individual accommodates to the present situation based on the behavioral expectations of the given culture in which the language was acquired. This is because language itself can act as an instrument to trigger certain cultural memories regarding the appropriate values, attitudes and norms to adopt or conform to when speaking.

As a result of Cultural Frame Switching, I always find myself to be bolder, more expressive, and more individualized when speaking English. For example, I’m able express values and opinions on topics such as social activism, individual rights, and equality more coherently. These values were acquired in an English-speaking setting through classroom discussions, talking with friends, or even on Western social media platforms. Therefore, as I code-switch from Chinese to English, I (consciously or subconsciously) shift my moral alignment from a highly collective cultural framework that prioritize respect for social order, hierarchies, and polite language use to a more casual, individualistic cultural script where idiosyncratic expression of thoughts is not only accepted but preferred.

Furthermore, bilingual speakers can develop the skills for Cultural Frame Switching from a very young age. A study by Chen and colleagues compared the difference in narrative styles between a group of children who speak both Chinese and English, and a group of monolingual English-speaking children. They discovered that although both groups displayed similar age-related growth in the development and use of evaluative expressions, Chinese-English bilingual children produced more evaluative clauses and adopted more of a local perspective on the story character’s frame of mind compared to English-speaking peers (Chen & Yan 570). The authors argued that such differences could be explained from a cultural perspective, where Chinese speakers “tend to focus on relations between a person or an object and the environment as the antecedent of a behavior.” On the contrary, Americans are more prone to “decontextualize” components of an event from its environment and attend to “internal attributes” of an individual in isolation. In other words, the peculiarity of Chinese culture fosters an increased awareness of social situations and contextual environment amongst Chinese speaking individuals, which in turn reinforces the collectivist, socio-centric features of Chinese society. Thus, bilingualism is oftentimes intertwined with biculturalism, where the bilingual individual is endowed with the mastery of two internalized cultural frameworks that command their perspectives and behaviors of themselves and the world.

Nonetheless, although there are shared experiences of being multilingual, such as the ability to adopt different cultural outlooks, we must acknowledge that there is no “universal” language experience. This means that bilingual/multilingual experiences are particularly individualized depending on the different socialization processes and cultural upbringing of the speaker. To illustrate, an English-Chinese bilingual raised in an English-speaking country might experience a different set of cultural shifts compared to a local Chinese-speaking individual who acquired English later in life.

Bilingualism’s effects on an individual expands far beyond a sociocultural aspect, as psychological research has suggested a link between bilingualism and one’s cognitive competency. An archaic view on bilingualism suggests that children exposed to a bilingual environment at an early age might suffer from cognitive deficiency due to linguistic confusions, leading to academic difficulties and diminishing school performances. However, professor and scholar Ellen Bialystok at the University of York argues otherwise. Her study on bilingualism’s effects on the brain from a neuroscience perspective shows that sufficient bilingual exposure could protect individuals against age-related cognitive decline, such as the development of dementia due to bilingualism’s ability to enhance one’s cognitive control and mental flexibility (Bialystok 242).

I vividly remember the constant scolding I received as a kid by teachers at my English-instructed international school for speaking Chinese with other Chinese peers. “English only!” was a phrase of nightmare for my middle-school self, a phrase that made me feel guilty and ashamed for speaking my native tongue. To a lot of instructors, code-switching between Chinese and English indicated a poor or incomplete acquisition of both languages. This is a common misconception among educators that ignores the multifunctionality of language in which code-mixing is deliberate, an index for cultural identification and moral alignment that formulates one’s sense of self.

The consequence of normalizing monolingualism manifests itself in the clear hierarchy of language, ranking standard American English on top as the dominant “global language” which leads to a pervading “English-only” ideology in the US, where immigrant parents will sacrifice anything (including speaking their mother tongue at home) to teach their children standard English in order to assimilate. This is because the proficient, native-level command of English with impeccable grammar and pronunciation is naturally equated to high socioeconomic status of the speaker, while someone who speaks English with a non-western accent is often subconsciously assumed to be less educated. Moreover, this English-centric view of language directly influences how people perceive non-Anglo cultures that have a completely different perception of appropriate language use by associating their cultures with a lesser degree of education, morals, or logic.

With more than half of the world’s population being bilingual or multilingual, it is crucial to recognize the unique beauty of being able to speak more than one language, as it comes with not only the ability to experience different cultures, but to also serve as a bridge between one and another. As my memories wander back from the rustling noise of leaves outside my boarding room’s window, I can’t quite recall how the phone call ended with my mother. However, I no longer feel the distraught from disagreeing with her, wishing that she could understand from my point of view. My bilingualism has become an integral part of my identity, as it enables me to see the world through an alternative cultural lens, neither of which is necessarily right nor wrong. As I navigate through the worlds of Chinese and English, I realized that it is possible for me to exist in both, where I’m learning to derive enjoyment instead of anguish from such hybridity.

Author

Sue Yuan

Sue Yuan, Class of 2026, is an Anthropology major at the University of Notre Dame. Her essay, “Navigating Modes of Communication: Experiences of Being Bilingual”, explores her own personal experiences of being bilingual in Mandarin Chinese and English in an English-dominant world. Growing up as a bil-cultural kid and facing many identity challenges, Sue has learned to embrace her bilingualism as a normal, natural, and beautiful phenomenon that results from her multiculturalism. Sue would like to thank Professor Want for her support and encouragement during the writing process. Most importantly, Sue would like to thank her mother for everything she has done for Sue and her family.