Abstract
The nonbalanced bilingual is much more typical of the present world than the balanced one. This is however by far not evident at first sight. The apparent balance of a bilingual’s language systems is often due to strategies and compensatory processes which he has learned to employ when using his subordinate language. If his pronunciation is good and his lexicon reasonable, a mere simplification of speech will hide his slower functioning in the weaker language, less automaticity as well as inferiority in grammar and syntax. These shortcomings may well remain hidden until some stress is added. Information overload, environmental, emotional or social stresses, fatigue, all these factors may unveil the hidden imbalance between the dominant and subordinate languages. Stress enhances latent differences and renders them apparent: language dominance which under normal circumstances would not appear becomes evident under stress.
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© 1978 Plenum Press, New York
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Dornic, S. (1978). The Bilingual’s Performance: Language Dominance, Stress, and Individual Differences. In: Gerver, D., Sinaiko, H.W. (eds) Language Interpretation and Communication. NATO Conference Series, vol 6. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9077-4_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9077-4_23
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