Face to Face with One’s Thoughts: On Thinking Multilingually

Abstract

In her discussion of ‘thinking and speaking in two languages’, Pavlenko (2011) writes about autobiographic studies of immigrants as those giving evidence of assimilation processes, witnessed when immigrants for various reasons, voluntarily or otherwise, decide to leave their motherland and adapt to a new life. The degree of this adaptation or in other words integration and in the end assimilation is best reflected in their use of the target community language, not only in communication but also in their dialogues with themselves—their inner speech or more generally, when thinking. One example quoted by Pavlenko (2011) is the well-known and fascinating testimony of Hoffman (1989) of the L1 Polish attrition she observed in her private/inner speech, i.e. when thinking and talking with/to herself. In this chapter, I would like to reflect upon the language(s) of thinking of multilingual language users who learnt rather than acquired their foreign languages through formal instruction and mostly use them in less authentic environments than immigrants, in their studies or work, and not in daily communication and interaction. The research focus is on thinking in FLs: the contexts and variables that prompt language choice and activation in thinking. The analysis presented is based on the self-reflection of multilingual language users expressed in written narratives, and it is mainly qualitative in nature.