It is important to define what we mean by "culture" and "identity." After a bit of reading and thought, I came up with this working definition of the first of these concepts:

"Culture. The collective ideas, values, and patterns of behavior of a group of people; culture consists of a set of intertwined subsystems, the generally blurry borders of which do not necessarily coincide; these cultural subsystems are transmitted and learned, and are constantly adapting to the changes in the geographic and social context of the group."

These cultural subsystems include things like economic strategies, social organization, material technologies, music, dance, visual symbolic systems, verbal symbolic systems, etc. Thus language is but one aspect of culture, intertwined (as Cameen says in the initial question) with these other aspects.

If you were to construct a three dimensional graphic model for plotting the distribution of cultural subsystems throughout space and time, then place within it data from groups of people living in some concrete geographic and chronological frame, you would probably find that each subsystem has distinct, blurry and overlapping boundaries. In some cases there may be no overlap at all. The complexity of the situation makes it difficult to make a clear association between language and other cultural subsystems, since these do not line up along neat boundaries, like those of political maps, which give us an extremely limited vision of human cultural complexity.

Ethnic identity is a separate but related matter. Language may be an important factor in defining ethnicity, but it is not the only one, nor is it a necessary component. Any cultural subsystem, or combination of these, may come into play. An individual's or a group's ethnicity is flexible and may change in a short span of time, as a response to a changing social and cultural context, and to internal processes of transformation. Nationalism may be thought of as a sort of macroethnicity, usually invented and imposed upon a population by a nation state.

In this framework, a bilingual person sometimes (but not always) learns to transcend his or her ethnocentricity, realizing that there are other equally valid ways of being and doing. This transcendental perspective permits one to have deeper interpersonal relationships with people from other cultural contexts, acquiring what I like to call a "horizontal gaze," that is, a healthy acceptance of their otherness.

Dear Cameen, 

Born as a Swedish speaking Finn, I identify myself with the Finnish Swedish culture although I went to school in Sweden. My sibling identifies  with the Swedish-Swedish culture. One of my children identifies  with the Finnish culture and his Finnish is stronger than his mother tongue. This is what happens when you use 2-3 languages all the time, you cannot really predict which culture is acquired although the cultures differ. It also depends into which culture you marry and what culture the other one has acquired or is prepared to acquire. A mixture of two cultures is also possible. 

Dear Cameen,

 Being born in Barcelona (Catalonia, North East od Spain), form a Catalan-speaker  mother and a Spanish-speaker father, I identify myself with the Catalan culture in spite of the Spanish dominant school curriculum in my early childhood. With eight brothers and sisters, most of my siblings use more Spanish than Catalan, but all my siblings are fully bilingual. We spoke Catalan with my mother and Spanish with my father; we played in the street in Spanish but we play in Catalan at the school playground.

Only one of my brothers speaker mainly Spanish with his son, and the rest of us speak Catalan with our children. no matter if we are married to mainly Spanish speakers or Catalan speakers... and even my sister, married to a Russian man, speaks more Catalan than Russian with her kids, and Spanish comes the third.

I use more Catalan than Spanish with my kids, although my husband was from Basque origin (Basque Country has also its own different language in Spain, Euskara). My kids have acquired both Catalan and Spanish language and culture, and they switch according to the interlocutor, and the task they are doing (studying, playing, or fighting, in different languages…).

  I thing I have a mixture of both Catalan and Spanish language-culture,  and all of us switch between them according to the interlocutor or the situation... Yes, it is possible to have several languages and cultures at the same time, and feeling stronger one or another in different situations (for example: traveling to abroad, in a monolingual group, in a family party...).

I hope it helps you...

I cannot relate to these answers more.Being born in Turkey but having been raised and pumped with European culture (German High in Istanbul, later studies in Vienna) I sometimes felt alienated to my local culture, which might have played a role in my plummeting ratings on Turkish airways. Just to give an example , I was making gestures like an Anglo Saxon (air quotes or ersatz quotes) and none of my Turkish viewers was getting it ! Language affects thinking and mentalities without any doubt. Today, living in Canada, I even prefer to listen to Celtic or French tunes rather than some Turkish music. It's very difficult to find the balance , especially if the languages one speaks belong to fundamentally different cultures.

Why make it a problem? You are who you are and you adapt in whatever way works. Your identity is forged from your history/experience (like everything else) not from national boundaries. In any case the notion of single culture e.g French or Turkish is being eroded as national boundaries are being eroded through mobility and communication. I am always fascinated when people say we must learn the language "and its culture". Especially in the case of English this is becoming meaningless; which culture exactly are we talking about? And what exactly will you teach apart from relatively superficial stereotypes: the Italians eat spaghetti and the French eat snails ... And... is real culture teachable? How will I make you laugh when and like a Pole or a Thai? It's not like it used to be 100 years ago or more where people were born in a particular group and lived and died there. Now everything is fluid and dynamic. ASEAN will change everything in SE Asia - maybe not completely but significantly.

Right, cultures are disappearing today. But it can still make a problem in mono-cultural societies if you stand out with a "foreign" attitude learned through language/culture.When I was growing up in Turkey, German culture as well as Anglo culture was considered almost one solid culture.Being brainwashed with German school songs, or your sister listening to Elvis Presley or Sylvie Vartan, your mother introducing you to Beethoven and Tchaikovsky would alienate you in a fully Turkish environment to a point that you couldn't discuss things with your friends since they wouldn't know what you were talking about. When I was learning German , from Goethe to Octoberfest all the culture came attached to it. When it comes to English, looking at the language from Istanbul in 70's, I also thought from Queen's lifestyle to porridge, to American country music  and Kellogg cornflakes :)    will come attached to it. To my mainly disappointing surprise, living now in Canada, I have realised that there are many Englishes and this language is now owned by many people, even more so by second language speakers than the Queen herself. I am trying to get used to the new world order, still liking Johan Sebasitan Bach or Celtic Thunder more than my own music !!!  BY the way, if we are talking about a mono-cultural real culture, yes, I think it's teachable. For example Istanbul culture together with its linguistic features, from music to manners, to cuisine is definitely teachable. Again with English, I would ask today "which English?" first.

Mainz, Germany

Dear all,

I notice that most of the discussion concerns people learning multiple languages and cultures in childhood or in younger years. I want to suggest that what happens with more mature people can be different.

Learning a second or third language basically gives one access to another culture, but whether this additional culture is fully integrated into the person is a different question. Most learners of second and third languages may chiefly learn to avoid particular intercultural problems. But avoiding problems is not the same thing as engaging with them. 

One can perhaps imagine learning a second or third language, and being able to understand and represent a second or third culture, though also being able to represent or elaborate the culture of one's first language in other terms. One might learn to act, in foreign cultural settings in ways consistent with the culture of one's first language. This would, plausibly, amount to an adaptation of the second or third language, using it for purposes foreign to the native or mono-lingual speakers. It might make an interesting philosophical exercise and practice. 

All of this must be taken with a grain of idealization, I suppose, and the cultures of speakers of different languages may be similar in many ways, overlap or interpenetrate. But insofar as they differ, then development of the culture of the first language by means of a second or third language, is a definite possibility. Nothing I say here, however, should be thought to forbid the possibility of learning from what is foreign. Quite the contrary! Those learning foreign languages are typically among the most open people one will encounter. It seems doubtful that any linguistic group could long exist without contributing significantly to what we may learn of the world.

H.G. Callaway

Dear all,

Thank you very much for sharing your views. I've learned a lot from your various perspectives.  Thank you again.

Cameen

As a sociologist and as bilingual (Spanish-Catalan), I think that you acquire both languages and cultures. In certain situations you tend to use more one language or the other but you can understand both cultural norms.

Hi,

It's a fascinating debate but you would be interested in reading the following to help explore this issue further.  There is a lot of research around the bilingual identity from a socio-cultural psychology perspective.

A lot of research around talk-in-interaction and ethnographic work seems to be quite apparent in the literature.  The influence of a bilingual identity is a process that is both adaptive and assimilative, perhaps based through a social constructionist approach.  But looking through a feminist lens, you might explore this in the way os social inequalities within incorporating two language and cultures.  Just some ideas to be thrown around. 

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2753/EUE1056-4934270380#.VZo9AGCRa2w

http://www.lingref.com/isb/4/070ISB4.PDF

http://studentorgs.utexas.edu/salsa/proceedings/2000/cashman.pdf

Very interesting area of inquiry, but the answer probably depends on each individual, the languages and the cultural values in question. 

Personally, I was born in South Africa's apartheid era as an ethnic Afrikaner - a linguistic group whose conservative and oppressive values at the time ran against the grain of my personal values. To me, English was the language of liberation and free self-expression and exploration since I first encountered it as a toddler in a bilingual country. Hence English was the first language in which I read and wrote, and it has since equipped me to communicate with the world in a way my mother tongue never could have done. 

In this case, the cultural values represented by the languages were the driving force behind my linguistic identity. I essentially wanted to distance myself from the perceived cultural values embodied by my mother tongue. 

As you can see, this case is intricately connected to the social, cultural and political context of the two languages, and may well differ from any other bilingual's experience. It would be interesting to track the experience of other respondents. 

It is important to define what we mean by "culture" and "identity." After a bit of reading and thought, I came up with this working definition of the first of these concepts:

"Culture. The collective ideas, values, and patterns of behavior of a group of people; culture consists of a set of intertwined subsystems, the generally blurry borders of which do not necessarily coincide; these cultural subsystems are transmitted and learned, and are constantly adapting to the changes in the geographic and social context of the group."

These cultural subsystems include things like economic strategies, social organization, material technologies, music, dance, visual symbolic systems, verbal symbolic systems, etc. Thus language is but one aspect of culture, intertwined (as Cameen says in the initial question) with these other aspects.

If you were to construct a three dimensional graphic model for plotting the distribution of cultural subsystems throughout space and time, then place within it data from groups of people living in some concrete geographic and chronological frame, you would probably find that each subsystem has distinct, blurry and overlapping boundaries. In some cases there may be no overlap at all. The complexity of the situation makes it difficult to make a clear association between language and other cultural subsystems, since these do not line up along neat boundaries, like those of political maps, which give us an extremely limited vision of human cultural complexity.

Ethnic identity is a separate but related matter. Language may be an important factor in defining ethnicity, but it is not the only one, nor is it a necessary component. Any cultural subsystem, or combination of these, may come into play. An individual's or a group's ethnicity is flexible and may change in a short span of time, as a response to a changing social and cultural context, and to internal processes of transformation. Nationalism may be thought of as a sort of macroethnicity, usually invented and imposed upon a population by a nation state.

In this framework, a bilingual person sometimes (but not always) learns to transcend his or her ethnocentricity, realizing that there are other equally valid ways of being and doing. This transcendental perspective permits one to have deeper interpersonal relationships with people from other cultural contexts, acquiring what I like to call a "horizontal gaze," that is, a healthy acceptance of their otherness.

I still think a sort of acculturation must have happened to me when I was being raised and exposed to European Languages.Today, I consider myself a Eurasian, having most of the European values, and "cultural subsystems" as mentioned above.My Turkishness or let's say  regional , local characteristics  only show up in my temperament and some sudden "interjections" Thankfully, my Turkish students in Canada, only trying to learn English, without necessarily "Canadianise or North-Americanise themselves. (I am teaching Business English and interestingly, we are covering the topic Cultures and Business etiquette across cultures this week :) From a teacher's perspective though, it is very difficult not to teach the language  and some "do's and don'ts" and certain values, traditions, idioms etc without introducing the "culture" which might have created them.Today, I was trying to explain to my multicultural class the idiom "we get on like house on fire" to which none of the students could relate. How could a terrible burning house describe the closeness of a relation.I might be wrong but after a brief discussion we came to thinking that 'wood' , being the preferred construction material in this part of the world might have created this idiom. since wooden homes(which are not easily to be found in other countries' might not "catch fire" that easily. I might have been wrong with this inference but it should be difficult to deny the relation of language with  the culture which has created it.

The formative processes of the brain, of the mentality, of the cultural patterns are highly influenced by the environment. The language and the culture (as defined by any handbook) are learned in concrete framework, through a specific language and culture. Two or more languages and cultures means an enlargement of the outlook and generate a more complex basis than that of someone who raised and educated under a monocultural and monolingual influence. Generally a person educated at the confluence of two cultures and languages has a great and nuanced comprehension of the reality and of the otherness.

Languange contact, especially in early childhood, deeply influences the evolution of personality and also individual  cognitive and social abilities. As a matter of fact early bilingualism is considered a very positive condition which has effects on future personal development. The Common European Framework of Reference (2001) indicates that in foreign language teaching  this aspect should also be taken into consideration. Pesonally I have experienced the widening of my horizons in relation to each language and culture that during my childhood I have learnt both in formal and non formal environment: Italian as my mothertongue, French in the kindergarden, English and German at primary school and in various summer schools in the UK and Germany.

Hi Carmeen,

We may discuss bilingualism in terms of gains and losses. Inevitably, if individuals acquire a second language, they open up to a new culture. This is all gains. At the same time, the more a person gets insights into a new culture, loses the tight, limited boundaries of his/her primitive culture and gains a broader scope of the realities that surround him/her.

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00795/pdf

This is not the point. The point is what happens with a person who is born and educated "naturally" in such an environment. It not acquires a second language or culture, he or she has from the begining two languages and two cultures.  It is not an adjonction of the basis, it's a entirely different kind of basis.

This post seems to me like being affected by the so-called Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which states that languages can influence users' thinking patterns.  However, this issue is a quite controversial one, and nowadays the hypothesis is undergoing a revival process. My personal view is that learning a new language is the same process of getting to know the culture behind this language, but the potential influence of this cultural knowing does not necessarily result in a strong case of aculturation, but at the same time, we cannot ignore the implicit effect of the L2 culture upon the learner.  The ultimate result may depend on many factors, besides the generally perceived L1 or L2 culture. 

@Laura... and this broadening is a gain too right? Or do you see it as a loss (because of the "weakening" of the original culture)? Then we adapt (as all humans do) and we become different. We evolve. As Popeye used to say: "I am what I am".

@Matthew - which is the culture behind English (unless you postulate that there are dozens of Englishes)? I chose English because of its special status, but this applies to all languages actually. Oh and the Whorf-Sapir revival (at least in its weak form) is real... Look at the Lera Boroditsky studies and the Himba tribe in Namibia. Fascinating...  In any case, beyond "spaghetti" culture, it is unlikely that real culture can be taught though it can obviously be learned (I am not suggesting that you think it can be taught by the way - it's just to counter the common idea that "you have to teach the language and its culture").

Also, in relation to @Alexandru's point... as a multicultural person, is it possible to establish boundaries between the two (or more) cultures? Will I only laugh the French way when I watch a French movie or the Greek way when I watch a Greek movie or the Thai way when I watch a Thai movie etc??? Or???

Just some thoughts...

In my view one is affected by the implicit cultural assumptions of the languages one adds to one's linguistic repertoire. These assumptions may be seen as the 'habitus' of the way these languages categorize the world. This may broaden one's own cultural horizon and may give one a window into alternative ways of perceiving values and phenomena. I was born in an Urdu-speaking family which assumed Urdu was superior to Pakistan's indigenous languages. I rebelled against what appeared a kind of snobbery to me and learned Punjabi which made me understand and enjoy the fun-loving culture associated with Punjabi. I learned English in school as well as a bit of French and developed an ever-lasting love for European literature and culture which has saved me from the ethnocentrism which has come to dominate much educated thought in Pakistan.

One prevalent idea among the teachers of English in Pakistan is  that languages should be taught without reference to  literature or culture. This is supposed to strengthen one's own culture but it probably will endorse prejudice and ethnocentrism. I think one should open one's self to all kinds of worldviews and consciously endeavour to promote not just tolerance but a real desire to respect and understand diversity without, however, compromising on certain core universal values such as human rights, womens' rights and animal rights etc which are some of the very positive values which come with the learning of Western languages and the literature and other cultural products in those languages.

If i have understand correctly, the idea of English teachers from Pakistan is the most unrealistic that i have heard for a long time.

The languages are not separates and autonomous bodies from the human societies. Language has to express ideas, cultures, values etc. (consequently and implicitly rankings). But, those rankings do not come from the languages, but from the way in which were built and works the societies, the cultures, the human consciousness. Indeed, the challenge is to build a non-darwinistic society (in a darwinistic Universe) and that relates and belong to the human being who, for this purpose, must have a comprehensive or open-mindedly conscience, placed on a humanistic moral basis,  eventualy, exceeding anthropocentric outlook .

@Tariq Rahman I agree with you on the former part of your post, however, I beg to differ on the latter part, in my humble personal opinion, there is no concensus on human rights, women's rights and animal rights. In many parts of the world, survival is the most basic human right, while on other parts of the world, the so-called freedom of speech may be considered more fundamental. As for women's right, on some parts of the world barring childhood marriage may be a very basic right for women, for other places to vote may be more desirable. As for animal right, does eating dog a violation of animal right? From the Anglo-European point of view, YES, while from other cultures NO. Does eating turkey a violation of animal right? From an American point of view, NO, but the question is, is eating turkey, or eating pigs, or horses, any better than eating dogs? If you think so, then you are only victim of human prejudice, there is no ethics that says that eating a particular kind of animal is better than eating another kind.  So the so-called universal values themselves may be only cultural hegemonies in a benevolent or humane disguise. We should be on alert against such kind of thoughts, in my personal view, to be tolerant and to be different is the right way of co-exitence, not on the basis of so-called universal values, if so ,whose values? I am afraid the Anglo-European values can not, and should not represent the values of the whole human race. 

In all seriousness, I would prefer to think about the question "How does being monolingual affect a person's identity?".

Bilingualism has many aspects, and we must first define and delimit what we are talking about. If by bilingualism you imply the feeling of ethnicity, the situation is indeed complex, because ethnicity is not only a stamp on a document, but a more or less deep personal feeling. I write ‘more or less’ because not all the people have the same references to ethnicity. For some, this is an insignificant detail, for other an essential detail, often linked to a certain religious conviction, and the wish to impose these norms on others, even by force. 

Bilingualism is ‘natural’ if used in a family where the father belongs to a linguistic (and ethnic) group A, and the mother to another group B. Their children are, at least theoretically, perfect bilingual speakers, provided that they wish to be so. I do not think there is a rule regarding bilingualism and human behavior in bilingual families, but there are many studies referring to a series of typical situations. 

‘[...] how a bilingual person develops his/her cultural identity? Why are you interested in this very complex question? As a part of a scientific work? As a personal experience, e.g. you belong to such a family and are undecided to which cultural/linguistic/ethnic group you belong? etc. You are interested in this phenomenon as a sociologist or as a linguist or both? Bilingual or even multilingual speakers may feel comfortable in any cultural or linguistic context around or may tend towards one language, perhaps despising the other, if his/her cultural orientation changes, usually when a teenager or later, by marriage. I am at least trilingual and feel very comfortable in any cultural context, but I would not bet this is valid for any person in a similar situation.

Being bilingual also means bicultural, and this has a big impact on a person's identity which may become attached to two identities rather than one. 

This question is a broad question, but I do think it is worthwhile to address at some point. Being bilingual does affect the way that a person behaves in a certain context. But It may or may not affect his or her cultural identity though. An notable fact is: even when a person speak two or more different languages, he or she still remains her or his original identity. Of course they could easily fit in different cultures, but in mono-culture society or society with dominant culture, a person would always tend to follow the main culture. It might be a social phenomenon. But I do understand how a person feels in this circumstance given the fact that I have lived in two different countries for a long time. 

As a linguist, I think  it is interesting to know two or more languages with different systems. Each language has its unique system of morphology, phonology and syntax. Also, there are some similarities between languages that are interesting to know.

@ Matthew Yu: Yes, you are right about there  not being a consensus about values especially as they pertain to rights. I must confess that I cannot defend with consistent logic my enlightenment, liberal values. However, while eating turkeys and not eating dogs may be ethnocentric prejudices, the rights of women may be basically those values, practices and social institutions which do not give them pain, which do not humiliate them, which allow them to enjoy life and express themselves fully and so on. I know this will also be subject to different interpretations but there seems no other way to express the desire to create a more compassionate society than talking in a confessedly Western way about rights!

good afternoon, schooling is the most forceful impact factor on a person's identity. Being an arab gave me enough to internalise that feeling of belongingness thanks to my direct environment, however, it is school where french was the first language of study that  gave me more on and about L2 french culture. Koranic school gave me the religious dimension of my identity.

Everyone is talking as though language were the starting point of the cultural issue whereas it seems (to me) that it is one of the consequences (an end point) of the environment that we live in. Just a quick thought.

what would we think of people who live on one side of the frontier, speak the language variety of the other side of the frontier, believe to belong to the speech communities of both sides of the frontier, and bear identity cards and passports of this side of the frontier?  they'r bilinguals for sure, but what about their cultural identity? Do they choose which one they identify with or the one imposed on them because of some geo-political reasons?

To speak  a language fluently does not necessarily enable one to have a cultural identity with the society that speaks that language,  since culture is more than speaking a language and to have an identity requires growing up and living with that language. Therefore a person can have an identity of two cultures of different languages if  he/she  grew up in the environment that speaks the two languages and the cultural  identity of that person will be a hybrid one not monolithic and that is perfect by itself.

I assume this is for the sake of a paper work, not for practical purposes of necessity where the cultural identity of a person has nothing to do of success but character and the job he/she does efficiently and professionally  that matter the most. 

Generally, a bilingual person will use two languages: one is mother tongue and another is local language or other language. These two languages will influences the culture. 

Generally, the person identifies with mother tongue language. But the person also imbibes local language culture.

The persons identifies with the culture of both the languages.

In my personal opinion, I find cultural identity / background has an impact on a person's language capability (I mean how bilingual / trilingual a person can be).  Reason being when a person started from young to learn a language, s/he needs to apply / use & practice with it within his or her cultural environment. 

For example, when a child is learning his or her native language e.g. Chinese, s/he needs to practice it with his or her surrounding family members, relatives, friends etc so that s/he can understand what s/he'd listened and what s/he said understood by others.  Any mistake can be fixed / learned from time to time.  When the same person starts picking up other languages e.g. English, if his or her cultural environment is not conducive / well verse with English, his / her comprehension & communication in English can be affected. 

In my country Malaysia, e.g. a Chinese can be trilingual in such situations - speaking Mandarin (Chinese) in schools, speaking English at home or in Church (due to parents are English educated) and speaking Bahasa Malaysia when running errant in government departments.  Because the environment / community that predominantly using a  particular language will prompt the person to adapt in speaking a specific language that s/he knows.

Being a bilingual person does not only mean you speak two languages but it also means that you have become two persons. A bilingual has the mark of two nationalities on him or her. These identities manifest in the blend of cultural life that the bilingual leads.

The second part of your question, ‘does the person acquire the culture of L1 or that of L2’? If the linguists’ definition of the word ‘acquisition’ as a subconscious, effortless of linguistic knowledge that the child acquires is anything to go by, then your choice of the word ‘acquire’ has already limited us. It gives me the clue that the bilingual acquires the elements of L1 but again, this is debatable.

Mohammad, I have just downloaded your paper, and have had a furtive glance at it. Most interesting, thanks.

If bilingualism or multilingualism (as it often happens in Nigeria) is limited to the understanding of  another language or languages other than your MT to a certain "degree" , i would say each person acquires simultaneously and to a certain extent, aspects of other cultures. This is especially the case when the process takes place in the foreign country or region/state even within one´s own county.

The question of identity is slightly different....in the case of Nigeria, being able to speak Izon, Kalabari, Hausa and Igbo for example, gives you easy access to understanding the cultures of these groups. You however, still retain "your identity " of ethnic belonging.

Learning a European language, or being born /attending school in a continent other than Africa (especialy as an African); it is very unikely that one can claim a change in identity. Being bilingual in the European language or languages and your own MT gives the advantage of understanding the culture(s) but it is difficult to say that it affects your identity.

I can see from my own children that they married over the (my mother tongue) language barrier and then I wonder if they have the energy to keep up both so very different languages simultaneously with their eventual children? Besides their daily use of two their children also have to learn 2-3 additional languages in school. 

Great question!  

❝To have another language is to possess a second soul.❞

                                                                      ‒Charlemagne

❝If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.❞

                                                                    -Nelson Mandela

Ask a bilingual person to count silently from 1 to 10. Then ask him/her what language she/he counted in. Chances are I think that the first language (mother tongue) will have been used. Any information/observation on this?

I am bilingual, or even multilingual, if one can determine the term in such fashion.

The official language of the state is Macedonian, the other official one ( up to ares where more than 20% of the inhabitants belonging to that identity and ethnic group live) is Albanian, to which I belong. ( Such is he Law, which I find hard to interpret).

I speak both languages, and linguistically I am OK. However, culturally, historically, biologically etc., I belong to the Albanian speaking people.

Other extra-contextual factors (  except for politics, which I hate to comment), as I have named them in my " Multilingualism in a semiotic context: sameness vs. otherness" ( which is still an unfinished article, - I promise to put it under public discussion afetr I finish it), are as well; my not being satisfied from the local publishers, therefore my decision to academically write only in English and Italian.  In conclusion, which is my own identity? I would not know. Probably a traditional and inherited one: the one from my parents, stemming from biology and psychology. The rest is something I have acquired by learning and adapting myself to brand new contexts.

I hope I have helped. Very interesting and discussable academic question.

Thanks. Bujar.

I grew up in a family that speaks arabic and is fluent in french because of the environment. I feel stronger, richer and I have never felt that I had a split personality/identity. Everything has merged together to the point that there's no obstacle when I speak or write. Diversity of horizons has allowed me to adjust according to my capacities,the situation-problem, the individuals around me, or the topic dealt with. French was the language of the colonizing power, but has been accepted by peaople of my generation as a war-booty. It does belong to me, because I am a citizen of the world, mediterranean, african, which means a wider, more complex identity

being bilingual has been asset as a person have more opportunities, i.e. easy for a person to work and live in different countries and easily adapt to two different cultures. really quiet easy. two identities and two cultures, that's really nice, isn't it?

Yes. I agree with Jun Zhang. Having knowledge and abilities to speak different languages open up avenues to learn more about socio-cultural values of people in different areas/countries as well... so enriching. It also gives opportunities for career development and mobility.

Charlemagne is reported to have said "To have another language is to possess a second soul".

His kingdom straddled most of central Europe and within it several of what are now the world's major languages Having the ability to understand other languages opens the door to a world of experience and insight.

That's for sure, being bilingual does not affect your identity but widens your language limits.

One of my distant relatives perfectly knows at least 5 European languages.

In what language does he dream?

According to him, this mainly depends on the place where, in a dream, events occur, and from the scenario of the dream.

This same feature of Bilinguals notes also prof.C. Lewis Kausel (see above)

The same thing happened to me after my almost 20 years in Japan.

But being Multilingual - does not affect the identity. It opens the possibility of a slightly better understanding of the way foreigners in the environment of which you are think (in this sense - Japan is a very special case)

Very nice discussion and comments!

It might be that the desire to learn another language is part of our humanity. Humans need to communicate as much as they need food and water.

Language is what makes us human.

Studying linguistics was a great influence on my education and I often regret not taking it much further.

Leonid is correct that being multilingual does not change the identity of a person but it gives great insight into other cultures which in its way strengthens the understanding of one's own. By comparing how we express ourselves in our own language with the way others express themselves in theirs we can learn a great deal.

Being a Tamil in India, I know Tamil and English and having been in North I have enough of Hindi, and my mother tongue being Urdu, I can speak it flulently. In a multicultural and multilingual country like India, this is not a unique talent but something common to most educated Indians. As for its effect on individuals, it gives accessibility to other cultures and people, making geography more porous. As a translator translating classical Tamil texts into English, I know the benefits of being bilingual and bicultural. I would say it makes you less rigid and more tolerant of other cultures and less dogmatic in your opinions.

I think it does have some affect individuals personality but that does not changes that beings identity, because at the core level he remains attached to his motherland cultural.

HI, bilingualism is a kind of privilege. having an interrelated system of language learning helps people to develop their L1 and L2. the cognitive and metacognitive strategies of L1 can help l2 learners in language learning. nowadays, people talk about interlanguage effects not just the interference of L1.Regarding Chomsky's views, languages have a lot of commonalities; so the principles are available . we should be exposed to l2 to set the parameters. bilinguals are gifted with a lot of resources cognitively, socio=linguistically, pragmatically and metacognitively. best