New horizons in the study of multilingualism and thought

The purpose of this sabbatical is to synthesise the substantial body of conceptual and empirical research on the relationship between language and thought that I have carried out together with my team over the past decade.

Our programme deals with whether the lexical and grammatical categories of the language you speak influence the way you think, and if so, whether learning a new language involves learning new ways of thinking.

To gain insight into these fundamental questions, we have implemented new standards of methodological rigor and applied these to the study of under-researched languages and multilingual populations.

In this way, it has been possible to better understand the internal (e.g., lexical frequency) and external (e.g., age of acquisition) factors that modulate the way in which language influences cognitive processing.

The time is now ripe to spell out the broader implications of these findings and chart the directions for future research.

Four journal articles generated during the sabbatical will be dedicated to this task, focusing on topics such as epistemological scope and validity. Two stays (tot 1.5 months) are planned at Bangor University (UK) and Turku University.

These will serve to gauge the state of the field with world-leading scholars and initiate collaborative projects between our universities, involving both staff and students.