IIT Guwahati sheds light on bilingualism

In a recent study conducted by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati, it gained interesting information about bilingual comprehensions. It found the comprehension is influenced by the cultural cues in different communities. The findings aligned with previous beliefs about the cultural context in language processing. The study mentions about types of bilingualism and socio-cultural and interactional context. It suggests the significance of various factors into consideration while studying bilingualism.

The study worked on how cultural cues affect the translation process, in between the first and second language across different age groups. The research provides a more inclusive understanding of bilingual experiences in non-Western settings.

The findings have been published in the journal Studies in Contemporary Linguistics. It is published by Mouton De Gruyter and co-authored by Professor Bidisha Som and her research scholar, Dr Opangienla Kechu, from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Guwahati, with them is was Professor Luis Benites and Professor Roc­o Maehara from Universidad del Pac­fico, Lima, Per.

While focusing on the importance of the research, Professor Bidisha Som stated “This research has significant implications for fields like education, healthcare, and customer service, where multilingual communication is common. By understanding how cultural familiarity or mismatch influences comprehension, educators can design more effective bilingual programs tailored to students' backgrounds. Similarly, healthcare professionals and translators can leverage these findings to enhance communication in diverse settings.”

The goal was to investigate, whether cultural cues influenced the performance in a translation word recognition task. Factors like age, living conditions or translation direction affected the results. The study found out the effect of culture cues despite the cultural and geographical proximity of the two communities researched.

Talking about the key findings, Professor Bidisha Som remarked, “This study is crucial because it adds to the current assumption that cultural context always plays a significant role in bilingual language processing. In communities where bilingualism and biculturalism are the norm, cultural cues appear to matter less in language comprehension; however, that too is dependent on other subtle cues in the environment.”

In culturally diverse region the research is beneficial for reducing miscommunication.