PROFESSOR SOMMER'S SESSION

It was really a pleasure for me to listen to Prof. Doris Sommers yesterday during the conference. She spoke about bilingual benefits. Some issues of her speech seemed to me very interesting.

She gave very several examples of the benefits of being bilingual; for instance, the experiments with the babies. There were two control groups of 6-7 month babies monolingual and bilingual. They were shown a puppet show where a puppet always appeared from the one side of the scene. All the babies saw it and reacted on it. After six or seven appearances of the first puppet, the second one began to appear from another side of the scene. The bilingual babies noticed it at once and reacted on it, whereas the monolingual babies noticed it only after six-seven appearances.

Another example was with the school-age children. They were divided in several control groups according to their age, the level of education of their parents, their race etc. They were shown a subject, for example, a pen, and were asked to name it and to describe its functions. The monolingual children answered: “A pen. We write with it”. Bilingual children gave two words (for example, English-French – a pen / un stylo) and gave several functions of it: “We can write with a pen, we can open the envelops with it, we can scratch our head with it when thinking” and so on. So the bilinguals were more creative and open-minded.

In her session Prof. Sommer discussed also the role of polyglossia in general and of bilinguism, in particular, in forming a democratic society. She told that the main condition of democracy is not tolerance, as they often say, but admiration. When we are tolerant, we just agree that somebody is different whether we like it or not. But it does not mean we accept this person; whereas admiration means social acceptance. I think, that's true, however this means that the social acceptance does not depend on the society where a person seeks to be accepted on, but on this particular person – on his achievements, his cultural background, his social behavior etc. – on the qualities that can cause admiration.

Prof. Sommer cited Bakhtin who wrote that poliglossia defines the ability of a writer to write fiction. This made me think about Melville. Melville knew several languages. How does his polyglossia effects the narrative of MOBY DICK? It seems to me an interesting theme to be discussed.