Can Bilinguals “Switch Off” Their Unwanted Language(S)?

Abstract

The complexity of a bilingual’s ability of two different languages have urged linguists to explore the hidden explanations for bilinguals’ command and processing of the two different language lexicons. The previous research studies investigating bilinguals’ lexical and sentence processing are explored, in this paper, to investigate whether it is possible for a bilingual to switch off the unintended language while using one of his languages. I expect to conclude, in the light of the presented evidence, that the bilingual’s languages are active at some level even when using one of his languages.