This course examines bilingualism both as a societal and an individual phenomenon. Thus, one part of the course focuses on societal multiligualism, and includes topics such as factors contributing to societal multilingualism, patterns of societal multilingualism, language maintenance vs. language shift, linguistic minorities, and attitudes towards bilingualism. Another part of the course focuses on the bilingual individual, and includes topics such as the mental representation of bilingualism, the effect of parental input on child bilingualism, and code-switching. Also included will be a discussion of bilingual education, both from a linguistic perspective as well as a political perspective. 3 credits.