In the previous chapters, we dealt with many of the facts and empirical research findings reported to date in multilingualism. In order to obtain scientifically valid empirical and theoretical knowledge, scholars deploy research methodologies and analytical tools. Researchers address concepts and terms, hypotheses, classifications, methods, theories and models. This chapter provides an overview of the general methodology of research in its application to multilingualism.

Features of multilingualism research

Scientific knowledge about multilingualism underlies language-related decisions in all areas of our life. It provides the basis for government and local policies concerning languages in economics, communication and education. Furthermore, it can help resolve issues in business, demographics and the personal existence of multilinguals. Research may also offer practical guidance relating to language policy, language pedagogies, language acquisition and language assessment.

Characteristics of research in multilingualism

Research in the field of multilingualism complies with the foundations of research in other disciplines and has its unique traits, which are both advantageous and challenging.

Due to the variety of disciplinary roots in multilingualism, research objectives, subjects of study, scope of investigations, and methods employed, all of which may differ from one academic subarea of multilingualism to another, it is no wonder that research methodologies, methods and techniques that now comprise multilingualism research are remarkably manifold and wide-ranging.

Multilingualism can boast an impressive collective list of methods that is probably unthinkable in any other domain of knowledge. Each discipline, as a rule, draws on the research philosophies accepted in its field of origin. Each subfield of multilingualism studies has a more or less stable set of traditional research methods. Multilingualism research includes the methods of natural science, such as mathematics and computational methods, life sciences, and humanities and social sciences. For example, neurolinguistics employs the methods of neuroscience and clinical studies to determine how languages are processed in the brain. The two primary technologies used in multilingualism research that image brain function in real time (not just the structure of the brain), thereby making it possible to detect changes over time, are positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).