Dominant Language
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Dominant Language
A bilingual site for educators and families of English language learners
The dominant language is the language with which a bilingual or multilingual speaker has greatest proficiency and/or uses more often. See primary language .
Colorín Colorado is a national multimedia project that offers a wealth of bilingual, research-based information, activities, and advice for educators and families of English language learners (ELLs). Colorín Colorado is an educational service of WETA, the flagship public broadcasting station in the nation's capital, and receives major funding from the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association. © Copyright 2019 WETA Public Broadcasting.
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We all harbor secrets. Some are big and bad; some are small and trivial. Researchers have parsed which truths to tell and which not to.
In one of the very first posts in this blog, I explained how bilinguals usually acquire and use their languages for different purposes, in different domains of life, with different people. Different aspects of life often require different languages. I have called this the Complementarity Principle (see here ).
The figure on the left helps us visualize the principle. Each quadrilateral represents a domain of life such as work / studies, home, family, shopping, leisure, administrative matters, holidays, clothes, sports, transportation, health, politics , etc. The person who is depicted here, a trilingual in languages a, b and c, uses language a (La) in seven domains of life, Lb in three domains, both La and Lb in five domains, and all three languages (La, Lb and Lc) in just one domain. Some domains, therefore, are specific to one language (ten in all), and others are shared by two or three languages (six in all). Any bilingual can be characterized in this way and will have a pattern that is specific to him or her.
The Complementarity Principle plays a large role in various aspects of bilingualism, one of them being language dominance. Li Wei of University College, London, defines the dominant bilingual as someone with greater proficiency in one of his or her languages and who uses it significantly more than the other language(s). In addition to language proficiency and language use, other factors are sometimes mentioned by researchers when accounting for dominance such as when the language was acquired, the bilingual's ability to read and write that language, the speed and efficiency with which it is processed, and so on.
Researchers have long tried to measure dominance. Outside judges can evaluate the bilinguals' languages such as their pronunciation and the extent of their vocabulary, or the bilinguals can be given various tests such as naming pictures, recognizing words, carrying out a command, or translating sentences from one language to the other. From the various measures obtained, specialists give the participants a dominance rating: the person is dominant in language A, or dominant in language B, or balanced in both languages (if such a person exists).
However, these various approaches have been criticized for reducing the complexity of the bilingual's language knowledge and behavior to a number of simple tasks often given in just one language. In addition, the cut-off point in the results of a particular task that is used to separate dominant from balanced bilinguals is arbitrary. It is also the case that many people use more than two languages in their everyday life which complexifies things even more.
Bilinguals can also be given language background questionnaires to fill out with questions that pertain to when and how the languages were learned, when the respondents started feeling comfortable speaking each language, how and when the languages are used, how proficient the bilinguals feel in each of their languages, etc. A dominance index is then calculated based on the answers given.
All these measures, both objective and subjective, may produce a global measure of dominance and may confirm, for example, that bilinguals are globally dominant in one of their languages, but they do not take into account that some domains of life are specific to a language. In the figure above, the bilingual depicted is globally dominant in La (13 domains counting shared domains), but there are three domains in which she uses Lb exclusively. With adequate assessment tools, it would probably be fairly easy to show that this bilingual is dominant in Lb in these domains. Thus, one can be globally dominant in a specific language but be dominant in the other language for particular domains of life.
Even though the Complementarity Principle puts the emphasis on language use, it has an indirect effect on proficiency, the other variable in Li Wei's description of dominance in the bilingual. If a language is spoken in a reduced number of domains and with a limited number of people, then it will not be developed as much as a language used in more domains and with more people. It is precisely because the need and use of the languages are usually quite different that bilinguals do not develop equal and total proficiency in all their languages.
This is also true for certain skills such as reading and writing. Many bilinguals do not need to read and write in some of their languages and hence have not developed these skills. Even if they do have reading and writing skills in their two or more languages, the levels of competence are probably different because the needs for these skills are not the same in each language.
Fortunately, researchers are starting to take the Complementarity Principle into account when describing language dominance. Carmen Silva-Corvalán of the University of Southern California and Jeanine Treffers-Daller of the University of Reading have just published a book on the topic and they give a new definition which takes into account the Principle: "... we define dominant language, a relative notion, as that in which a bilingual has attained an overall higher level of proficiency at a given age, and/or the language which s/he uses more frequently, and across a wider range of domains."
The book contains nine chapters by other researchers in addition to the ones by the editors, and it raises many unresolved issues relating to language dominance in children and adults. It also offers different theoretical perspectives on the question and a number of approaches to get at dominance. There is no doubt that it will very quickly become THE book to read on the topic!
For a full list of "Life as a bilingual" blog posts by content area, see here .
Photo of a girl thinking from Shutterstock.
Wei, Li (2007). Dimensions of bilingualism. In Li Wei (ed), The Bilingualism Reader , pp. 3-24. London & New York: Routledge.
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen, and Treffers-Daller, Jeanine (2016). Language Dominance in Bilinguals: Issues of Measurement and Operationalization . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Grosjean, François (2016). The Complementarity Principle and its impact on processing, acquisition, and dominance. In Carmen Silva-Corvalán & Jeanine Treffers-Daller (eds), Language Dominance in Bilinguals: Issues of Measurement and Operationalization . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
François Grosjean, Ph.D. , is an emeritus professor of psycholinguistics at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland and the author of Bilingual: Life and Reality , among other books.
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We all harbor secrets. Some are big and bad; some are small and trivial. Researchers have parsed which truths to tell and which not to.
July 9, 2022 November 17, 2021 by Hanan Parvez
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Home » Learning body language » 22 Dominant body language signals
Human beings are sensitive to social hierarchies. They want to know their status in their group and the status of their group members. Therefore, when people interact with others, some questions naturally run in their heads, such as:
These questions are important because they tell us how we should approach the other person. If they’re high-status, we’re likely to treat them nicely and be more careful around them to get in their good books. If they’re low-status, we’re likely to ignore them and, in worst-case scenarios, even treat them badly.
It’s because high-status people have greater access to resources. They have wealth and connections. By staying in their good books, one has a lot to gain.
Because gauging the social status of people is so important, we do it based on minimal non-verbal cues .
Most of the time, you don’t even have to talk to someone to know their status. You can judge their status based on their possessions, clothes, and non-verbal behavior.
Our ancestors gained high status mainly through the accumulation of resources. They accumulated resources mostly via dominance and the formation of alliances. Might has been right for most of our evolutionary history. This is why dominance and high status go hand-in-hand.
Those who’re high status tend to behave dominantly and those who’re dominant communicate high status .
Since the accumulation of resources is more important for the reproductive success of men than of women, we usually see men striving for social status and displaying dominant behaviors.
This article will lay out almost all the dominant body language signals for you. The goal is to inform you what those signals are so you can use them strategically to create the impressions you want.
Also, knowing these signals will help you respond to them effectively.
That said, there are some common themes that you’ll find over and over in dominant body language examples. Knowing these themes provides a context for you to understand and remember the different body language signals of dominance. These themes are:
Dominance is primarily about exerting control over people, things, and the environment. The more dominant a person, the more power and control they have.
As is the case with many other animals, size matters when it comes to dominance. Larger organisms can easily overpower the smaller ones. When smaller animals encounter the larger ones, they often submit without a fight and without risking their lives.
Making yourself appear bigger is therefore used by humans to intimidate others and dominate them. It communicates:
“I’m bigger than you. You better back off before I hurt you.”
Leading is a form of exerting control. Leaders direct, instruct, advise and help people. Leading requires following so, ultimately, it’s a form of control. Often, people are willing to follow high-status leaders. So, it’s more kind of positive control.
Dominant individuals reflect openness in their body language because they have nothing to hide. Closed body language communicates defensiveness and fear. It’s an attempt to protect one’s vital organs from attack.
Now that we’ve covered the common themes of dominant body language, let’s go over the different dominant non-verbal signals:
When you maintain eye contact, you show you’re unafraid of people and confident in yourself. People who can’t maintain eye contact signal nervousness and a lack of self-assuredness. They are worried others will judge them negatively.
Avoiding eye contact can have many- and sometimes contradictory- meanings depending on the situation. In most cases, it communicates nervousness and social anxiety. In some cases, it communicates dominance in the sense of:
“I’m not engaging with you by looking at you. You’re beneath me.”
This usually happens when a person is vying for the attention of the dominant person. The dominant person ignores or looks away.
Imagine you go to your boss’s room to ask them something. They barely look at you when you talk to them and keep staring at their screen. They’re communicating:
“You’re not important enough for me to engage with you.”
When you pull your head slightly up by raising the chin, you show you’re not afraid to expose your neck, a vulnerable part of your body. Another reason this communicates dominance is that it lets you ‘look down on others’ because your eyes are raised too.
If you’re a shorter guy and a taller guy ‘looks down’ on you, you can still look dominant if you raise your chin up. See this example:
When two people greet each other, the one who ‘nods up’ appears more dominant than the one who ‘nods down’.
Next time you interact with someone at the counter, pay attention to the direction in which your head moves while you wait. If you’re not a dominant person, you’ll find that while your body is facing the counter, your head turns to the side to ‘scan’ the environment.
“I can’t face what’s in front of me. I’m looking for an escape.”
It’s one of the signs of nervousness . People who’re confident tend to look in the direction in which their bodies are oriented most of the time.
Facial expressions that communicate dominance include:
If you hold your head still in conversations, you show dominance. You show that you’re unimpressed by what others have to say. This is often accompanied by prolonged eye contact and a neutral facial expression to show a lack of interest.
When you do this gesture, you communicate:
“You better make sense or say something worthwhile if you want a reaction out of me.”
Relaxed shoulders communicate dominance because when people are nervous, they tend to raise their shoulders . It’s an unconscious attempt to protect the neck and make the body smaller.
Of course, we also do it when it’s cold to reduce the surface area of our body and lose less heat. So, pay attention to the context.
Crossing the arms is a classic defensive body language gesture. Since dominant individuals don’t need to defend themselves, they don’t cross their arms. Also, they don’t hide the front of their body behind wine glasses and handbags. They have no need of erecting any barrier between themselves and others.
Dominant people have no problems spreading their arms out and moving them freely during conversations. Doing so makes them appear bigger and more in control. Nervous people tend to stick their arms to their sides if they’re not crossing them. This makes them appear smaller.
This ‘I’m ready to act’ gesture makes a person appear bigger.
Hiding the hands in your pockets shows you’re trying to hide yourself or a part of yourself. When people freely show their hands during conversations, they communicate openness, honesty, and confidence.
Keeping your palms down as you talk communicates:
“I have control over you. You’re under my hand.”
This gesture is usually done when we ask someone to ‘slow down’ or ‘calm down’. Since
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