Childhood in Multiple Languages: When Bilingualism Becomes a Metaphor

Abstract

This paper advances the proposition that childhood bilingualism functions not merely as a psycholinguistic condition but as a metaphor through which children construct meaning about self, identity, and the social world. Drawing upon empirical research from developmental psychology, sociolinguistics, and educational studies, the paper demonstrates that bilingual children develop enhanced metaphorical competence, particularly in metaphor production, rooted in meta-metaphorical awareness and cognitive flexibility. Children actively construct their multilingual identities using four master metaphorical source domains: the natural world, artefact or tool, journey, and personification. These metaphors carry significant emotional valences, conceptualised as affective metaphorical load, which shapes psychological well-being and educational outcomes. The paper further distinguishes between code-switching as metaphor, which reifies language boundaries, and translanguaging as metonymy, which recognises holistic linguistic repertoires. Educational implications include explicit metaphor instruction across all of a child's languages, treatment of children's metaphorical productions as valuable data, examination of educators' own metaphorical framings, and selection of curricular materials that model positive, dynamic metaphors of bilingualism. By reconceptualising bilingualism as metaphor, the paper redirects attention from purely functional outcomes towards the experiential and symbolic dimensions of multilingual childhood, offering theoretical tools for research and practice in an increasingly globalised world.