Second language acquisition and schizophrenia

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a complex mental disorder that results in language-related symptoms at various discourse levels, ranging from semantics (e.g. inventing words and producing nonsensical strands of similar-sounding words) to pragmatics and higher-level functioning (e.g. too little or too much information given to interlocutors, and tangential discourse). Most of the literature concerning people with schizophrenia who acquire a second or foreign language suggests that these linguistic deficits are not as prominent (in some instances, altogether absent) when patients use their non-dominant language, a phenomenon that has been used to support different claims posited by psychologists and linguists about schizophrenia and second language learning alike. This review explores the relationship between second language acquisition and schizophrenia, and discusses how empirical findings regarding multilingual individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia inform current notions regarding second language acquisition.