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Article published In: Journal of Second Language Pronunciation
Vol. 12:1 (2026) ► pp.4–32

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Sound communities

A quantitative proposal for studying bilingual speech

ORCiD logo with link | University of Texas at Austin
ORCiD logo with link | University of Chicago
ORCiD logo with link | University of California, Santa CruzSanta Cruz
ORCiD logo with link | Rutgers University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Published online: 5 February 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jslp.25016.nag
Abstract
Bilingualism researchers have intensively studied how learning and using multiple languages affects all levels of linguistic structure. In this strand, examining diversity in the bilingual experience and the extent to which variables like language dominance regulate crosslinguistic interaction has been of special interest. However, most studies sample small groups of bilinguals from a single research site, creating a twofold generalizability problem. First, with small samples it is unlikely that researchers will be able to fully capture and quantify the range of variables known to affect findings. Second, when bilinguals are recruited from a single site, it is impossible to determine if findings are site-specific or apply to bilinguals more broadly. To address these issues, we propose a large(r)-scale, multisite approach to bilingualism research. We believe that such an approach, when informed by open science practices, has the potential to significantly advance the state of the art.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • State of the Art in Bilingual (Speech) Research
    • Bilingualism across space and time
    • Current experimental design and analysis in bilingual speech research
    • Opportunities for open speech science
  • A Case in point: Spanish-English Bilinguals in the United States
    • Examples of opportunities for speech research
  • Recommendations
    • General considerations
    • Instruments to assess language dominance
    • Statistical modeling and sampling
    • Multisite collaborations
  • An Example of a multisite project in development
  • Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
References (91)
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