Resumen de Theoretical Perspectives of Trilingual Education
The aim of this paper is to discuss different aspects of trilingualism and multilingualism as related to sociolinguistics. The paper highlights the importance of multilingualism in modern society and the interdisciplinarity of its study as related to sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and psycholinguistics. The paper, which adopts a sociolinguistic perspective, goes on to distinguish different chronological stages in the study of language use and behavior and their relationship with different social conditions. It identifies three stages, multilingualism being the most recent stage. The paper also discusses the distinctive features of tri-multilingualism as different from bilingualism and summarizes some recent explanatory models of multilingualism: the language switches model, the factor model and the dynamic model of multilingualism. The last section discusses the multilingualism as related to identity and education and highlights the role of trilingual education in modern society.
