Advantages of Language Proficiency in the Military Environment

Multilingualism describes the fact of using several living languages, understanding them, and mastering their nuances. Languages apprenticeship is long, tedious, but rewarding. Worldwide, 60-75% of the population speaks at least two languages. To be monolingual is to be part of a minority. For the new generations of military leaders, speaking several languages is a huge advantage, socially, professionally and neurologically. After briefly reviewing some scientific data on the advantages of the bilingual brain, the paper discusses how bilingualism positively affects their cognitive development as future Army leaders. Indeed, the obligation to juggle between two languages, the mother tongue and the language learned, offers bilingual people better control of the executive functions of their brain. In other words, the faculties of attention, memory, reasoning developed by learning the language are reinforced. This is an advantage for the military leader, who can thus process each piece of information more quickly and adapt more effectively to the evolution of a situation in a theatre of operations, for example. Cognitive control skills, mental flexibility, the ability to perform tasks requiring change, monitoring and conflict control are thus easier for a bilingual army officer.