István Kecskés or Istvan Kecskes is a Professor of Linguistics and Education. He teaches and writes on pragmatics, second language acquisition, and bilingualism. In Foreign Language and Mother Tongue, which he co-wrote with a relative, Tünde Papp, Kecskés claims that second language learning has a beneficial effect on the use of the mother tongue. The book presents data garnered through a longitudinal study on the effects of foreign language learning.
Kecskés has written and co-edited five books as well as articles published in the Journal of Pragmatics, Pragmatics & Cognition, International Journal of Bilingualism, Slavica, Second Language Research, International Journal of Multilingualism, WORD and elsewhere, as well as in Intercultural Pragmatics, which he edits.[1]
In 2004, Kecskés became the founding editor of Intercultural Pragmatics and the Mouton Series in Pragmatics published by Mouton de Gruyter. He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Pragmatics,[2] Pragmatics & Society,[3] the International Journal of Multilingualism,[4] and the Journal of Foreign Languages. He was the guest editor of a special issue of the International Journal of Bilingualism on cognitive approaches to bilingualism. [5] Kecskés lives in Latham, New York, a suburb of Albany. He was born, raised and educated in Hungary.