JMMD

Contents
Editorial 93
Anna Wierzbicka: Preface: Bilingual Lives, Bilingual Experience 94
Kanavillil Rajagopalan: Emotion and Language Politics: The Brazilian
Case 105
Alexia Panayiotou: Switching Codes, Switching Code: Bilinguals’
Emotional Responses in English and Greek 124
Mary Besemeres: Different Languages, Different Emotions?
Perspectives from Autobiographical Literature 140
Celeste Kinginger: Bilingualism and Emotion in the Autobiographical
Works of Nancy Huston 159
Aneta Pavlenko: ‘Stop Doing That, la Komu Skazala!’: Language Choice
and Emotions in Parent–Child Communication 179
Jean-Marc Dewaele: The Emotional Force of Swearwords and Taboo
Words in the Speech of Multilinguals 204
Catherine L. Harris: Bilingual Speakers in the Lab: Psychophysiological
Measures of Emotional Reactivity 223
Jeanette Altarriba and Tina M. Canary: The Influence of Emotional
Arousal on Affective Priming in Monolingual and Bilingual
Speakers 248
Robert W. Schrauf and Julia Sanchez: The Preponderance of Negative
Emotion Words in the Emotion Lexicon: A Cross-generational and
Cross-linguistic Study 266
 JMMD

Editorial
Languages and Emotions: A Crosslinguistic
Perspective
This special issue is an outcome of several years of productive collaboration between
the editors and contributors, most of whom had opportunities to meet and discuss
their work in person at the colloquia on bilingualism and emotions we have organ-
ised at the Second University of Vigo International Symposium on Bilingualism,
Vigo, Spain, October 2002; the Fourth International Symposium on Bilingualism,
Tempe, Arizona, United States, May 2003; and the International Pragmatics Associ-
ation Conference, Toronto, Canada, July 2003. We thank the organisers and the
audiences at these conferences for their feedback and support. The issue has also
greatly benefited from the comments of our colleagues who peer-reviewed the
papers: Jeanette Altarriba, Angeliki Athanasiadou, Fabienne Bader, Mary
Besemeres, Malcolm Edwards, Catherine Harris, Aspa Hatzidaki, Yasuko Kanno,
Celeste Kinginger, Michele Koven, Ingrid Piller, Maria Elena Placencia, Thomas
Ricento, Robert Schrauf, and Christopher Stroud. We thank them for the benefit of
their time and expertise.
The multiple opportunities we all had to read and to comment on each other’s
work contributed to the great cohesiveness of this issue where scholars working in
different fields – linguistics, psychology, literary theory, language education – have
found ways to make imaginative and innovative interdisciplinary connections in
the field of multilingualism and emotions. While all of us approach emotions,
languages, and the relationship between them from different disciplinary, theoret-
ical, and analytical perspectives, we also share some common aims:
• to show that bi- and multilingualism, used as a unique lens, can illuminate
new directions in the study of the relationship between languages and
emotions, typically investigated with monolingual speakers and/or within
one language at a time (and thus to argue that ‘crosslinguistic’ does not neces-
sarily imply ‘monolingual’);
• to point to ways in which languages may create distinct emotional worlds for
their speakers and thus contribute to the inquiry in linguistic relativity;
• to understand how emotion and emotion-laden words and concepts are
encoded and processed in the bilingual mental lexicon;
• to put a human face on linguistic and psycholinguistic research, finding ways
to bring speakers’ lived experiences and concerns into our inquiry.
We hope that this special issue will raise interest in, and contribute to, the under-
standing of ways in which emotions impact language choice and use, as well as
ways in which bi- and multilinguals encode and express emotions in their multiple
languages.
Jean-Marc Dewaele and Aneta Pavlenko
Birkbeck College, University of London, UK and Temple University, USA

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Preface: Bilingual Lives, Bilingual
Experience
Anna Wierzbicka
Department of Linguistics, Australian National University, Canberra,
Australia

In a recent interview in the French magazine Epok , the multilingual German

sinologue Christoph Harbsmeier (2004) says that what interests him most is
‘the influence of language on thought, how we are influenced . . . in our ways
of being and of feeling by our language’. He illustrates this general statement
with his own experience:
A change of language brings with it a change of role. When I speak
French, I can’t stop making gestures with my hands. I learnt Danish at
Oxford, because my wife-to-be, who is Danish, didn’t like my Anglo-
phone personality: when I was speaking English, I was becoming too
intellectual. Fortunately, she liked my Danish personality.
The theme of this special issue
/ multilingualism and emotions
/ promises to
throw a new light on the vital issues that Harbsmeier is talking about.
Emotions are central to human life, and bilingualism provides a new
perspective on emotions which promises to lead to new insights, as well as to
offer crucial evidence for the old debates. At the same time, in a world in
which more people are bilingual than monolingual, bilingualism, too, is
central to most people’s lives; and a look at multilingualism from the point of
view of emotions promises to radically change and expand traditional
accounts of this phenomenon and immeasurably deepen our understanding
of it. Furthermore, research into the interface of emotions and bilingualism
promises to throw new light on wider issues of the relationship between
languages, culture, and self
/ a point to which I will return shortly.
Without attempting an exhaustive survey of issues which can be seen as
pertinent to the theme of ‘multilingualism and emotions’ I will focus in this
preface on a few points, which from my own perspective are particularly
interesting and important.
To begin with, the vocabulary of emotions is undoubtedly different from
language to language. This means that the set of concepts by means of which
the speakers of any given language make sense of their own and other
people’s feelings is specific to a particular language. I will illustrate this with
reference to Polish, my mother tongue, and English, the language of my
adoptive country, Australia. Since Polish and English emotion concepts do not
match, speakers of Polish have a different set of conceptual categories for
classifying
/ and interpreting
/ their own and other people’s feelings from
the speakers of English. For example, as I have discussed in a recent article

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Preface 95

focused on the concept of ‘grief’ (Wierzbicka, 2003), Polish has no word for
‘grief’, whereas English has no word for the important Polish concept of
‘nieszcze˛ście ’, roughly ‘disaster-cum-unhappiness’ (in Russian, nesčast’e , in
French malheur ). This means that the same event, for example the death of a
loved person, can be interpreted by a speaker of Polish through the conceptual
category of ‘nieszcze˛ście’ and by the speaker of English through the
conceptual category of ‘grief’. Since the way we think about what happens
to us is an integral part of the experience, the emotions associated with these
different interpretations may also be different. This means that the emotional
lives of speakers of different languages (in this case English and Polish) are
likely to be different, to some extent.
The differences in the sets of interpretive tools provided by different
languages can be analysed with great precision by linguistic semantics. In
particular, as I have argued in many publications, the ‘natural semantic
metalanguage’, based on empirically established universal human concepts
(cf. Goddard & Wierzbicka, 2002), allows us to pinpoint both the common-
alities and the differences in the emotion vocabularies of different languages
with great precision. Semantic differences associated with different vocabul-
aries are objective and can be compared rigorously and objectively by means
of the common measure of universal human concepts. But how can one
compare human emotional experiences which in contrast to the meanings of
words are inherently subjective? In particular, how can one establish that the
differences in the meaning of words matter in people’s lives? Here, I believe,
the perspective of bilingual persons is invaluable: it can complement an
objective semantic analysis with insights derived from subjective experience.
The language-specific character of the emotional vocabulary of a natural
language (for example, English) is undeniable and has been documented in
countless semantic studies (see, e.g. Harkins & Wierzbicka, 2001; Wierzbicka,
1992, 1999; cf. also Russell, 1991). But it is always possible for a monolingual
sceptic to dismiss the evidence of semantics as irrelevant and to claim that the
absence of a word does not prove the absence of a concept, and that moreover
the absence of a concept does not prove the absence of an emotion (cf. e.g.
Pinker, 1997). It is harder, however, to dismiss the testimony of a bilingual:
obviously, only a bilingual person can compare subjective experiences linked
with the use of different words, different expressions, different languages. I am
not saying that every opinion of every bilingual person should be regarded as
authoritative, or that testimonies of bilingual persons should replace all other
methods of studying human emotions. Rather, I am saying that such
testimonies need to be taken into account, and that they complement semantic
(and other) objective approaches. In what follows, I will permit myself to
illustrate these points by drawing on my own experience as a bilingual
/ a
Pole in Australia, living, on a daily basis, through two languages, Polish and
English.
My daughters were raised in Australia. They are bilingual. While they often
speak English to each other and to their father (who is an Australian but who
speaks very good Polish), normally, they speak Polish to me. When they were
younger, one of our recurring ‘emotional’ exchanges took the following form
96 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

(as will be discussed shortly, the English glosses given below are inaccurate
and misleading):

Mother: Nie gniewaj sie˛ (na mnie)!

‘Don’t be angry (with me)!’
Daughter: Ja sie˛ nie gniewam! Nie mów, że sie˛ gniewam.
‘I’m not angry! Don’t say that I’m angry.’
Mother: Ja nie mówie˛, że ty sie˛ gniewasz. Ja tylko prosze˛, żebyś sie˛ nie
gniewala.
‘I’m not saying that you’re angry. I’m just asking you not to be
(become) angry.’
Daughter: Ty wiesz, że ja sie˛ gniewam, kiedy mówisz, że ja sie˛ gniewam,
kiedy ja sie˛ nie gniewam.
‘You know that I get angry when you say that I’m angry when I’m
not angry’.
Mother: Ale ja widze˛, że sie˛ gniewasz.
‘But I can see that you are angry.’

I have taken note of such little exchanges for years, always with a feeling that
we were miscommunicating, and that a linguistic, cultural and emotional
misunderstanding was involved
/ a kind of misunderstanding that is
probably common in the lives of bilingual persons. I now realise that at the
heart of this misunderstanding lies a (mis-)identification of two expressions
from two different languages. Thus a bilingual child (for whom English was a
dominant language) was in her mind matching the Polish verb gniewać sie˛
with the English adjective angry, whereas in fact the two differ slightly (but
significantly) in meaning. While the Polish noun gniew can be roughly
matched with the English noun anger, the Polish verb gniewać sie˛ , usually
used with a complement (na kogoś ‘with someone’, na mnie ‘with me’), is
relational. It conveys something like ‘I don’t want you to feel bad feelings
towards me’ and it implies an underlying close relationship. The utterance nie
gniewaj sie˛! appeals for a continued mutual warmth, which is important to the
speaker. The pragmatic meaning of this appeal is soothing and affectionate.
Thus in a popular kindergarten song, a child addresses another child as
follows:
prawa˛ [ra˛czke˛] mi daj, lewa˛ [ra˛czke˛] mi daj, i już sie˛ na mnie nie gniewaj.
‘give me your right [hand, literally: little hand, handie], give me your
left [hand] and don’t be angry with me anymore (i.e. let’s be friends
again)’.
On the other hand, the English phrase don’t be angry could be interpreted as
critical and accusatory. There is no appeal there to an underlying close
relationship and no attempt to soothe and to restore mutual warmth. The very
fact that I can’t assign to the verb gniewać sie˛ a simple English gloss which
would show that it differs in meaning from to be angry is instructive. I would
have to write a whole story: one person is thinking ‘bad thoughts’ about
another person, manufacturing in this way (as it were deliberately) ‘bad
feelings’ towards that other person; these ‘bad feelings’ are outwardly visible
Preface 97

(in particular, to the target person), and they clash with the usual ‘good
feelings’ between the two persons in question. Prototypically, but not
necessarily, it is an emotional stance of a parent towards a child. (I think that
the Russian verb serdit’sja has similar implications, cf. Apresjan, 1997.)
Thus, the concept of ‘gniewać sie˛ (na kogoś)’ is different from that of ‘being
angry’. These different concepts are linked with different cultural models and
different emotional scripts. Quite apart from a possible linguistic misunder-
standing (as when my daughters interpreted my nie gniewaj sie˛ as an
equivalent of don’t be angry ) there is a cultural and emotional mismatch
here: I could not say an English equivalent of nie gniewaj sie˛ to anyone, not only
because there isn’t one in the English language, but also because this way of
speaking, thinking and feeling belongs to my Polish cultural world, not to the
Anglo world.
Recently, one of my daughters explained to me that what used to annoy her
about my utterance nie gniewaj sie˛ , which she interpreted as meaning the same
as don’t be angry, was what she saw as an implicit accusation of letting her
emotion (anger) interfere with the rational argument. In fact this was not what
I meant at all, but for years none of us was aware of the linguistic mismatch. I
might add that from a Polish point of view there is nothing wrong with a
heated argument. The Anglo cultural scripts valuing a ‘cool’ way of arguing in
which ‘emotions’ do not interfere with ‘cool reason’ has no counterpart among
Polish cultural scripts, and in fact, the Polish word closest to cool (chlodny) is
rather pejorative. On the other hand, Polish culture, with its ideal of
‘serdeczność ’ (from serce ‘heart’), values sustained interpersonal warmth,
frequently manifested verbally (e.g. in diminutives) and non-verbally (cf.
Wierzbicka, 1999). In fact, the reason why chlodny ‘cool’ sounds pejorative in
Polish is that it implies an ‘unpleasant lack of interpersonal warmth’. Polish
has a number of expressions referring to ‘interpersonal’ rather than purely
personal feelings and implying an underlying warm relationship. For
example, the expression mieć do kogoś żal implies something like a reproachful
feeling directed at someone loved and loving, and przykro implies a hurt
caused by the lack of warmth from someone whom we expect to be warm
towards us (cf. Wierzbicka, 2001).
The semantic difference between the English adjectival phrase to be angry
and the Polish verbal phrase gniewać sie˛ na kogoś illustrates differences in
conceptualisation which apply also at the level of theoretical constructs like
‘emotions’. The theme of this special issue has been formulated as ‘bilingu-
alism and emotions’, and given the status of ‘emotions’ in contemporary
scholarly literature this is perfectly understandable and justifiable. It needs to
be borne in mind, however, that ‘emotion’ itself is a construct which depends
on the contemporary English language, and that many other languages do not
have words corresponding exactly to the English word emotion. As noted by
the philosopher Thomas Dixon (2003: 1), even in English, the category of
‘emotions’ is relatively recent, and although it currently tends to be taken for
granted, it is far from a neutral analytical tool:
Emotions are everywhere today. Increasing numbers of books and
articles about the emotions are being produced; for both academic and
98 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

broader audiences; by neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers.

As the author of one recent book on the science of the emotions puts it:
‘Emotion is now a hot topic.’ According to another, the last three decades
have witnessed an explosion in emotions studies, in the fields of
cognitive psychology, anthropology and literary history, which consti-
tutes a veritable ‘revolution’. . . . It is surprising, then, to discover that the
emotions did not exist until just under two hundred years ago.
In his book, Dixon investigates the creation of ‘the emotions’ as a psychological
category associated with the term emotion which has replaced earlier ways of
thinking associated with terms like appetites , passions , affections , affects and
sentiments .
Thus even the theme of this special issue, ‘bilingualism and emotions’,
reflects a language-specific Anglo perspective. I do not think this is a problem,
as long as the point is noted and taken into account. But for a Polish
/English
bilingual like myself, one of the key differences between my two ‘emotional
worlds’ is that one of them is, and the other is not, conceptualised via the
category of ‘emotions’. For example, the expression gniewać sie˛ na kogoś does
not mean to experience a particular emotion (e.g. that of ‘feeling angry’).
Rather, it refers to a complex configuration of elements involving interpersonal
relations, as well as feelings and the expression of feelings. It implies a certain
stance towards another person, involving ‘thinking bad things about them’
and ‘feeling bad feelings towards them’.
Different languages are linked with different ways of thinking as well as
different ways of feeling; they are linked with different attitudes, different
ways of relating to people, different ways of expressing one’s feelings and so
on (cf. Lutz, 1988). They are linked with different ‘cultural scripts’, including
‘emotional scripts’ (Goddard, 1997, 2000; Wierzbicka, 1994, 1999). The
experience of bilingual people is an invaluable source of insight into such
differences.
A point which seems to me particularly important is that experience of
bilingual people should not be construed as merely their experience of speaking
two languages but rather as their experience of living with other people through
two different languages . To take an example, one of the most important insights
emerging from the recent literature bearing on the issue ‘bilingualism and
emotions’ is that a person’s language acquired first (‘at the mother’s knee’) is
often endowed with a greater emotional force than the second language. For
example, it has often been noted that anger expressed in one’s first language
may feel more real, and more intense, than that expressed in one’s second
language (cf. Dewaele, this issue; Harris, this issue; Pavlenko, this issue). My
own experience is consistent with this generalisation. At the same time,
however, in my experience, ‘anger’ and related emotions and attitudes are
often expressed by a switch away from the speaker’s first language. The
emotional distance created by the use of the second language can sometimes
convey ‘anger’ and other ‘bad feelings’ better than anything said in one’s first
language, which often (though of course not always) is the language of
emotional closeness and intimacy.
Preface 99

The way we interpret our own inner experience depends on the language in
which we interpret it
/ and this may depend, to some extent, on the language
of our interlocutor. Take, for example, the Polish verb denerwować sie˛ and the
corresponding inner
/ and outer
/ state. There is no corresponding word in
English, and I think with good (cultural) reason. Roughly speaking, denerwo-
wać sie˛ designates a state of visible agitation, linked with unsuccessful
attempts to control events (cf. Wierzbicka, 1994). Using the ‘natural semantic
metalanguage’ of simple and universal human concepts (cf. Goddard &
Wierzbicka, 2002), we can portray the state of mind of a person who says
denerwuje˛ sie˛ (very roughly, ‘I’m agitating/agitated’) as follows:

I think like this now:

‘some things are happening to me now
I don’t want these things to be happening
I have to do something because of this
I don’t know what I can do’
when I think like this I feel something bad because of this
I know that if other people can see me now they can know that I think like
this now

In Polish, people often say denerwuje˛ sie˛ , and the cognitive scenario spelled
out above is culturally salient and culturally acceptable. To draw again on my
personal experience, when I call my sister in Poland (from Australia) I would
not hesitate to say to her that I ‘denerwuje˛ sie˛ ’ (for this or that reason). On the
other hand, when I speak to my Anglophone friends in Australia I would not
say the equivalent of denerwuje˛ sie˛
/ first of all, because there is no equivalent
expression in English, but also, because such a state of uncontrolled inner and
outer agitation is not part of my English-speaking persona. There are cultural
scripts in Anglo culture which encourage emotional self-control and a rational,
economical use of inner resources. Thus, I might say in English I’m angry or
I’m upset (neither of which has an exact equivalent in Polish) but not
something like ‘I’m keeping myself in a state of aimless inner and outer
agitation’. I’m angry about something is consistent with an ‘active’ attitude: ‘I
don’t want things like this to happen. I want to do something because of this’.
I’m upset describes a state of being temporarily out of emotional control; it
implies that the ‘bad feeling’, over which the experiencer has no control, is
viewed as a temporary departure from a ‘normal’ state. Since I never describe
myself in English in a way similar to the Polish expression denerwuje˛ sie˛ , I do
not think about myself in this way when I am speaking English; and as the
interpretation put on our experience shapes that experience, the experience
itself is different. In a sense, then, I do not only project a different persona but
am in fact a different person in my Anglophone and Polonophone relation-
ships.
It may be asked: can this be proved? Presumably, not in a lab, and not by
methods acceptable in a lab. But who says that only knowledge that can be
obtained by methods acceptable in a lab is valid or worth having? I will take
one more example from my own experience. I have a baby granddaughter,
100 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

who lives far away from me but whom I often visit. When I come back from
these visits and when my Anglophone friends ask me how she is, I am often
stuck for words. I just can’t find English words suitable for talking about my
tiny granddaughter. It is not that I am not familiar with the register of English
used for talking about babies but I feel that this register does not fit the
emotional world to which this baby belongs for me. No doubt one reason is
that Polish was my first language and that as such it is imbued with an
emotional force that English doesn’t have for me. But this is not the only
reason. Another reason is that Polish words that I could use to talk about my
baby granddaughter do not have exact semantic equivalents in English and
therefore feel irreplaceable. For example, I could say in Polish that she is
rozkoszna , using a word glossed in Polish
/English dictionaries as ‘delightful’,
but I couldn’t possibly use the word delightful about her myself
/ not only
because delightful has no emotional force for me but because its meaning,
which is not identical with that of rozkoszna , doesn’t fit my way of thinking
and feeling about this baby. Rozkoszna has a greater emotional force by virtue
of its meaning, and delightful would sound, from the point of view of a
bilingual but culturally Polish person, ‘too light’, ‘too objective’ and too
lacking in emotional intensity. In fact, in English, too, most people would be
probably reluctant to describe their own child or grandchild as ‘delightful’,
because the word appears to imply an outsider’s perspective and a lack of
personal emotional involvement. People might, however, describe their own
child or grandchild as ‘adorable’, or as ‘a cutie’, or ‘a sweetie’; and they might
describe other people’s babies as ‘gorgeous’. None of these options are
available to me.
Of course when people ask me about my little granddaughter they are not
asking, at least not overtly, about my emotions, and theoretically, I could reply
providing, in a nonemotional language, some information about her develop-
ment. But this, too, goes against the grain of my Polish emotional scripts. In
Polish, the language used for talking about babies relies on a wide range of
emotionally coloured diminutives, and to talk about a baby in a purely
descriptive language would seem strangely cold and loveless. For example, in
Polish I could say that she now has a lot of loczki ‘dear-little-curls’, or that she
has six za˛bki ‘dear-little-teeth’, or that for her age she is still malutka ‘dear-little-
small’. Since English doesn’t have such diminutives, I would have to use
descriptive ‘loveless’ words like curls , teeth or small , and I feel I couldn’t do
that. I might add that in Polish I would never say to a baby something like ‘I’ll
wash your hands’ or ‘I will give you some milk’ using the plain words for
hands or milk, I would only use the diminutive forms comparable to ‘dear-
little-hands’ or handies . Although I rarely correct my family’s Polish, which is
extremely good, I do sometimes correct them when they use, in reference to
the baby, nondiminutive words such as re˛ka ‘hand’, usta ‘mouth’, glowa ‘head’,
nos ‘nose’: ra˛czka, I’d say, usteczka , glówka , nosek . Speaking to or about a baby
in English, one could use the word handies (in the plural) but not handie; and
one would normally not use mouthie, nosie or headie. In Polish, however, such
diminutives not only exist but are virtually obligatory in speaking to or about a
baby, at least in a family setting. If plain, nondiminutive words were used for a
Preface 101

baby’s eyes, ears, hair, legs, back, etc. they would all sound very cold and
clinical.
Of course in English, too, people often talk about babies in an emotional
language, describing them as cute , sweet , dear, adorable , lovely, even gorgeous.
But again, I feel I couldn’t use any of these words about my little grand-
daughter, not only because they all leave me cold (not being anchored in my
childhood experiences and thus having no visceral emotional resonance) but
also because their meaning does not fit my own way of thinking and feeling,
and so they would not sound ‘true’ to me. As a result of all these factors, when
I am asked about my granddaughter, I often find myself mumbling,
inadequately from everyone’s point of view, that ‘she is well’.
It is important to bear in mind that the two languages of a bilingual person
differ not only in their lexical and grammatical repertoires for expressing and
describing emotions but also in the sets of ‘emotional scripts’ regulating
emotion-talk. Often, but not always, important ‘emotional scripts’ are
epitomised by tell-tale lexical labels such as, for example, shrill , cool , wet ,
emotional and over the top in English. From an Anglo point of view, it is bad to
be ‘shrill’ or ‘wet’ (in speaking) and it is good to be ‘cool’: the very fact that
such words exist in present-day English, with the meaning they have, provides
incontrovertible evidence for the existence of the cultural norms associated
with them. These norms may not be shared by all speakers of English, but they
are familiar to them. Polish does not have equivalents of the words shrill , cool
and wet (in the relevant meanings), and it doesn’t have the corresponding
cultural scripts. On the other hand, it has words like serdeczny and serdeczność
(roughly, ‘warm’ and ‘warmth’), which have no equivalents in English, and
which point to certain emotional scripts which are salient in Polish culture. A
person living his or her life through Polish and English has to choose, on a
daily basis, not only between two languages but also between two sets of
cultural scripts, including emotional scripts.
Thus when bilingual immigrants speak to people who share the same two
languages (for example, to their bilingual children) they have to make
linguistic (or lexical) choices, but when they speak to monolingual speakers
of the host country, they have to choose communicative styles (regulated by
different cultural scripts). For example, the Anglo cultural script reflected in
the word wet can make it difficult for a Pole living in an Anglo society to speak
about children in English in accordance with Polish cultural scripts, even if
appropriate lexical and grammatical resources could be found, because an
awareness of Anglo cultural scripts puts a pressure on the bilingual person to
modify their ‘normal’ ways of speaking. (This applies also to non-verbal
expressions of emotions. For example, Poles who greet each other by kissing in
a Polish social context would often refrain from doing so in a mixed, or Anglo
context, for example, on university campus.) Thus in speaking in English
about my baby granddaughter I am conscious of the need not to sound
‘excessively emotional’, and this restricts my ability to speak freely as much as
the lack of adequate English words does.
In discussions about the relationship between language, culture and self
one often hears the following argument: ‘If a person’s self were partly
culturally and linguistically constituted, bilingual people would have to be to
102 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

some extent schizophrenic. Since obviously they are not, people’s selves must
be largely independent of language and culture’. The testimony of many
bilingual people who have reflected on their own experience shows that this
argument is spurious. For bilingual people, living with two languages can
mean indeed living in two different emotional worlds and also travelling back
and forth between those two worlds. It can also mean living suspended
between two worlds, frequently misinterpreting other people’s feelings and
intentions, and being misinterpreted oneself, even when on the surface
communication appears to proceed smoothly. The fact that to a monolingual
person all this may seem hard to believe underscores the limitations of a
monolingual perspective in human sciences and the importance of the
subjective knowledge of bilingual persons as a source of insight into ‘human
nature’ and human lives.
The metaphorical expressions ‘codeswitching’ and ‘codemixing’ can be
useful as an abbreviated way of referring to speech practices common in the
life of bilingual persons, but they can also be misleading. A language is not a
code for encoding pre-existent meanings. Rather, it is a conceptual, experi-
ential and emotional world. Shifting from one language to another is not like
shifting from one code to another to express a meaning expressible equally
well in both these codes. Often, the very reason why a bilingual speaker shifts
from one language to another is that the meaning that they want to express
‘belongs’ to the other language. This underlying motivation is particularly
clear in the case of cultural key concepts like those encoded in the English
words privacy, self -esteem or unfair, but it is also very clear in the case of
expressive expressions such as, for example, interjections (cf. Besemeres, this
issue). It is a common experience to hear an immigrant using some emotive
interjections of their second language long before they have learned that
language well, and also, to hear them using some key interjections of their first
language when speaking the second language long after they have become
fluent in it. For example, for an Italian male immigrant in Australia, the key
Australian expletive bloody may well be among the first English words that he
starts using regularly, while at the same time Italian expressive expressions
like mamma mia may be retained for a very long time in his English. This is
clearly not a matter of an arbitrary ‘codemixing’ but rather, of living with one
foot in one emotional world, and the other, in another.
The metaphors of ‘codeswitching’ and ‘codemixing’ appear to deny the
intimate links between a person’s native language and their inner self, which
were strongly emphasised by the philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer. To quote:
Language is not something by means of which consciousness commu-
nicates with the world. . . .Language is not an instrument, not a tool. . . .
Such an analogy is false, because our consciousness never faces the
world reaching
/ as if in a languageless state
/ for a tool of
communication. Rather, in all our knowledge about ourselves and in
all our knowledge about the world we are already enveloped by
language, by our own language. We grow up, we get to know the
world, people, and ourselves, in the process of learning to speak. To
learn to speak does not mean to learn to use a certain pre-existing tool
Preface 103

for designating a world with which we are already familiar; rather, it

means becoming familiar with and getting to know the world itself, and
the world as we encounter it. . . . (1967: 95
/96; my translation)
I believe that what Gadamer says about consciousness in general applies also
to people’s feelings. Language is not a tool for expressing a person’s feelings
/
feelings that could be equally well expressed in another language. Rather, our
very feelings depend on our language (cf. Panayiotou, this issue). We learn to
make sense of our raw feelings through the categories imposed on them by our
language, and this categorisation enters into the fabric of our feelings, and
gives them shape and direction.
In the responses of bilingual persons cited in Pavlenko’s study (this issue)
several people used terms like ‘wrong’ and ‘untrue’ in relation to attempts to
express their emotions in their second language. I think that the intuition
reflected in such responses is illuminating. The terms of the second language
don’t match those of the first language, and they may also not match the
speaker’s emotions shaped or coloured by the first language. If so, then they
are literally not true, not right as descriptions of those emotions. For example,
if my inner experience is that of ‘zdenerwowanie’ or of ‘gniewanie sie˛ (na kogoś)’
any English expression that I might use to express those experiences would be
inadequate, ‘wrong’, ‘not true’.
This doesn’t mean that the emotional expressions of a person’s second
language can never become psychologically ‘true’. Often, however, they are
not; and since bilingual persons (e.g. immigrants) often have to communicate
with monolingual interlocutors, a sense of distortion, of falsehood, and not
being true to oneself is often inescapable. No doubt one reason is that the
emotion terms of the second language may not have the subjective force that
those of the first language have acquired through their existential, autobio-
graphical grounding. Another reason, however, may be that the bilingual
person’s emotions have been moulded, to some extent, by the expressive
devices (lexical and grammatical) of their first language, and that conse-
quently, the expressive devices of the second language literally do not fit them.
Traditionally, the literature on bilingualism has focused on issues like ‘the
bilingual brain’, ‘bilingual memory’ or ‘neurofunctional bases of language
organization in bilinguals’. A focus on ‘bilingualism and emotions’ can help, I
think, to shift the attention from bilingual brains to bilingual lives
/ especially
the bilingual lives of immigrants and their children. Given the scale of
migration in the contemporary world, the importance of the latter problem can
hardly be overestimated. To quote the Korean
/American scholar Young Yun
Kim (2000: 1): ‘Millions of people change homes each year, crossing cultural
boundaries. Immigrants and refugees resettle in search of new lives . . . In this
increasingly integrated world, cross-cultural adaptation is a central and
defining theme’. An interest in ‘bilingualism and emotions’ can help to
integrate the psycholinguistic approaches to bilingualism with studies aiming
at a better understanding of cross-cultural lives, including the special
problems and needs of immigrants. At the same time, an interest in
‘bilingualism and emotions’ can help to restore the balance between, on the
one hand, ‘objective’ and ‘scientific’ study of language and cognition and on
104 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

the other, a study open to the ‘soft data’ of human testimonies and subjective
experience, including experiential knowledge of bilingual persons.
It seems clear that if we want to tap that knowledge of bilingual persons a
wide variety of approaches must be allowed and attempted. This is, I think, a
special strength of the present issue: the wide variety of approaches, methods
and perspectives represented in the papers included here. The editors should
be congratulated for this diversity as much as for the thematic unity of the
issue and for their imagination in addressing a theme which in the coming
years will no doubt be increasingly recognised as important across a range of
disciplines both theoretical and applied.

Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Professor Anna Wierzbicka,
Department of Linguistics, Australian National University, Canberra 0200,
Australia (anna.wierzbicka@anu.edu.au).

References
Apresjan, J. (1997) Serdit’sja. In Apresjan, J. (ed.) Novyj Ob’’jasnitel’nyj Slovar’ Sino-
nimov Russkogo Jazyka (pp. 362
/367). Moskva: Škola Jazyki Russkoj Kul’tury.
Dixon, T. (2003) From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gadamer, H-G. (1967) Kleine Schriften I. Philosophie. Hermeneutik . Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr
(Paul Siebeck).
Goddard, C. (1997) ‘Cultural values’ and ‘cultural scripts’ of Malay (Bahasa Melayu).
Journal of Pragmatics 27 (2), 183
/201.
Goddard, C. (2000) ‘Cultural scripts’ and communicative style in Malay (Bahasa
Melayu). Anthropological Linguistics 42 (1), 81
/106.
Goddard, C. and Wierzbicka, A. (eds) (2002) Meaning and Universal Grammar: Theory and
Empirical Findings . Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Harbsmeier, Ch. (2004) Portrait. Epok 43 (Février), 50
/51.
Harkins, J. and Wierzbicka, A. (eds) (2001) Emotions in Crosslinguistic Perspective. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Kim, Y.Y. (2000) Becoming Intercultural. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Lutz, C. (1988) Unnatural Emotions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pinker, S. (1997) How the Mind Works. New York: Norton.
Russell, J. (1991) Culture and the categorization of emotions. Psychological Bulletin 110
(3), 426
/450.
Wierzbicka, A. (1992) Semantics, Culture, and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in
Culture-Specific Configurations . New York: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, A. (1994) Emotion, language, and ‘cultural scripts’. In Sh. Kitayama and
H.R. Markus (eds) Emotion and Culture: Empirical Studies of Mutual Influence (pp.
130
/198). Washington: American Psychological Association.
Wierzbicka, A. (1999) Emotions Across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wierzbicka, A. (2001) A culturally salient Polish emotion: Przykro (pron. pshickro) . In J.
Harkins and A. Wierzbicka (eds) Emotions in Crosslinguistic Perspective (pp. 337
/358).
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Wierzbicka, A. (2003) Emotion and culture: Arguing with Martha Nussbaum. Ethos 31
(4), 577
/600.
Emotion and Language Politics: The
Brazilian Case
Kanavillil Rajagopalan
Department of Linguistics, Institute of Language Studies, State University
at Campinas, Campinas, Brazil
The objective of this paper is to make a case for the claim that exclusive focus on the
rational has only helped isolate linguists and prevented them from having a say on
important political issues relating to language. One important feature of the ordinary
person’s view of and involvement with language is that emotions play an important
role in both. And it is precisely this feature that linguists, as a matter of general rule,
fail to take into account when addressing issues related to practical affairs involving
language. Language loyalty, bilingualism, codeswitching etc. can only be fully
addressed provided we also take into account their emotional connotations.
Theoretically oriented in its thrust, this paper discusses (1) how linguistics has
from its inception sought to downplay or altogether ignore the importance of
emotions as they figure in what is depreciatively referred to as ‘folk linguistics’ and
(2) how, largely in consequence of that inaugural decision, the science is threatened
with becoming a body of knowledge with very little impact on what happens in the
real world.

Keywords: linguistics, rationality, emotions, folk linguistics, language debates

Introduction
A graduate student of mine was working on his PhD dissertation on
codeswitching practices among bilingual speakers on a Kaiowa-Guarani
reservation in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil. One day, during a
routine interview, one of his informants made a casual remark that caught the
researcher completely unprepared. Indeed so unexpected was that remark yet
so embarrassingly straightforward its implications, that the episode made him
rethink his whole research project from scratch. The informant, a young man,
identified himself as a local school teacher who taught Portuguese, Brazil’s
national and official language, to fellow tribesmen and women. He told the
researcher point blank that whenever he made promises in Portuguese and
failed to keep them, he had no problem whatsoever with his conscience. In
fact, he went on to confess to his by now flummoxed interlocutor that he had
made a fine art of promising in Portuguese with a straight face without having
the remotest intention of living up to it
/ something, he hastened to add, he
would not even dream of doing in his own native language.
As it turned out, the informant, like many others from his village, was one
of those who could be classified as fully ‘assimilated’ to the community
outside the reservation. His Portuguese was absolutely fluent and indeed
practically indistinguishable from that of any other native speaker of Brazilian
Portuguese. If anything, it was his knowledge of his own ‘native’ Guarani that
was rather shaky and left much to be desired. Yet, when asked to explain the

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105
106 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

different attitudes he had in relation to the two languages that made up his
bilingual repertoire, he was quick to come up with this ready-made and well
rehearsed response: ‘Well, what else do you expect from us? For the past 500
years, this is just what the paleface has done to us. We are only paying his
tribesmen back in the same coin.’
The episode narrated above highlights a key aspect of natural languages,
one that is nonetheless often ignored or downplayed by linguists studying bi-
and multilingualism. Ordinary people attach a great amount of emotional
value to their language. Indeed, languages are powerful flags of allegiance
(Rajagopalan, 2002, forthcoming). Bi- and multilingual speakers typically have
different degrees of emotional attachment to the languages that make up their
repertoire. On the strength of several empirical studies carried out by
themselves as well as other researchers, Dewaele and Pavlenko (2002: 264)
state that
when a second language (L2) is learned post puberty or even after early
childhood, the two languages of an individual may differ in their
emotional impact, with the first being the language in which personal
involvement is expressed, and the second language being the language
of distance and detachment.
Pavlenko (2002) takes the discussion a step further when she hypothesises that
the reason why researchers have mostly confined their attention to the
emotional impact of different languages on bi- and multilingual individuals
may be that there has been a tendency to theorise languages and emotions as
independent phenomena. Instead, she argues that ‘the social constructionist
view of emotions as discursively constructed phenomena
/ which may differ
cross-culturally
/ allows researchers in bilingualism and SLA to expand the
scope of their work on bilingualism, emotions and cognition and to investigate
emotion discourses of bilingual speakers’ (Pavlenko, 2002: 50).
Interest in the emotional reactions to language and emotion discourses of
bi- and multilingual speakers is relatively recent. As already pointed out,
many researchers prefer to go about their business as though emotional
reactions like the one described above don’t exist or, even if they do, they are
of marginal interest to the understanding of codeswitching practices. Armed
with knowledge accumulated on the basis of considering language in the
abstract or individual languages in splendid isolation from one another,
some scholars approach multilingualism and related practices, such as
codeswitching, with a view to either confirming already formulated hypoth-
eses or honing them in light of wider data. ‘For linguists in general’, writes
McCormick (1998: 115), ‘code-switching raises metatheoretical challenges.
These include how to conceptualize boundaries between languages; how to
develop criteria for classifying loanwords; how to use the scope of analytic
models using binary oppositions and those using the idea of a spectrum; and
how to exploit the heuristic value of system-based and speaker-based
perspectives on data.’ In other words, codeswitching is interesting because it
provides an ideal testing ground for theories conceived in the abstract and
attending to ‘pending issues’ such as how to decide on the boundary between
individual languages. The fact that speakers have different emotional attitudes
Emotion and Language Politics in Brazil 107

vis-à-vis the languages they speak and that their codeswitching practices are,
to a considerable extent, governed by their emotional reactions is simply
treated as of little or no consequence.
The episode reported at the beginning of this paper is a fine example of how
the practice of sweeping such details under the carpet can actually skew
results by covering up vital clues as to how the emotional attitudes of speakers
vis-à-vis their languages can threaten the foundations of many a prestigious
theory about natural languages and how they work. In this particular case, the
remarks of the informant strike at the very heart of the Theory of Speech Acts,
at least in its ‘received version’, according to which an act of promising could
only be deemed to have been successfully carried out provided the speaker
had the intention of delivering on the promise at the moment they spoke the
magic words ‘I promise to . . .’ (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969). Indeed, Austin even
spoke of ‘some of the more awe-inspiring performatives such as ‘‘I promise to
. . .’’’ (Austin, 1962: 9). At a critical stage in his attempt to capture theoretically
the concept of promising, Austin recalls a passage from Hippolytus , the great
tragedy by Euripedes, which illustrates a mismatch between what is said and
what is intended. In his own words:
The classic expression of this idea is to be found in the Hippolytus (l. 612),
where Hippolytus says

h glvss? omvmox?, h do 8rhn anvmotow

i.e. ‘my tongue swore to, but my heart (or mind, or backstage artiste)
did not’. Thus ‘I promise . . .’ obliges me
/puts on record my spiritual
assumption of a spiritual shackle. (Austin, 1962: 9
/10)
What this remark also illustrates is a certain abiding theme in western thinking
about language, according to which human linguistic faculty is ultimately tied
or tethered to an interior language, an idea that has recently resurfaced in the
literature in cognitive theory as the concept of ‘homunculus’
/ a mysterious
midget humanoid existing, as it were, in the head. Notice that Austin does
express some unease over such extensions of the concept, referring somewhat
disparagingly to the whole idea of there being some ‘backstage artiste’ stage-
managing the show from behind the curtains.
Now, neither Austin nor Searle was interested in what people do with the
different languages that they may speak with different degrees of emotional
involvement. Indeed, like most theorists who busied themselves doing
armchair reflections on the nature of language, they were primarily thinking
of monolingual speakers and their knowledge of the only language they speak.
No doubt, the theory they formulated works relatively smoothly so long as
attention is confined to monolingual contexts, where the speakers’ emotional
attitudes and discursive constructions of emotions are relatively uniform and
can, therefore, be ‘factored out’ of the discussion
/ although even this is being
called into question by a growing number of scholars (Butler, 1997; Felman,
1980).
Besides, in virtue of the strong tendency among theorists to base their
hypotheses on one (generally European) language or another, many have
108 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

fallen into the trap of claiming as universal what under closer scrutiny turns
out to be culture-specific (Duranti, 1994; Rosaldo, 1982). As Wierzbicka (1985:
145) put it in no uncertain terms: ‘From the outset, studies in speech acts have
suffered from an astonishing ethnocentrism and, to a considerable degree,
they continue to do so.’ But theorising of such a navel-gazing kind is just what
one cannot afford to do if one is interested in the complexities of interethnic
communication, as the narrator of the episode related above discovered in a
totally unexpected way. Of special relevance in this particular case is
Gumperz’s distinction between the ‘we-code’, used for in-group, informal
settings and ‘they-code’, used for formal, out-group settings (Gumperz, 1982).
It is clear that the use of the exclusive ‘we’ by the informant signals his self-
identification with his own tribe and simultaneous exclusion of the inter-
locutor
/ a gesture suffused with emotional and, in the final analysis, political
significance. Or, to go straight to the heart of the matter, the informant in the
episode, when he opts for the use of the exclusive ‘we’, is taking an eminently
political stand, because he is recognising himself as an outsider and making a
point of declaring that he is. In Judith Butler’s words: ‘The act of recognition
becomes an act of constitution’ (1997: 25).
Also of interest to us in the episode involving the bilingual informant from
the Indian reservation is the way his language loyalty is determined, not by
familiarity or competence, but by a felt need to distinguish himself from his
monolingual interlocutor. Thus when Sebba and Wootton (1998: 262) claim:
‘The opposition of ‘‘we-’’ versus ‘‘they-’’ codes . . . presupposes a particular
relationship between monolingual and bilingual communities. . .’, what is at
stake here is how speakers identify themselves linguistically, as speakers with
identical competencies may find themselves at the opposite sides of the
identification continuum.

Objectives
My central aim in this paper is to make a case for the claim that an
important part of the reason why we linguists have traditionally had little or
no appreciable success in influencing public opinion with respect to language,
let alone having a say in language planning and state policies, is that we have
by and large tended to overlook or downplay the emotional aspect of
language. Instead, human linguistic faculty is typically viewed as an attribute
of the reasoning mind. In other words, it is believed that man is homo loquens
because, unlike any of the other, lower order species in the animal kingdom, he
is homo sapiens. On the other hand, as far as the person on the street is
concerned, the language issue is full of emotional connotations.
Exaggerated emphasis on the rational dimension of language to the almost
total negligence of the emotional has, I shall argue, created a wide gulf
between the linguist and the layperson. Although there has been some
awareness of late of the importance of paying attention to lay opinion with
respect to language (cf. Aitchison, 2001; Cameron, 1997; Garrett, 2001; Johnson,
2001; Preston, 1993), it is by and large still the case that professional linguists
continue to distrust and dismiss lay opinion and, in Hutton’s words, treat the
court of public opinion as a ‘kangaroo court’ (Hutton, 1996: 209).
Emotion and Language Politics in Brazil 109

The continuing standoff between the two
/ the linguist and the layperson
/
is highlighted by an ongoing controversy in Brazil over the growing influence
of English which many see as a threat to the integrity and survival of the
country’s national language, Portuguese. The Brazilian case has interesting
parallels elsewhere in the world, notably the USA, where occasional bouts of
language-related paranoia have prompted concerned citizens to rally behind
proposals to scrap bilingual education projects already in place. As I hope to
show, in all these cases, the failure on the part of professional linguists to
intervene effectively in the evolving debates must be attributed, in large part,
to their principled neglect of how the layperson feels about the language issues
that directly impact their lives
/ an attitude whose origin in turn may be
traced to certain crucial inaugural decisions made by the discipline’s founding
fathers.

Linguistics and the Neglect of the Emotional Aspect of

Language
Language and reason
That language and rationality have typically been viewed as going hand in
hand in western thought hardly needs to be stated. Ancient Greek philoso-
phers thought of the use of reason as constituting a significant part of the
summum bonum of man. Later philosophers such as Kant and Hegel argued
that it was what made the crucial difference between a man acting on his own
free will and someone acting impulsively in response to base emotions. In the
17th century, Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole published in France a
monumental work of grammar, referred to in the literature as the Port-Royal
Grammar. The exact title of this work was Grammaire générale et raisonnée , ‘the
aim of which was to demonstrate that the structure of language is a product of
reason, and that the different languages of men are but varieties of a more
general logical and rational system’ (Lyons, 1968: 17). Indeed so powerful has
the temptation been to locate and identify a rational hard core in human
languages that Leibniz, impressed by the beauty and perfection of the
language of mathematics, is believed to have exclaimed that, if God Almighty
were to descend from Heaven and address ordinary mortals (made after His
own image), he would speak to them in that language
/ it was simply
inconceivable from the German philosopher’s point of view that an all-perfect
God would resort to any language other than the all-perfect language of
mathematics.
Traditional grammarians typically equated ungrammaticality with illogi-
cality. The use of double negation to express a negative proposition just can’t
be grammatical, they said, because binary logic, incorporating as it does the
law of the excluded middle, would automatically assign positive polarity to a
sentence containing two negatives. The aim of many traditional grammarians
was to put natural languages and their grammars on the procrustean bed of
classical logic. In many ways, modern linguists, who initially established their
scientific credentials in stiff opposition to the claims of traditional grammar-
ians rarely, if ever, questioned the guiding principle of their adversaries. It is
110 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

significant in this respect that when Labov (1972) undertook his pioneering
work on Black English, his immediate concern was to show that the so-called
nonstandard English did obey its own logic, albeit a logic different from that
which underwrote Standard English. In his own words, his primary target was
the then prevalent mainstream view
/ so-called ‘deficit theory’
/ among
educational psychologists who held that ‘the children’s speech forms are
nothing more than a series of emotional cries’ (Labov, 1972: 205) and that
children ought to be removed from their family environment where they
‘maintain primary emotional relationships’ to ‘hopefully prevent the decelera-
tion in rate of development which seems to occur in many deprived children
around the age of two to three years’ (Caldwell, 1967: 17, cited in Labov, 1972:
233). The very title of his classic paper ‘The logic of non-standard English’ is
itself very suggestive in this regard. As he put it elsewhere,
African American Vernacular English shares most of its grammar and
vocabulary with other dialects of English. But it is distinct in many ways,
and it is more different from standard English than any other dialect
spoken in continental North America. It is not simply slang, or
grammatical mistakes, but a well-formed set of rules of pronunciation
and grammar that is capable of conveying complex logic and reasoning.
(Labov, 1997)
The question of logic or the rational basis of language became a major bone
of contention within the generative paradigm of grammatical analysis in the
1970s, when a group of linguists took the stance, contra the mainstream view,
that the deep structure of natural language sentences should be identified with
their logical form. Although the group that originally raised the alternative
view is widely believed to have been overcome by more powerful arguments
from Chomsky and his followers (cf. Newmeyer, 1980), the idea itself of
grammar somehow containing the nucleus of logical forms of sentences has
continued to elicit great fascination.
In Rules and Representations , we find Chomsky (1980) speculating that,
insofar as they lack even the rudiments of the computational structure of
human language, apes can be loosely regarded as ‘humans without the
language faculty’. He draws attention to the crucial differences between his
claim and the traditional view linking reason and language. To quote him,
These speculations are not to be confused with a traditional view that
reason is a distinctively human possession, with normal use of language
an indication of possession of reason as in Descartes’ Gedankenexperi-
ments , or that ‘‘the express manifestation or work of reason . . . is
evidently reduced to what is possible only to abstract, discursive,
reflective, and mediate knowledge that is tied to words,’’ that is, that
ratio is reduced to oratio , and thus distinctively human. (Chomsky, 1980:
57
/58)
Nonetheless, Chomsky goes on to observe that, although clearly different, the
two views are extensionally similar, once it is granted that ‘ratio devoid of the
projective mechanisms of the computational system of human language is
severely impaired, almost mute’ (Chomsky, 1980).
Emotion and Language Politics in Brazil 111

It is hardly surprising therefore, that linguists and philosophers of language

have tended to accord primacy to fact-stating sentences, as it is in the
declarative mood that propositions
/ the bearers of truth values
/ find their
true expression. Scholars like Ogden and Richards (1923) and Stevenson (1944)
distinguished emotive (or affective) meaning from cognitive (or purely
referential) meaning, invariably giving primacy to the latter. Likewise, in the
early models of Transformational-Generative Grammar, there were transfor-
mational rules generating interrogatives and imperatives from an underlying
base structure, but no rule for generating declarative sentences, as the
declarative itself was assumed to be the basic, default pattern, from which
all the rest were to be derived. Austin (1962) made a great effort to turn the
tables, when he argued that the constative (fact-stating) utterances were but
performative ones in disguise. But, interestingly enough, the idea of the
primacy of propositional meaning was restored by his best known interpreter
and intellectual legatee Searle (1969) when the latter reintroduced into the
framework the notion of ‘propositional content’ thus positing within the
content of a speech act a hard core of truth-value-bearing form (Rajagopalan,
2000).
The close link between language and reason in western thought is most
visible today in some of the most influential proposals in cognitive science.
Barwise (1999: 482) sums up the widely held view when he says: ‘Reasoning
and using language have a number of things in common. Both characterize
human cognitive abilities.’ Or, as McGinn (1994: 587) puts it, ‘Pure logic takes
possession of my reasoning processes and steers them according to its own
dictates.’
The overall message, then, is that, in order to understand the workings of
language, all you need is a clear understanding of the processes of reasoning
which in turn calls for a full understanding of the immutable laws of logic.
Concentration on rationality has meant simultaneous relegation of emotions
to the margins. The real challenge to the dominant paradigm in cognitive
science, namely Parallel Distributed Processing or Connectionism, is yet to
make serious inroads into the mind-set that has over the years kept it in place.

Language, cognition and emotion

The general distrust of emotions in Western thought is, as just mentioned,
but the flip side of the systematic effort to promote reason as the beacon light
of human language faculty. Reason is celebrated as the crowning achievement
of mankind in its evolutionary progress. Ever since Aristotle defined man as a
‘rational animal’, the idea of rationality as the very essence of man
/ essence
in the sense of ‘quiddity’ or the ontological correlate of a definition
/ has
survived unchallenged through the centuries. Insofar as it was opposed to
reason, emotion became a synonym for irrationality, the mark of bestiality. In
his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals , Charles Darwin
(1872 [1965]) went to the extent of claiming that emotional expressions are
behavioural equivalents of vestigial anatomical organs such as the appendix:
the implication being that they are, strictly speaking, redundant and perfectly
dispensable at best, or an irksome impediment at worst, being leftovers from
112 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

an earlier, bestial stage of evolution. When the 18th century English poet
Alexander Pope (1930: 180) wrote
Unlearn’d, he knew no schoolman’s subtle art,
No language, but the language of the heart.
he was simply expressing what has over the centuries been an unargued
assumption underlying our cultural practices, namely that emotions betray a
lack of culture and sophistication and hence need to be brought under the
control of cool, dispassionate reason.
A good deal of recent research on emotion in psychology has concentrated
on how emotions bias cognitive processes during judgement and the making
of inferences (Oatley, 1999: 275). The idea is by no means new and can be
found even in Freud’s theoretical incursions into emotional disorders. For
Freud, emotional disorders resulted from traumatic experiences so intense that
they affected the smooth functioning of the reasoning mind. The tussle
between reason and emotion is frequently thought of in terms of an
androcentric agenda, so that distrust of emotions is exacerbated by association
with the Biblical theme of feminine seductive charm swerving the cool
reasoning power of man from the path of righteousness.
Associated with the dichotomy reason versus emotion are a number of
other binary oppositions. Thus, side-by-side with the equations reason/
masculine and emotion/feminine one also comes across the associations
reason/mind and emotion/body. For instance, William James (1884) famously
argued that emotions have no mental content but are merely bodily states.
James’ position thus echoes a long tradition
/ dating back to ancient Stoics
/
of regarding emotions as generally deleterious and in need of being reined in
by robust reason: the hysterical woman who must be brought under control by
man’s cool and sober reasoning power. Incidentally, this tradition is still kept
alive in contemporary practices of cognitive therapy for emotional disorders.
Now, someone might argue at this stage that this subsection mistakenly
includes ‘language’ in its title, for the reason that what most of the authors
referred to in fact do, is pit emotion, not against language as such, but against
cognition. While there is some truth to this, it must not be forgotten that many
of the arguments put forward by these authors carry over to language
inasmuch as language is itself often conceived of as a cognitive activity par
excellence (see, for instance, the quotation from Barwise in the ‘Language and
reason’ section).

Linguistics and the prejudice against emotions

As heir to the mainstream Western philosophical tradition, linguistics has
systematically sought to downplay the role of emotions in language.
Emotional aspects of language use are typically considered secondary or
marginal to its rational, fact-stating role. In the words of Sapir (1921: 38): ‘On
the whole, it must be admitted that ideation reigns supreme in language, that
volition and emotion come in as distinctly secondary factors.’
But it is not only with regard to the emotive use of language that linguists
have claimed centrality for rationality. The very discourse of linguistics is itself
Emotion and Language Politics in Brazil 113

founded upon a claim to (scientific) rationality. The rationality of the

metalanguage of linguistics is typically pitted against the irrationality/
emotivity of what is pejoratively dismissed as ‘folk linguistics’. This is clearly
evident in a classic paper by Bloomfield (1944) entitled ‘Secondary and tertiary
responses to language’ where the founding father of American linguistics
disparages in no uncertain terms lay opinions about language:
Several peculiarities of these secondary responses deserve further study.
The speaker, when making the secondary responses, shows alertness.
His eyes are bright, and he seems to be enjoying himself. . . The whole
process is, as we say, pleasurable. (Bloomfield, 1944: 49)
Several comments are in order here. Notice, first of all, that Bloomfield’s
remarks are couched in what one may characterise as a philosophical posture
with regard to what the enterprise of science is all about. Science is a rational
enterprise, cold and methodical. There is no room for warmth or mirth. As a
matter of fact, Bloomfield writes as if there was sufficient justification in the
very fact that the natives appeared to be having a great time talking about their
language for arriving at the conclusion that what they say could not be
considered scientifically admissible. His advice to would-be field linguists is to
simply ignore such remarks volunteered by the natives and resist the
temptation to make the informants realise how mistaken they are about such
folk beliefs. Here are his own words:
The linguist’s cue in this situation is to observe; but if, giving in to a
material impulse (or else, by way of experiment), he tries to enlighten the
speaker, he encounters a tertiary response to language. (Bloomfield,
1944: 49)
And the stage of so-called tertiary responses is the one where the natives are
on the defensive and switching on to a disputative, indeed combative, mode.
The tertiary response is hostile; the speaker grows contemptuous or
angry. He will impatiently reaffirm the secondary response, or, more
often, he will resort to one of a few well-fixed formulas of confutation.
(Bloomfield, 1944: 49)
For Bloomfield, to engage the native informant in any form of dialogic
exchange at this stage is a sheer waste of the precious time the field linguists
have at their disposal. There is little point, he claims, in trying to make the
informants change their beliefs. Any attempt to do so will only distract the
field linguists from doing what they are there for
/ collecting data for future
analysis.
In so distancing themselves from folk wisdom, contemporary linguists are
only being faithful to a long tradition in scientific research, according to which
it is absolutely important not to get ‘involved with’ one’s informants or
subjects of study, lest overintimacy with lay and untutored opinion should
obfuscate the researcher’s scientific outlook. As Robins (1964: 364) put it, ‘The
informant . . . is a familiar and necessary part of the study of any living
language. The informant is not a teacher, nor a linguist; he is simply a native
speaker of the language.’ Interestingly, Darwin, in the work already alluded to,
114 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

claimed that ‘animals are ideal subjects for the observation of emotional
expression . . . because [they] are less susceptible to the highly complex
associative psychological behaviors that humans are prone to’ (cited in
Prodger, 1998: 148).
At the metalinguistic level, then, the distrust of emotion manifests itself as
the disparagement of the ordinary person’s views about language. The reason,
when all is said and done, why the layperson’s views about language are
dismissed as unworthy of serious consideration is that they are believed to be
incapable of standing the test of reason. Kay (1987) echoes the typical attitude
of linguists vis-à-vis folk linguistics when he argues that it lacks consistency
and is not rigorously thought out, implying that most of it is the outcome of
subjective, emotional reactions to language which have not been passed
through the sieve of rational inquiry.
If only to put the record straight, mention must be made here of a rather
different sense of the term ‘folk linguistics’ that has gained some currency in
recent years. In the words of Preston (1993: 181), ‘[f]olk linguistics seeks to
discover non-linguists’ beliefs about language in general.’ Clearly, this is a far
cry from the way Bloomfield and Kay were using the term. From an earlier
sense of, say, ‘a set of
/ unscientific or pre-scientific (depending on how
charitable you feel towards them)
/ beliefs about language’ the term has
suddenly come to mean ‘the scientific study of beliefs (regardless of their
scientific status) held by non-linguists’. In the former sense, the term ‘folk
linguistics’ was, strictly speaking, a misnomer, whereas in the latter sense, it is
being claimed to be an avenue of new research possibilities, or maybe a branch
of linguistics. What hasn’t changed though is the absolute faith in the one-
sidedness of the gaze: reason claiming for itself the exclusive prerogative to
make sense of irrationality.
In point of fact, part of the reason why folk theory is disparaged is that it is
mostly of a subjective nature. An objective science such as linguistics can ill
afford to heed subjective views about language, so the argument seems to run.
In human and social sciences, the fear of being caught using the subjective
mode is so great that many researchers avoid using first-person pronouns (of
the kind that occurs in the very opening sentence of this paper) in the
presentation of their findings and many scholarly journals highlight the
injunction in their very style-sheets.

Politics of Language: Reason Versus Emotion

The linguist and the layperson: Incommensurable discourses?
Given the stand-off between the linguist and the layperson, it is not at all
surprising that there is mutual suspicion between the two. The linguist is loath
to listen to what the person on the street has to say concerning linguistic
matters; as a matter of fact, as we have just seen, it is one of the founding
principles of the discipline not to listen to what the nonlinguist has to say
about language. Most linguists consider it a sheer waste of time worrying
about practical matters involving language, because in order to get involved in
practical matters one must seriously confront the opinions ordinary people
Emotion and Language Politics in Brazil 115

entertain with respect to language. Consider, for instance, the following

remark by John Rickford:
The phrase ‘Not in my backyard’
/ abbreviated to NIMBY
/ is
commonly used to refer to the stiff opposition which local citizens
mount to prevent individuals or institutions that they consider undesir-
able from moving into their communities. Linguists sometimes seem to
have a NIMBY attitude towards Applied Linguistics issues and the Great
Language Debates of our Times, motivated perhaps by the fear that they
will distract us from the theoretical and descriptive research we consider
our bread and butter (if not our fame and fortune), that they will devour
our time and dilute our expertise, or that they will lead us into uncharted
waters for which our training and experience provide little preparation.
(Rickford, 1998)
It is not just that professional linguists are ill equipped to engage with public
opinion. The real reason why there is hardly any serious dialogue between the
two sides is that the two sides do not have a common language. Their
discourses are mutually unintelligible. The metalanguage of the linguists or, if
you will, their discourse qua linguistics is hermetically sealed and closed unto
itself (as most technical discourses tend to be) and its basic vocabulary
typically consists of terms that (1) are highly ‘theory-laden’ and thus
practically incomprehensible to outsiders and (2) have been carefully crafted
in such a way that any emotive or sentimental resonance their rough
equivalents in ordinary speech may have is deliberately suppressed (in the
name of scientific objectivity and noninvolvement).
Examples are legion. Let us consider a single illustrative case: the term L1
versus the expression mother tongue . To dismiss the difference with a cool
shrug of the shoulders and the remark that the latter, in contrast with the
former, is suffused with emotive or affective meaning is to state an obvious
point but also to close the doors on any possible dialogue between the linguist
and the layperson. The expression mother tongue is embedded in an associative
chain of other expressions such as home , mother’s womb , cosiness , belongingness ,
motherland and so forth. By contrast, L1 belongs to a theoretical universe
where there is no room for affective roles. It is based purely on the chronology
of acquisition. Furthermore, insofar as it is a theoretical construct, the term L1
only makes full sense in a discursive universe that has also incorporated such
terms as competence , native speaker, intuition and so forth. To use L1 , instead of
mother tongue , is to presuppose that your interlocutor has already bought into
the discursive practices of professional linguists.
But the differences do not stop there. L1 is an objective fact; what makes
language x someone’s L1 rather than language y, is the simple objective fact
that he or she was born and brought up in a linguistic environment where the
language spoken was x and not y. With mother tongue it is a rather different
story. It has frequently been observed that for bi- or multilingual speakers,
especially those living in societies which are themselves bi- or multilingual,
mother tongue is a matter of choice rather than a fact of the matter. It is a
category whose defining features include the question of language loyalty,
which has been known to shift in response to shifting political allegiances
116 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

(Khubchandani, 1983). To reiterate a point already made: it is not that mother

tongue is simply L1 with an overlay of emotive and political meanings. The
two belong to completely different classificatory grids.
It is interesting to point out here that, not very long ago, mother tongue was
very much a part of the linguist’s metalanguage. Bloomfield’s remark ‘No
language is like the native language that one learned at one’s mother’s knee’
(Bloomfield, 1970: 151, quoted in Davies, 2001: 514) did invoke the powerful
emotive element of the mother
/child relationship to define the notion of
‘native language’. But progress in linguistic theory has meant progressive
distancing from any point of contact with common-sense understanding of
ordinary notions relative to language.
The result is a complete communication breakdown. Laypeople find most
of what professional linguists say beyond their powers to comprehend. When
they do come to grips with what the experts say, they find it contrary to
common sense and are apt to dismiss it as excessively academic and pedantic.
The price professional linguists pay for their principled neglect of public
opinion or inability to address it properly is very high indeed. As has been
verified time and time again, professional linguists are increasingly being
sidelined in matters concerning language planning and state policies regard-
ing literacy, language teaching etc. (Rajagopalan, forthcoming). Worse still,
when well intentioned linguists do force their way into public debates about
language-related issues, the reaction from the public is often vitriolic. John
Rickford of Stanford University discovered this to his horror, as in the mid-
1990s he got involved in the Ebonics debate in the USA. The debate was a
heated public argument over a decision by the Oakland, California, School
Board on December 18, 1996, which declared that the official language of
28,000 African-American school children enrolled in Oakland’s public schools
was not English but ‘Ebonics’ (a word combining ‘Ebony’ and ‘phonics’, first
coined by Robert Williams, an African-American psychologist, designating
the distinctive variety of English spoken by African-Americans in the USA
(cf. Baugh, 2001)).
One example of the hate mail was a postcard I received addressed to
‘John Rickford, Linguistics Professor (God Help Us All)’ which included,
alongside a newspaper report of my remarks at the 1997 LSA meeting,
the comment: ‘It’s just amazing how much crap you so-called ‘‘scholars’’
can pour and get away with. Can you wonder, John Boy, why the general
public does not trust either educators, judges or politicians? As a brother
might say, ‘‘Ee Bonic be a bunch a booshit man, but it get de muny offa
de White man. He be a sucka.’’’ (Rickford, 1998)

Head-on confrontation: The Brazilian case

Differences of opinion between the linguist and the lay public can often
degenerate into a noisy verbal duel and, in some cases, a no-holds-barred free-
for-all. Here, for instance, is an excerpt from a heated exchange that took place
recently in an Internet chat room in Brazil frequented mostly by linguists. (The
message below was, needless to say, from an irate lay gatecrasher.)
Emotion and Language Politics in Brazil 117

I have the great privilege of not knowing who is who in Brazilian

linguistics. Thus, I am in a position to judge their texts for what they are
worth, without being induced to ‘think’ that they contain doses of
prodigious wisdom . . . just that they bear the signature of Tom, Dick or
Harry. Of the scholars whose names you cite, up until now I have only
read pure nonsense, here in this chat room and elsewhere. I am not
impressed by their names nor their PhDs. This is the great privilege of
ordinary citizens who do not care a damn about academy.
In what follows, relevant aspects of a controversy that erupted in Brazil some
time ago will be discussed (the leftover embers are still smouldering as I write
this piece today).
It all started in 1999, when a Federal Congressman Aldo Rebelo (currently,
the whip of the ruling coalition in the lower house of the legislature) presented
a bill aimed at curbing the influx of word borrowings (called estrangeirismos
/
‘foreignisms’
/ in local parlance) into the country’s national and official
language, Brazilian Portuguese. Although the text of the bill initially warned
about excessive borrowings from all foreign sources, it soon became clear that
the real target was English. The preamble to the bill was packed with
nationalist rhetoric of the sort that appeals to the unwary public. And
the Congressman, elected on a ticket from a political party on the radical
left called ‘The Communist Party of Brazil’, knew full well that a threat, real or
imagined, to a country’s national language
/ the mother tongue of millions of
its citizens
/ is a powerful rallying point. In fact, it was exactly this powerful
sentiment that the shrewd politician was hoping to cash in on
/ an attempt in
which he had, by all estimates, a resounding success, at least initially. (The bill
has now been superseded by a substitutive one, proposed by a Senator as it
moved to the Upper House.)
In no time, the Congressman’s name became a household word, especially
amongst the Brazilian middle class. In educational circles, everybody was
discussing the pros and cons of the proposed bill, which, if passed, would
stipulate, among other things, tough penalties, including hefty fines, for
anyone caught using English words (shopping centre, drive-thru, self-service ,
newsletter, delivery, sale , homepage , site , workshop , franchising and so on).
‘Unfortunately’, pondered Congressman Rebelo in a press briefing, ‘business-
men and shopkeepers seem to believe that these foreignisms create the
impression that the products on display are sophisticated and of a superior
quality, which is complete nonsense’ (Stábile, 2002). Now, clearly, he was
wrong on this. Marketing specialists have long known that products sell not
merely on the strength of their intrinsic worth but also on the basis of
associative attributes that are painstakingly attached to them through
sustained advertising campaigns. If foreign words enjoy prestige in a given
society, then that is a perfectly good reason for advertisers to resort to them in
order to boost the appeal of a product they want to sell. But, be that as it may,
Rebelo’s arguments struck a favourable chord in the minds of the ordinary
people on the street. This public appeal was seen in enthusiastic responses
from the public at large, manifested in the form of letters to newspaper editors,
remarks made in Internet chat rooms etc.
118 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Most middle-class people in Brazil have good reasons for being suspicious
of foreign words, especially from English. English is typically seen in South
America as the aggressively visible symbol of (North) American hegemony in
the region. English words stare at you from billboards, neon lights, shop
windows, newspaper and magazine articles, indeed literally anywhere and
everywhere (Rajagopalan, 2003; Rajagopalan & Freitas, 2002). The wide-spread
resentment in many South American countries of what is perceived as the US
government’s steam-roller diplomacy vis-à-vis their ‘backyard’ often surfaces
in most surprising ways, especially as conspiracy theories of one sort or
another involving perceived US pretensions in the southern hemisphere. In
fact, it soon became clear to independent observers of the unfolding scenario
that it was this pent-up frustration among the Brazilian public at large that
Congressman Aldo Rebelo was aiming to channel into his own private project
of anti-Americanism. As José Luiz Fiorin (2000: 71
/72), a prominent Brazilian
linguist, pointed out: ‘What the project aims to do is to treat language as an
arena for anti-imperialist struggle’.
As Rebelo and his incendiary legislative bid started attracting media
attention, Brazilian linguists remained in stultified silence. There was an air
of utter disbelief and frustration that, despite years of linguistic research with
plenty of concrete results to show, linguistics was still, by and large, an
unknown field as far as the lay public was concerned. ‘40 years after its
introduction as a discipline in Brazilian universities, linguistics continues to
remain invisible and inaudible to the society as a whole’, lamented another
front-ranking linguist, Carlos Alberto Faraco (2001: 30). The remedy? The
almost unanimous recommendation was: spread the message of linguistics to
the wider public. At the end of his diagnostic report, published in the form of
an article in a major national newspaper in Brazil, Faraco made the following
statement:
Linguists are faced with the challenge of approaching these questions as
fundamentally political questions and thinking about ways of making
their voices heard, thus contributing to the beginning of an urgently
needed cultural war among contending discourses concerning Brazil’s
language. (Faraco, 2001: 31)
Faraco’s exhortation to take linguistics to the streets is an important and
refreshingly different step ahead, insofar as it entails an admission that there is
a need to address popular concerns about language if linguists are to have any
say at all in language politics. But here is precisely where one detects an
important weak point in the position taken by linguists, not only in Brazil but
elsewhere in the world. For it turns out that what they are proposing to do is to
familiarise the public with the fundamental truths of their science: claims such
as that ‘The defense of the Portuguese language is an old project
/
conservative, elitist, and exclusionary’ (Guedes, 2000: 35); ‘Languages, all of
them, undergo changes (or do we speak Latin?); this is neither good nor bad’
(Zilles, 2000: 52); ‘The best language policy consists of giving total liberty of
expression to the language user, letting him/her choose . . .’ (Schmitz, 2000: 45)
and so on. The claims just cited are all taken from a special bulletin issued by
Emotion and Language Politics in Brazil 119

the Brazilian Association of Applied Linguistics (ALAB). In her introductory

note, Motta-Roth (2000: 5) claimed:
By and large, the opinions expressed in the articles that follow . . . attest
to the outdated and misinformed nature of the bill that seeks to legislate
over and penalize the ordinary language user for the use they make of
their own mother tongue in order to genuinely interact with their socio-
historical context.
The choice of the expression mother tongue is significant and its emotive effect
needs no comment. In fact, the remark takes us all the way back to centuries
ago when Sir Philip Sidney (1554
/1586) found it a scandal that a child should
go to school to learn the grammar of its own language:
. . . and so voyd of those cumbersome differences of Cases, Genders,
Moodes, and tenses, which I thinke was a peece of the Tower of Babilons
curse, that a man should be put to schoole to learne his mother-tongue.
(Sidney, 1905: 70)
But the use of the expression mother tongue is about the farthest that linguists
involved in the language dispute in Brazil seemed willing to go in their effort
to establish a working relationship with their would-be interlocutors, the
public at large. The overall attitude is one of distrust and dismissiveness in
relation to the public’s capacity to engage in any meaningful (/rational)
dialogue. At the end of a retrospective study as to where things might have
gone wrong, Garcez and Zilles (2001) register with evident resignation:
When all is said and done, the debate about ‘foreignisms’
/ reedited for
the umpteenth time in Brazil
/ manifests itself in the form of
emotionally charged discourses, packed with allusions to sentiments
of nationalism and patriotism, based on the unfounded belief that there
is only one language in the whole nation, the standard language of
power, which must be defended against external threats. (Garcez &
Zilles, 2001: 35)
Now, needless to say, there is a lot of truth in what the authors are saying.
Demands for linguistic engineering and protection of national languages
usually stem from a right-wing political agenda and they rally the unwitting
masses that readily fall head over heels in love with the chest-pounding brand
of chauvinism that they promote. The point, however, is that, by not
recognising that the human languages are invested with powerful symbolism
in addition to being the things that linguists customarily say about them,
professional linguists often fail to establish a vital beachhead in their effort to
make an all-out assault on folk-linguistic beliefs. As a result, they have so far
had a rather poor track record in their efforts to win public opinion and
persuade ordinary people of the inconsistencies in their own beliefs about
language vis-à-vis the soundness of the findings of scientific linguistics.
Outside the disciplinary bounds of linguistics, scholars like Bourdieu (1977) in
sociology and Rosaldo (1980) and Duranti (1994) in anthropology have shown
much greater awareness of the enormous gap between specialist and lay
discursive practices.
120 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

The ordinary people’s engagement with language is inextricably embroiled

in emotions and loyalties of all sorts. And they are not being completely
irrational in their attitude. Bourdieu (1988: 782) has argued that ‘[s]ocial action
is guided by a practical sense, by what we may call a ‘‘feel for the game’’’
/ a
‘feel’ he goes on to contrast with ‘rational action’. The fact that, through the
employment of the right strategies of persuasion, ordinary people can be made
to see the weaknesses in their untutored arguments no more proves that their
emotive nature was what stood in the way all along, than the fact that linguists
themselves have entertained in the past beliefs they no longer do proves that
there is nothing scientific about the conclusions they arrive at.

Concluding Remarks
If there is one precious lesson to be learned from the episode involving the
Rebelo bill in Brazil, it is that linguists can no longer afford to ignore public
opinion with regard to language on pain of rendering themselves irrelevant
and inconsequential. This entails, first and foremost, accepting the fact that it is
not because the ordinary person’s views about language are guided by
emotions and sentiments that they should be set aside or completely ignored.
To think that they can be countered by dint of cool reason alone is to be
hopelessly naı̈ve about the whole process of engaging with public opinion.
John Rickford concludes his thoughts on his experience of involvement in the
Ebonics debate with the following words: ‘Ultimately, the quality of our
contributions will depend on the depth of our knowledge and understanding’
(Rickford, 1998). Without doubt, knowledge and understanding of one’s
interlocutors’ position is absolutely essential if one is to engage them in any
meaningful dialogue. But it is also indispensable to engage your interlocutor
in a discourse where he or she is most at home even when your ultimate goal
happens to be to convince him/her of the inadequacies and inherent
inconsistencies of that very discourse. This means meeting your interlocutors
on their own turf.
This is the important lesson that the great Brazilian educator Paulo Freire
left for posterity. The only way to ensure success in teaching is by engaging
our students where they are and not by expecting that through repeated
exposure to our discourse of reason they can be won over to our side and
made to see the rationality of our arguments. Once again, Rickford seems to
miss the point when, after noting how linguists regret the complete ignorance
on the part of the general public of the great advances they have made in their
science, he goes on to observe:
However, in harboring this frustration, we seem to have forgotten what
advertisers of Colgate toothpaste and other products never forget: that
the message has to be repeated over and over, anew for each generation
and each different audience type, and preferably in simple, direct and
arresting language which the public can understand and appreciate.
(Rickford, 1998)
To claim that the ordinary people can only be won over to certain arguments
by repeated exposure to them is to tacitly assume that they are incapable of
Emotion and Language Politics in Brazil 121

reasoning for themselves or of being made to appreciate by themselves the

rationality of those arguments. It is, furthermore, to equate them with lower
order animals whose behaviour can only be controlled by repeated exposures
to the same stimuli. (Or could it be that we are resorting to crude behaviourism
in our dealings with the lay public?)
As I have been at pains to show in this paper, what is urgently needed
/ if
we linguists are to make any headway at all in our efforts to establish a
working rapport with the public at large
/ is to rethink one of the founding
principles of our discipline, namely, that we have nothing whatsoever to learn
from the layperson. Our complete lack of interest in laypeople’s opinion, often
disparaged as ‘folk linguistics’, makes us turn a deaf ear to what they have to
say. So long as we refuse to listen to them and engage them where they are, we
will go on complaining about poor results in our bridge-building efforts.
Finally, it is absolutely important for us linguists to come to terms with the fact
that, as far as the lay public is concerned, the phenomenon of language will
always carry powerful emotional connotations.

Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the CNPq (National Council for Research and Develop-
ment), a funding agency under Brazil’s Ministry of Science and Technology, for
financing my research (Process no. 306151/88-0). I also wish to thank the
anonymous referees of the journal for many valuable suggestions for
improvement.

Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Professor Kanavillil Raja-
gopalan, Department of Linguistics, Institute of Language Studies, State
University at Campinas (UNICAMP), Campus ‘Zeferino Vaz’, Barão Geraldo,
Campinas-SP 13081-970, Brazil (rajagopalan@uol.com.br and rajan@iel.
unicamp.br).

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Switching Codes, Switching Code:
Bilinguals’ Emotional Responses in
English and Greek
Alexia Panayiotou
University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus
This paper investigates the verbal construction of emotions in a bilingual/bicultural
setting, the target languages and cultures being American English and Cypriot
Greek. To examine whether bilingual speakers express different emotions in their
respective languages, a study was carried out with 10 bilingual/bicultural profes-
sionals. A scenario was presented to them first in English and a month later in Greek
and their verbal reactions were recorded. The participants’ responses were then
analysed through three questions: (1) whether they translate from one language to
the other; (2) whether and when codeswitching occurs; (3) whether there is a pattern
in the use of emotion words. The analysis of the results shows that respondents
displayed different reactions to the same story depending on the language it was
read to them in. The paper argues that participants changed their social code, i.e.
sociocultural expectations, with the change in linguistic code. These findings raise
interesting questions about the relationship between language, emotions and
cognition, and the formation of the bilingual self.

Keywords: emotions, bilingualism, social constructionism, discursive psychology,

Greek
/English bilinguals, linguistic scenarios

Introduction
This paper addresses an important theoretical question in research on the
cultural construction of emotions: does one’s emotional reaction shift when the
language shifts? Specifically, this paper asks: if the same scenario or situation
appears in a different language and/or culture, does a person (1) interpret this
scenario differently? and (2) provide a different emotional response? Working
within a social constructionist framework, I explored the expression of
emotions in a bilingual/bicultural setting, the target languages and cultures
being American English and Cypriot Greek. In the study, 10 bilingual/
bicultural professionals were presented a scenario first in English and a month
later in Greek. Their verbal reactions to the text were recorded and the
subsequent responses analysed by asking whether they translated from one
language to the other in the two contexts; whether codeswitching occurred
and why; and whether a pattern existed in the emotion words used.
The study relied on the use of bilingual/bicultural informants in order to
address the issue of translatability of emotion words in English and Greek.
In doing so, it also addressed the critique of previous cross-cultural
psychological research which saw monolingual subjects used in this type of
research as rarely equivalent (Mesquita & Frijda, 1992). Bilinguals, as people
who cross physical, linguistic and cultural boundaries, offer an optimal pool

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J. OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT Vol. 25, No. 2&3, 2004

124
Bilinguals’ Emotional Responses 125

for cross-cultural comparison of emotion terms because they subjectively

experience two languages and two cultures. In this study then bilingualism is
used as a means through which one can access emotional representations and
as a phenomenon worthy of study in emotion research (see also Dewaele &
Pavlenko, 2002; Pavlenko, 2002b).

The Cultural Construction of Emotions

Although it is tempting to think of emotions as natural givens (Gergen,
1999) or as part of human nature, the viewpoint adopted in this study is that
emotions are culturally and linguistically constructed (Armon-Jones, 1986;
Averill, 1980; Parrott & Harré, 1996; Rosaldo, 1980; Wierzbicka, 1992, 1998,
1999; Winegar, 1995) and psychologically equivalent to statements (Harré &
Gillett, 1994: 146). I define emotions as a subcategory of feelings (Levy, 1984)
which help organise thoughts and behaviour (Lutz, 1988). Emotions are
‘biologically generated elements which must be enriched by meanings before
becoming emotional experiences’ (Parrott & Harré, 1996: 2). In my analysis of
the bilinguals’ responses, I relied on the following fundamental aspects of
what defines an emotion: (1) a biologically manifested element, (2) bounded
by a bodily experience, (3) understood as a cognitive appraisal of a situation,
(4) created and learned within a particular cultural meaning-making system,
(5) constituted in context and (6) located within a cultural categorisation
system. In this respect, hunger is not an emotion as it violates the last four
premises; stenahoria 1 is, as it fulfils all six although not necessarily sequentially.
Stenahoria is a socioculturally determined pattern of experience and expression
which is acquired and subsequently felt in the body and featured in specific
social situations. In other words, I am not claiming that emotions begin as
biologically generated elements, only that at some point they are biological as
well. As shown in another study (Panayiotou, 2001), it is also possible to learn
an emotion in a new language/culture (so 3, 4, 5 and 6 are met). At that point
the new cultural element manifests a physiological component as well.
Language, in this respect, provides a means through which one can access
emotions (not only in terms of understanding another person’s emotions but
also in making sense of our own) but it does not necessarily determine an
emotion; in other words, the issue of whether a person actually feels sad in a
given context or is just constructing an appropriate verbal response and claims
to be ‘sad’, is not an issue that this study addresses nor one that could be
addressed in a social constructionist framework.
The study is located in the context of discursive psychology which ‘focuses
on the role of linguistic practices in the formation and expression of the mind’
(Harré, 1998: 42). Language in this study is assumed to be at the core of
psychological constructs and the focus is on the use of ‘vocabularies through
which emotions are described and catalogued in particular cultures’ (Harré &
Gillett, 1994: 160). Without negating the bodily component of emotions, I argue
that emotions are language dependent (Searle, 1995), as the raw or bodily
experience of an emotion must be filtered through a cultural meaning-making
system (Parrot & Harré, 1996), i.e. language, before it can be defined as an
126 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

emotion. Language, then, is assumed to both actively construct and recon-

struct emotions (Pavlenko, 2002a).

Research Design
Objective
The purpose of this study was to explore the construction of emotions in
verbal responses of bilingual/bicultural Greek/English2 speakers elicited
through a scenario presented in the two languages.

Sample
In exploring the question ‘does one’s experience of emotions shift when
language shifts?’, bicultural bilinguals offer an optimal cross-cultural compar-
ison pool since, as noted above, these people subjectively experience two
languages and two cultures. The cross-cultural comparison exists then within
the individual because he or she is simultaneously the vehicle of two cultures;
it is neither a comparison to another group nor a comparison between two
individuals as is usually the case for cross-cultural studies (e.g. Hoffman et al .,
1986; Kitayama et al ., 1995). In the present study, bilingual interviewees acted
simultaneously as informants and as native anthropologists; a methodological
approach which has not been used in previous studies.
The participant pool consisted of five English
/Greek bilinguals and five
Greek
/English bilinguals, two men and eight women, middle to upper
class, between the ages of 25 and 50, living in Boston, Massachusetts and
Nicosia, Cyprus, at the time of the interview.3 I used only 10 participants
because this number allowed me to conduct an in-depth qualitative analysis.
One of the participants did not offer any direct responses to the scenario but
agreed to be interviewed on her emotional experiences as a bilingual/
bicultural person, so her insights are included as they informed the general
findings of the study.
For the purposes of this paper, I used Romaine’s (1989) basic criteria of what
a bilingual is (having a native-like control of two languages) but with the
realisation that a completely balanced bilingual is more a utopian than a
realistic term (Snow, 1993). For the purposes of this study, it was important to
include people who could effectively communicate their experience of
emotions in two languages, regardless of any strictly defined criteria for
competency and proficiency in the two languages. The criteria, in other words,
were less stringent: if a person was able to talk to me about experiencing
emotions in two languages, they were included in the study. It is also
important to note that even though the participants were bilingual, parity
between English and any other language is not possible in the current world
hierarchy where English is clearly the higher-status language (Duranti, 1997).
Not surprisingly, nine out of ten speakers regarded English as their dominant
language in the work settings but eight saw Greek as their dominant language
in family and personal settings. Lastly, it must be noted that in this study I
focused specifically on bilingual and bicultural people; in other words, people
who are not only cognitively knowledgeable about a language, but who also
Bilinguals’ Emotional Responses 127

know the culture encoded in the scripts and narratives that a certain group
shares (LeVine, 1997).4
The Appendix gives a brief description of the participants although, as
mentioned earlier, as a sociolinguistic study, this paper gives less importance
to the individual psychological profiles of the respondents than to the
language they use to describe emotions. Also, as already noted, my primary
selection criterion was whether respondents are bilingual and bicultural. Other
participant characteristics
/ such as gender, age of second language acquisi-
tion, years in the native and adopted country, and frequency of travel between
the two cultures
/ are only included as part of my subject description. With
regard to gender, the sample was not balanced as I could not locate any more
American
/Cypriot bilingual males who fulfilled my competency criteria. This
is not surprising, given that the reason most Americans live in Cyprus are
family-related and, typically, an American man married to a Greek Cypriot
woman would not migrate to or live in Cyprus. Although much research has
indicated gender differences in regard to the different emotional development
of men and women, the different situations in which men and women express
emotions, and the different discourses used by men and women to talk about
emotions (Chodorow, 1999; Cohen, 1990; Gilligan, 1991; Josselson, 1992;
Tannen, 1994), in this study I did not include gender as a primary category
in my subject selection for two reasons. The first reason is that the focus of my
study is the linguistic and cultural untranslatability of emotions and how
people talk about this untranslatability; I do not assume that either issue is
influenced by gender. Secondly, I am focusing on language use, as it is filtered
through cultural knowledge, and the experiential shift that may accompany a
language shift, and I do not assume that these factors are influenced by gender
either. I do acknowledge that language and culture influence gender
construction (and vice versa) but the interplay of these categories, alongside
the construction of emotions, could be the subject of future work.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that some of the participants were either
multicultural or multilingual, with two American English informants not
having American English as their mother tongue but Spanish and Arabic.
While these characteristics may add another layer of complexity to my subject
description, this complexity was not problematic in my data collection as my
primary objective was to understand how these participants talk about their
emotions in the two languages and cultures in which they were immersed and
fluent. Rather, the fact that the American speakers form a less homogeneous
group than the Greek
/Cypriot informants is simply indicative of the diversity
of the USA versus the relative homogeneity of Cyprus.

Recruitment and screening

My primary recruitment method was snowballing, that is, using one contact
to recruit another contact, who in turn put me in touch with someone else
(Valentine, 1997: 116). In terms of screening interested volunteers, I conducted
a brief screening interview in which I spoke briefly about my work and
interest in bilingual and bicultural experiences and asked them questions in
Greek and English to explore (1) whether they were comfortable in both
128 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

languages; and (2) whether they defined themselves as and were indeed
bicultural (the latter was accomplished by looking at their cultural sensitivities
and references, e.g. acknowledgment of status differences in Cyprus, food
associations, etc.). I also ensured that the pool was limited to (1) people who
had lived in both countries for at least three years,5 (2) people who continued
to speak both Greek and English, and (3) people who continued to travel
between the two cultural settings. If interested participants did not meet the
criterion of bilingual/bicultural, they were screened out. The participants
chosen for the study were explicitly told what was required of them, and
informed of the time commitment expected, the general purpose of the study
and the possible use of the data. At that point, a consent form was signed.

Data collection
The scenario presented to the participants involved, in its two cultural
versions, Andy, an American, and Andreas, a Cypriot who live, respectively, in
the USA and Cyprus.6 I asked the participants to assume that Andy/Andreas
is a person close to them. The English story is as follows:
Andy, a person close to you, is a 30-year-old Harvard graduate. He has
an MBA (Master’s in Business Administration). He is an accomplished,
successful and driven young man who is currently working as a
business analyst for a large multinational corporation in Boston. He
says that he is very ambitious and that his ultimate goal is to manage his
own company. He works late hours and, at the sacrifice of his friend-
ships and family obligations, including his elderly divorced mother and
his girlfriend, he has devoted all of his time and energy to his work. He
says that this is absolutely necessary if he is going to become successful.
To give a culturally appropriate account in Greek, the main character, Andreas,
was an honours graduate from the Athens School of Engineering (Ethniko
Metsoveio Polytechneio )7:
O Antróaw, óna stonó soy átomo, oínai 30 xronv́n kai apó8oitow toy
Polytoxnoíoy Auhnv́n sth mhxanikh́. Motá tiw motaptyxiaków toy
spoydów sto Londíno, opóstroco sthn Kýpro kai tv́ra orgázotai gia
mia mogálh poloodomikh́ otairía ston idivtikó tomóa sth Loykvsía.
Eínai h́dh potyxhmónow ston tomóa toy kai óxoi sígoyra kalów
prooptików gia thn hlikía toy. Ergázotai sklhrá kai syxná jonyktá
sth doyloiá toy, mo apotólosma na mh blópoi polý th xh́ra mhtóra toy,
toyw paidikoýw toy 8íloyw h́ thn arrabvniastikiá toy. Lóoi óti aytó
própoi na kánoi an prókoitai na potýxoi ston tomóa toy kai na jokinh́soi
th dikh́ toy doyloiá.
Andreas, a person close to you, is a 30-year-old engineering graduate of
the ‘Athens School of Engineering’. After completing his graduate
studies in London, he returned to Cyprus and now works for a large
construction company in the private sector in Nicosia. He is successful
for his age and has many prospects. He works hard and often stays at his
job until late at night, so he does not spend enough time with his elderly
Bilinguals’ Emotional Responses 129

widowed mother, his childhood friends or his fiancée. He says that this
is absolutely necessary if he is going to become successful and start his
own company.
The first reading of the scenario was in American English and the participants
were asked to describe their emotional reaction to the story. About a month
later, the participants were read the same story in Standard Modern Greek
(SMG) and questioned again about their emotional reaction. SMG was a
culturally appropriate choice here given that Cypriot Greek is rarely used in
writing; the participants were, however, explicitly told that they could use
Cypriot Greek in their responses. In addition, I spoke in the dialect throughout
the interview, thus encouraging them to respond in this way.8
Both readings were completed in the same cultural setting; in other words,
if a participant was presented the English story in the USA, he or she was also
presented the Greek story in the USA, since this was determined by the
accessibility of the participant. Although it may have been better to have the
English story read in an American context and the Greek story in a Cypriot
context, or vice versa, the constraints of the study did not allow for this.
Leonidas, George, Christina and Camille were interviewed in Boston while the
other participants were interviewed in Nicosia.
The two questions after each story were:

(1) What would you say to Andy/Andreas if he were a person close to you?
(2) How do you feel about Andy/Andreas?
Subsequent questions inquired about any differences in the two accounts.9
This approach provided me with the participant’s interpretation of the
difference. The participants were, therefore, shown a transcript of their two
accounts and asked:
. Do you see a difference in the two accounts?
. What is different? (Or, how are these the same?)
. Why are these lists different, you think? (Or, why are these lists just a
translation of each other?)
. What would you identify as your predominant (main) emotion in the
English list? In the Greek list? Can you tell me why?

The participants’ reactions were recorded and subsequently transcribed, with

codeswitching marked throughout in bold. In the absence of a videotape and
wanting to establish the overall emotional experience and state of the
respondents, I transcribed every intonation change, every pause, ‘um’ and
word spoken. I should also note that the transcription of the Greek interviews
was in the spoken Greek Cypriot dialect, although the written form of this
dialect is not widely used. I kept the dialect to maintain the authenticity of the
participants’ voices.
The difficulties arising from transposing an oral text to a written one were
compounded by the difficulties of translating a narrative from one language to
another, so, in this respect translation in a study such as this one becomes
‘intimately linked to ethnography’ (Duranti, 1997: 154) as my choices reflected
the larger sociopolitical context to which both I and my interviewees belong as
130 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

bilinguals. In order to establish the accuracy of the transcription, translation

and analysis, the transcriptions and translations were read both by the
participants themselves and by two bilingual bicultural colleagues.

Findings and Analysis

The summary of the responses to the two scenarios is given in Table 1. The
Greek responses are given in English translation in italics and codeswitching is
marked in bold. It is interesting to note that some participants opted for Greek
when the scenario was presented in English and vice versa.
I used the participants’ responses to the two scenarios to address the
following questions:

(1) Do participants offer translation equivalents of emotion terms in their

responses to the two stories?
(2) Is there any codeswitching where participants use emotion terms from the
other language?
(3) Are there certain emotion words that are repeated by participants in each
language? (In other words, is there a pattern in the words used?)

At first glance, what Table 1 shows is that the respondents had different
reactions to the two stories. There appears to be a greater overall concern for
Andreas and either indifference or disapproval for Andy. For Andreas,
respondents used words such as ‘I am concerned; I would warn him; He
should not overdo it; I can sympathise with him; I feel sadness; I would tell
him to be careful; I would ask him what he is doing all this for’. They also
made several comments regarding his relationships, none of which came up in
responses to the English version. Four respondents wondered about his
mother and two said that they felt sorry for her; two respondents also showed
concern about his romantic relationship. Andy’s situation appears somewhat
different: in the eyes of the respondents he came across as a less likeable
person who is simply following the rules to get ahead and doing what is
required of ‘men that age’. One respondent said that he felt ‘frustrated and
disapproval, because his priorities are wrong’ and two said that they felt sorry
for him or sad. None, however, mentioned his relationship or his mother,
which is an intriguing finding. Although I expected a greater acceptance of
Andy, given the American work ethic that the interviewees picked up on, the
opposite was true
/ there was greater concern and understanding for
Andreas. To my surprise, what two respondents said is that Andreas sounded
like ‘he needed to work, maybe because of his mom and because he is getting
married’, while Andy to them sounded ‘purely selfish’. The interviewees are,
therefore, interpreting the two versions of the story differently, creating a
different scenario each time. Some mentioned that the ‘widow mom’ has
different connotations in Greek and English. At my questioning whether this is
because she is a ‘widow’, respondents said that ‘a divorced mom in Cyprus of
a person that age would be unlikely anyway’ but that mostly it was the image
of a Cypriot mom that influenced their reactions
/ ‘knowing what Cypriot
moms are like, just living around their children and having their children be
Bilinguals’ Emotional Responses 131
Table 1 Summary of responses to the Andy/Andreas story

Responses to the English version Responses to the Greek version

Leonidas He’s just doing what everyone does at He’s just immature; I would probably
that age; he’s just following the rules; warn him about the future (to be
I feel indifferent to this . careful); he just shouldn’t overdo it;
I guess I am concerned.
George Frustrated; disapproval because his I can sympathise with him even
priorities are wrong. I don’t feel though I don’t agree with his thinking
much sympathy for him, he is not process. I feel some admiration but
excused in my eyes. some sadness as well if he feels he has
no other choice. It feels that he has a
need to do this.
Lydia I feel sorry for him; that sounds Mana mou re [Greek expression of
like [a mutual acquaintance] so I sympathy]. . . What is his financial
think he sounds pathetic, I could situation though? Is he doing it for
never live this way; he is missing his mom you mean?
out on life.
Christina He’s trying to get ahead; he’s He’s just doing what everyone in the
doing whatever it takes in the private sector is doing here; he’s
society we live in; good for him to young, let him work while he can */
be able to work so hard. that’s what I do; I just feel sorry for
his mom.
Nefeli I don’t really know anyone like Will his engagement survive? If he
that except for doctors here [the were a friend I would tell him to be
USA] but if this is what he wants, careful, this is a trap and people are
let him be! I don’t really feel not aware of this sometimes.
anything about him.
Lila I feel sorry for him but maybe he is I pity him. Isn’t this the same
just doing what he has to do as a story pretty much as last time? If
30-year-old male. No, he would he were my son I would feel that
not be a friend. I failed as a mother.
Jackie I don’t feel anything in particular I don’t know about him but I feel
about him; that’s just the American sorry for his mom.
work ethic, what everyone does.
Julia N/A N/A
Camille I am so not in touch with people I feel sad because I feel that it’s
like him, on purpose. . . because I this American mentality that is
knew too many like him, so I guess transferring all over the world;
I feel resentful for people like that. maybe worried too because of
I distance myself from these go- that. Does his mom live with him
getter types. though?
Sofia I feel sad that he has to prove His woman will find someone else!
himself this way. . . What is he doing all that for?
132 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

their whole lives’ (Christina, translated from Greek). Jackie also agreed that
‘somehow when I think of a Cypriot mom there’s a different image that comes
to mind than an American mom, although it shouldn’t be that way but maybe
it’s because I think of my mom and (her husband’s) mom. . .’. Camille agreed,
asking whether Andreas’ mom lived with him ‘since that would make a
difference’. She also noted that maybe the question was deeply related to the
status of women in both countries and ‘how important family is (in Cyprus)’.
Clearly then, the terms given in response to the English story are not a
translation of the terms given for the Greek story and what bilinguals are
reacting to is the different cultural context of each story. There also seems to be
a pattern of concern for the family in the Greek scenario
/ particularly for the
widowed mother
/ that does not appear in the American scenario. Finally,
what is interesting is the codeswitching noted in several instances, from Greek
to English words and expressions, such as ‘indifferent’, ‘concerned’, ‘fru-
strated’, ‘priorities’, ‘sympathy’, ‘I can sympathise with him’, and ‘the
American work ethic’. When respondents were asked about these terms,
they said that the reason they switched to English was either because they
could not think of the Greek word or because the Greek word did not sound
right. In the case of ‘frustrated’ and ‘the American work ethic’, the respondents
said that these terms simply could not be translated into Greek (Panayiotou,
2004). The term ‘sympathy’ was also interesting as the Greek equivalent seems
inadequate for expressing what George wanted to say. This codeswitching is
particularly noteworthy because it shows that bilinguals are indeed ‘delving
into the bag of emotion terms’ and choosing what they find as most
appropriate when speaking with another bilingual, regardless of the language
context. In other words, if ‘sympathy’ is the appropriate term, then they will
use this term in a Cypriot scenario presented in the Greek language without
really thinking about it. So, although different cultural contexts seem to be tied
to different emotional reactions, these reactions are not inherently tied to a
particular language.
In sum, this analysis shows that (1) one’s emotional reaction shifts with
language (and cultural context) and (2) all emotion terms (and reactions) are
available to bilingual speakers, almost regardless of the context. This last
finding suggests that the experience of emotions is a unified experience,
despite its strong cultural component. In other words, although different
cultural scenarios evoke different reactions, these reactions are not linguisti-
cally or culturally monolithic
/ they include terms and possibly experiences
that ‘cross over’.

Discussion
What the aforementioned findings show is that a change in codes
(languages) implies, at least to a certain extent, a change in the cultural or
social code used, but also vice versa
/ that a change in context implies a shift
in language. Since bilinguals are able to ‘read’ the context of a situation
/
cultural and otherwise
/ it seems that they consciously or unconsciously
connect this context to the relevant language. It is almost as if in describing a
feeling of frustration, which cannot be translated into Greek, for example, a
Bilinguals’ Emotional Responses 133

bilingual can reach into the bag of emotion terms and pick out the one that is
most suitable, provided that the interlocutor is also bilingual. This explanation
would be consistent with what I was told in one of my interviews, that being
bilingual is like having a palette with more colours: whereas monolinguals
have some colours with which to paint their emotions, bilinguals have even
more and can thus use a greater variety of emotions.10
What the participants stressed is that language and culture are deeply
intertwined. Leonidas, for example, said that he felt stenahorimenos regarding
Andy’s relationship with his mom. When asked in the subsequent explanatory
interview why he had not used the term in the English interview (although he
had used Greek in his answer), he said that he cannot feel stenahoria in English
‘not just because the word doesn’t exist but because that kind of situation
would never arise’. Lila said that she felt the same way about ypohreosi, ‘this
deep sense of a cultural and social obligation which could never arise in the
US’. This ypohreosi is not something that Andy would feel, but Andreas would,
or should. And marazi , the deep sense of sadness accompanied by images of
‘mothers dressed in black mourning for lost soldiers’ is also culture- and
language-specific, according to the participants. Christina, for example, noted
that while it is likely that Andreas’ mother felt marazi both for her son and for
her widowhood, Andy’s mother would not, and it is for this reason that she
‘(felt) sorry for his mom’.
These responses suggest that to the extent that language use implies a
certain cultural context, certain experiences can occur only within the context
of a specific language. This finding is consistent with Lutz’s (1988) argument
that the Ifaluk’s fago can only be experienced in that language and culture,
Wierzbicka’s (1998) argument about German angst , Doi’s (1962) argument
about the Japanese amae, and with much of the literature that supports the
idea of culturally and linguistically specific emotions. In addition, the
literature on linguistically translatable but culturally untranslatable emotions
mentions that certain terms, such as love (Derné, 1994), anger (Averill, 1982)
and guilt and shame (Ekman, 1972; Kitayama et al ., 1995; Wallbott & Scherer,
1995), mean different things in different contexts. What this literature does not
examine, however, is how the same person might experience ‘love’ in three
cultures (taken from Derné, 1994). Is it the same experience? Although this is
not the pertinent question of this study, it is an important issue to address in
future research as my respondents are indicating that even the experience of
emotions may differ based on the linguistic and cultural context.
Furthermore, the participants’ responses point to the construction of a
different emotional space for bilinguals. One can begin to ask if bilinguals have
one emotional space in which the labels for the various emotions appear
simultaneously (‘shame’ in English, ntropi in Greek) and are mapped onto one
construct, OR if they have two distinct emotional spaces, which are connected
but separated, so that ‘shame’ is in one space (like ‘frustrated’) and ntropi in
another (along with stenahoria ).
What my findings show then is that bilingualism may act, on some level, as
a metalanguage for emotions. It is likely, in other words, that a person’s ability
to ‘express feelings, emotions and thoughts in both languages equally well’
134 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

(Julia) may give him or her a metalanguage through which to think about his
or her two (or more) languages. As Nefeli said,
I think that being bilingual gives me the ability to be more analytical
about certain things. . . Sometimes I think I was really lucky to learn
English at such an early age because I realised, early in life, how relative
and meaningless words could be. . . Inevitably, I think, you become more
analytical because you no longer take things for granted, you learn that
almost everything is an either/or, that nothing is just ‘right’ or ‘wrong’,
but an issue of interpretation. . . .
Nefeli then added that being bilingual enables her to think about Greek words
in a different frame of mind, to analyse certain concepts ‘like an outsider
would’. Christina also said that being a bilingual/bicultural person is ‘like
being able to stand back and watch yourself, hear what you are saying, and
analyse it like a listener of yourself or how a spectator would’. It is these
observations and experiences of the people interviewed that bring me to the
conclusion that being a bilingual is like having ‘the other within the self’
(Panayiotou, 2001).

Conclusion
This paper explored the verbal construction of emotions in a bilingual/
bicultural setting; specifically, it sought to explore the responses of 10 English/
Greek bilingual speakers to two culturally similar scenarios that were
presented to them in the two languages. The findings showed that bilinguals
reacted differently to the two versions of the story, offering culturally
appropriate emotional responses. The verbal responses were not direct
translations of each other. Codeswitching was used when certain emotion
terms were seen as more appropriate in one language versus the other.
It appears then that bilinguals offer an optimal pool for cross-cultural
comparison of emotion terms and this finding is an important contribution
to the study of emotions.
These findings also offer useful directions for other types of inquiry, in
particular a study of self-construction, grounded in examinations of the
relationship between language, culture and emotions. Bilinguals manage to
create coherent, viable selves through which they experience and make sense
of the world. The present study indicates that the bilingual self may be
contextual, one which is found and founded in two languages. The self can be
multilayered, both English and Greek, both satisfied and confused, both at
home and at a loss. Maybe searching for one description of the self or even one
language of the self is problematic and guided only by our need to make sense
through categories and our finite human ability to grasp the complexity of the
multilayered self.
While Harré (1984, 1986), in his work on the construction of emotions,
does not explicitly address the case of bilinguals, I see his theory as useful in
the differentiation between self and person. If we assume that a bilingual
person is two persons, based on Harré’s definition
/ i.e. two personalities that
are ‘identifiable by public criteria. . . and interpreted within a social frame-
Bilinguals’ Emotional Responses 135

work’ (1984: 76)
/ but one self , in the experiential, maybe even constructivist
sense that he describes, then a bilingual person/self is one who must learn to
(socially) orchestrate the two persons but who is, nonetheless, always
the ‘experiencer’ of ‘unified perceptions, feelings, and beliefs’ (1984: 77).
In other words, although the interpretation of an experience may differ
based on the language and culture that one is in, the manifestation of the
experience only involves one self. To use the example of bicultural emotions,
‘angry’ may be interpreted differently by a bilingual/bicultural person
depending on the context, but the actual experience of this emotion may be
the same.
While any kind of a definitive answer is premature at this point, the present
study indicates that there seems to be a close relationship between language
and the construction and interpretation of emotions. Bilingualism complicates
this relationship to a great degree and further research is needed to fully
understand the complexity of this relationship.

Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank the two editors, the three anonymous reviewers,
and George Kassinis for their valuable insights and comments during the
preparation of this article and Miranda Christou and Spyros Spyrou for their
useful contributions during the analysis of the data.

Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Dr Alexia Panayiotou,
University of Cyprus, 75 Kallipoleos Street, Nicosia 1678, Cyprus (alexiap@
ucy.ac.cy).

Notes
1. A Greek emotion which, using Lutz’s (1988) connotation, can be loosely translated
as sadness/discomfort/suffocation.
2. ‘Greek’ includes both Standard Modern Greek (SMG) and the Cypriot dialect;
‘English’ refers to Standard American English (SAE).
3. I chose to focus on Greek/English bilingual/bicultural adults (This notation
includes both Greek
/English and English
/Greek bilinguals) who live in the
Cypriot and American cultural contexts specifically because these are the
languages and cultures in which I am ‘fluent’. As explained elsewhere (Panayio-
tou, 2001), fluency is crucial for conducting a thorough analysis both of the emotion
terms used and of the explanation of those terms (see also Denzin and Lincoln,
1998; Maxwell, 1996). As the Cypriot culture is distinct from the Greek culture
/
despite the many similarities and shared history
/ and the Greek Cypriot dialect is
different from SMG, for the purposes of the study, I recruited Greek
/English
bilinguals who were Greek Cypriots (and thus knowledgeable of both SMG and
the Cypriot dialect) and English
/Greek bilinguals who were fluent in both SMG
and the Cypriot dialect and had Cyprus as their home base for at least three years
(Birdsong, 1992).
4. Admittedly, by treating the American and Cypriot cultures as distinct conceptual
categories, I seem to be neglecting the multiple subcultures present in both. As I am
focusing on the manifestation of linguistic phenomena, however, I believe that for
this study it is not problematic to treat ‘American’ as that culture which is
intertwined with the (American) English language and ‘Cypriot’ as that culture
which is connected to the (Cypriot) Greek language.
136 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

5. Birdsong (1992), for example, reported that adult learners of a second language
who achieve native-like competence in this second language, have it by about the
end of a three year period of immersion in the second language environment.
6. Similar work with Chinese
/English bilinguals was conducted by Hoffman and her
colleagues (1986). In this study, Hoffman et al . found that bilingual speakers may
develop different impressions of a person depending on which language they were
using when forming an impression.
7. The story was made culturally relevant using the help of a focus group.
8. For a discussion of the differences between SMG and the Cypriot dialect, see, for
example, Hadjioannou (1996).
9. Tannen (1980) used a similar method with Greek Americans when she asked them
to talk about a film they saw (further details about this film in Chafe, 1984).
10. Interviews were also conducted with the 10 participants as part of a larger study on
the cultural construction of emotions (see Panayiotou, 2001).
11. All names have been changed to ensure confidentiality and anonymity.

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Appendix: Descriptions of participants11

Leonidas
Leonidas is a 30-year-old Greek Cypriot who spent the first few years of his
life in the USA and then went back for his university studies at the age of 20.
As a child, he spoke English with his family, even upon returning to Cyprus,
but stopped doing so a few years after entering elementary school. He
completed his undergraduate and graduate studies in the USA and then
worked for a well known East Coast consulting firm for several years.
Currently, his home is in Cyprus where he works as an accountant; he is
married to a Greek Cypriot.

George
George is a Greek Cypriot who attended English-speaking schools all his
life. He is an engineer who studied and then worked in the USA for nearly 10
years. Recently married to a Greek Cypriot, he had just returned to Cyprus
when I interviewed him.

Nefeli
Nefeli is a Greek Cypriot artist living in the USA. She is married to a Greek
Cypriot and is the mother of a young bilingual girl. She learned English at the
age of five when she moved with her family to the USA for a few years. She
spoke English with her sister and parents until she graduated from high
school.

Lydia
Lydia is a Greek Cypriot architect in her late 30s. She has two young
children and is married to a Greek Cypriot. She learned English in the USA at
the age of 11 when her family moved there for three years and then returned to
the USA as a college student for an additional five years.

Christina
Christina is a Greek Cypriot who had learned English in Cyprus at a young
age and lived in New York for 10 years as an adolescent and young adult. In
her late 30s, she says that she feels like a New Yorker at heart and had it not
been for family circumstances she would have lived there ‘for ever and ever’.
She has a young son to whom she speaks only in English. Christina runs her
own company and is married to a Greek Cypriot who only recently learned
English.

Sofia
Sofia’s first language is Spanish as she was born in South America. She
learned English as a child when her family immigrated to the USA and had
lived in the USA until she married her Greek Cypriot husband. She speaks
several languages and has lived all over the world. She has been living in
Bilinguals’ Emotional Responses 139

Cyprus for the last seven years with her husband and two children. Sofia holds
a degree in the social sciences and is in her early 40s.

Lila
Lila is a multilingual, born in Lebanon to a Lebanese father and a German
mother. Her first languages were Arabic and German but all of her education
was in English, even while attending a Cypriot high school for three years. She
has lived all over the world and moved to the USA when she was an
adolescent. There she met her Greek Cypriot husband and, after living in the
USA for seven years, they moved back to Cyprus. She has been living in
Cyprus for the last 13 years and is a lecturer at a private college and a
businesswoman. She is in her early 40s and has two trilingual children.

Julia
Julia is a multilingual American in her late 40s, married to a German. She
has lived in Cyprus for the last three years. She is a language teacher who
learned Greek in her early 20s when she met her first husband, a Greek. Before
going to Cyprus she had lived in Greece for 10 years and then in various
countries around the world.

Camille
Camille is an American in her late 30s who has been living in Cyprus for the
last four years. She is married to a Greek and before coming to Cyprus she
lived all over the world. She has a toddler whom she is raising as a bilingual
Greek
/English speaker. Camille is a researcher with an advanced degree in
the humanities from a US university.

Jackie
Jackie is an American who has been living in Cyprus for the last 12 years
after she married her Greek Cypriot husband. She has three bilingual children
and runs her own business. She holds a bachelor’s in social sciences from a US
university.
Different Languages, Different Emotions?
Perspectives from Autobiographical
Literature
Mary Besemeres
Division of Humanities, Curtin University of Technology, Curtin, WA,
Australia
Bilingual life writing offers a rare insight into the relationship between languages
and emotions. This article explores ways in which some striking contemporary
memoirs and novels of bilingual experience approach questions of cultural
difference in emotion. The texts considered include memoirs by Eva Hoffman and
Tim Parks, autobiographical fiction by Lilian Ng and Nino Ricci, and personal
essays by Stanislaw Baran̄czak and Zhengdao Ye. I focus on these writers’ treatment
of the role played in their own or their protagonists’ lives by forms of emotional
expression that do not readily translate between their two languages. These include
expressive forms such as diminutives and interjections as well as concepts which
invoke specific feelings, like the Polish szcze˛śliwy (happy) and American English
‘happy’. Another significant area represented in these texts is the extent to which
nonverbal means of expressing feelings translate, or fail to. The narratives explored
here suggest that different languages make possible distinct emotional styles, which
engage different parts of a bilingual’s self.

Keywords: bilingualism, emotions, cross-cultural, autobiography

Introduction
I would like to begin with a question recently posed by linguist Aneta
Pavlenko, but rarely, if ever, asked in either mainstream literary studies,
psychology or social sciences: ‘what [do] bilinguals’ own narratives contribute
to the study of bilingualism’ (2001: 321)? More specifically, what might
bilinguals’ autobiographical writings have to say on the subject of bilingualism
and emotion? The bilingual author Eva Hoffman, who emigrated at 13 from
Poland to Canada, writes poignantly of the gap she recalls between her own
and her mother’s emotional worlds as immigrants: ‘My mother says I’m
becoming ‘‘English’’. This hurts me, because I know she means I’m becoming
cold. . .’ (1989: 146). Hoffman’s words express some of the key concerns of a
whole emerging canon of cross-cultural autobiographical literature, which
probes the emotional and psychological lives of migrants between languages
and cultures. In this paper I explore ways in which several striking examples
of the genre approach the question of whether, and how, emotional experience
is inflected differently in different languages.
The texts discussed here include two memoirs, Eva Hoffman’s (1989) Lost
in Translation: A Life in a New Language and Tim Parks’s (1996) An Italian
Education ; two novels, The Book of Saints by Nino Ricci (1990) and Silver
Sister by Lilian Ng (1994); and two autobiographical essays, ‘E.E.: The

0143-4632/04/02 140-19 $20.00/0 – 2004 M. Besemeres

J. OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT Vol. 25, No. 2&3, 2004

140
Perspectives from Autobiographical Literature 141

Extraterritorial’1 by Stanislaw Baran̄czak (1990) and ‘La Double Vie de

Veronica: reflections on my life as a Chinese migrant in Australia’ by
Zhengdao Ye (2003). I focus on these writers’ treatment of the role played in
their own lives, or those of their protagonists, by important forms of emotional
expression in their two languages. Some of the more obvious forms include
interjections, such as ‘Aiyah! ’ in Cantonese, and diminutives, like ‘poveretto ’ in
Italian. Of his wife’s ‘ecstasy’ over their newborn daughter, Englishman Tim
Parks writes satirically, if fondly: ‘It must be one of the areas where Italian
most excels: the cooing excited caress over the tiny creature, uccellina ,
tartarughina . . . Little birdie, little turtle’ (1996: 68). Another significant area is
the representation of the immigrant’s attempt to translate between emotion
concepts, such as the Polish szcze˛śliwy (happy) and American English ‘happy’
(Baran̄czak, 1990); and, as Ye (2003) discusses in relation to her experiences as
a Chinese immigrant to Australia, the extent to which nonverbal means of
expressing one’s feelings translate, or fail to.
Bilingual lifewriting offers a rare insight into the relationship between
languages and emotions. Cognitive psychologist Merlin Donald’s comments
in the context of fiction are no less apposite where autobiographical literature
is concerned:
The best writers have pushed the subjective exploration of the mind
much further than would be permissible in clinical . . . psychology.
[Their] portrayals of it . . . are possibly the most authoritative descrip-
tions we have. . . . [S]uch testimony constitutes our primary ethological
database. (2001: 78
/85)
While cross-cultural authors may not all be equally gifted as writers, education
researcher Jane Miller’s point holds true for many. As Miller puts it, bilinguals
who write ‘have needed to develop knowledge about language and, as a rule,
an ear for its meanings that is more acute and subtler than that possessed by
the rest of us’ (cited in Pavlenko, 2001: 318). The authors included here all
demonstrate a subtle attunement, in particular, to the language of emotions,
whether in their native, or adopted, tongues.
As I have suggested, the emotional vocabulary that I explore in these texts
ranges over several distinct categories of discourse. The categories do not
necessarily presuppose the same interrelationship between speaker, emotion,
and language. Some kinds of emotion words are used to describe what the
speaker is feeling, for example, words like ‘anxious’ or ‘happy’; I refer to these
as emotion concepts. Other kinds of words, such as diminutives and
interjections, appear to express the speaker’s feeling more immediately.
Haiman (1989: 156) usefully distinguishes between the meaning of utterances
such as ‘Yuk!’ and ‘I feel disgust’, linking the first type with Bühler’s
‘Ausdrucksfunktion’ or expressive function of language, and the second
with Bühler’s ‘Darstellungsfunktion’ or representational function of language.
Yet the autobiographical works considered here suggest that directly expres-
sive forms and more representational emotion concepts alike affect how the
person perceives and experiences what he or she feels. Idioms such as the
Italian ‘fare festa a qualcuno ’ (discussed by Parks, 1996) convey a certain attitude
towards a display of feeling, an attitude for which there may be no ready
142 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

counterpart in another language like English. Bilingual writers’ reflections on

these diverse kinds of emotional vocabulary can shed light moreover on
cultural evaluations of emotional expression, and the related issue of the
relative importance of verbal and nonverbal communication of feeling within
different cultures.

The Translatability of Emotion Concepts

‘Happy’ versus ‘Szcze˛śliwy’
Are specific ways of speaking, in the experience of these bilinguals,
conducive to particular ways of feeling? Does living ‘in’ a language, in Eva
Hoffman’s phrase, help to engender certain emotions? In a discussion of
cultural misunderstandings that occur because of the ‘built-in incompatibility’
of two languages, the Polish émigré writer Stanislaw Baran̄czak offers a
resounding ‘yes’ to this question when he contrasts the meanings of the Polish
and English words for ‘happy’:
Take the word ‘happy,’ perhaps one of the most frequently used words
in Basic American. . . . The Polish word for ‘happy’ (and I believe this
also holds for other Slavic languages) has a much more restricted
meaning; it is generally reserved for rare states of profound bliss, or total
satisfaction with serious things such as love, family, the meaning of
life. . . Accordingly, it is not used as often as ‘happy’ is in American
common parlance. The question one hears at . . . parties
/ ‘Is everybody
happy?’
/ if translated literally into Polish, would seem to come from a
metaphysical treatise or a political utopia rather than from social
chitchat. (1990: 12)
Baran̄czak comparison of ‘happy’ with the Polish szcze˛śliwy (and, by
extension, words such as the Russian schastlivyi ) is, to my Polish
/English
ear, perceptive and illuminating. Yet he offers it almost in parenthesis, as ‘just
an innocent example from the field of private emotions’, before moving on to
what he sees as the weightier case of political terms like ‘liberal’, ‘the
vocabulary of what really matters on the nation-to-nation plane’ (Baran̄czak,
1990: 13). He does not reflect here on how the quality of his own emotional
experience is affected by his reliance on the Polish word
/ his ‘life with the
concept’, in the phrase of Wittgensteinian philosopher Cora Diamond (1988).2
What he points to, though, suggests a significant difference with implications
for social interaction as much as for the inner life
/ one that he approaches
from a more subjective angle in his poem ‘Smalltalk’:
How Are You, I’m Just Fine; who says there is no chance
for any conversation between us, who says
there’s no communication between the grey stone wall,
or the trembling of a window frame, or the rainbow-hued oil
spilled on the asphalt, and myself . . .
. . . on every path, in every passing
/
always the same and invariably friendly inquiry,
Perspectives from Autobiographical Literature 143

What’s The News, Everything’s O.K.; after, I am entertained
/

among so many guests
/ by the world, the host of a party
who, asking his cordial questions, slaps my back, spares me a minute
of his precious time, while he’s completely aware
that anything I answer won’t have much weight anyway,
that it’s bad form here to open oneself too much
to the world that one hasn’t known long enough,
and that, besides all that, our conversation will be too brief
for me to manage to go beyond How Are Things, Not Bad. (Baran̄czak,
1989)
The host who briefly asks ‘how are you’ is not inquiring into how
/ or what
/
the other person really feels. In this he resembles the host referred to in
Baran̄czak’s essay, whose question ‘Is everybody happy?’ roughly equates
with, ‘Does everybody have a glass?’ This idiomatic use of ‘happy’ to mean a
temporary comfort or content3 is consistent with a cultural environment
in which people keep their feelings about what most deeply concerns them to
themselves. While the Polish ‘szcze˛śliwy ’ refers to a feeling experienced, and
hence talked about, more rarely than being ‘happy’, it is part of an emotional
economy, in the poet’s perception, in which people express their feelings more
readily, ‘open’ themselves to a greater degree in conversation. The notion of
the privacy of one’s real feelings that he reads in smalltalk at first glance seems
hard to reconcile with the confessional mode reflected in such popular
American television programmes as Donahue, where intimate personal details
are revealed to strangers.4 The kind of conversation that Baran̄czak misses,
however, involves people speaking with strong feeling about their lives or
about public issues, rather than speaking about their feelings per se .

‘Anxious’ versus ‘Boje˛ sie˛’

Baran̄czak emigrated to the USA as an adult dissident from communist
Poland.5 The frustration he voices in his poem with the convention of
smalltalk is that of someone who feels unable to get through a sort of invisible
buffer-zone that he senses between himself and the people among whom he
now lives. Eva Hoffman, who migrated to North America at 13 with her
parents and younger sister,6 and completed her education there, writes, rather,
from the perspective of a partial cultural insider, although the differences she
discerns between Polish and English are comparable with those perceived by
Baran̄czak. Interestingly, she describes her ‘internal monologue’ as proceeding
for the most part in English, but as interrupted by Polish phrases often drawn
from the emotional realm: ‘Occasionally, Polish words emerge unbidden. . .
They are usually words from the primary palette of feeling: ‘‘I’m so happy,’’ a
voice says with bell-like clarity. . .’ (1989: 272). It seems likely that Eva’s ‘so
happy’ is a rendition of ‘szcze˛śliwa ’, the English term given added emphasis
(‘so’) to render the warmth of the feeling in Polish.
Elsewhere, Hoffman portrays herself as being drawn in different directions
when she thinks about her feelings in terms of the English word ‘anxious’ or
the Polish for ‘afraid’:
144 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Between the two stories and two vocabularies, there’s a vast alteration in
the diagram of the psyche and the relationship to inner life. When I say
to myself, ‘I’m anxious,’ I draw on different faculties than when I say,
‘I’m afraid.’ ‘I’m anxious because I have problems with separation,’ I tell
myself very rationally when a boyfriend leaves for a long trip, and in
that quick movement of self-analysis and explanation the trajectory of
feeling is rerouted. I no longer follow it from impulse to expression; now
that I understand what the problem is, I won’t cry at the airport. By this
ploy, I mute the force of the original fear; I gain some control. (Hoffman,
1989: 269)
When she identifies her feeling as one of anxiety (or of being ‘anxious’),
Hoffman finds herself responding with an attempt to quell it, as something
harmful to her sense of self as an adult, someone in control of her own life. The
Polish ‘boje˛ sie˛ ’ (the verb she most likely has in mind here) has no such
negative overtones: it is simply, ineluctably, the way she feels. Interestingly,
‘boje˛ sie˛ ’ (and ‘afraid’ in English) could equally well be used by a child or an
adult, whereas ‘anxious’ could not. Hoffman writes that her mother, who
emigrated to Canada from Poland in early middle-age, finds the notion of
‘controlling’ her feelings altogether alien, ‘suffer[ing] her emotions as if they
were forces of nature, winds and storms and volcanic eruptions’ (1989: 269).
Hoffman’s account of thinking about her own feelings in terms of the words
‘anxious’ and ‘afraid’ suggests at once the advantage of the American
vocabulary
/ a greater freedom from pain, a sense of empowerment
/ and
the cost
/ a certain loss of spontaneity and expressiveness, in the interests of
‘appearing strong’.
Shortly before she left Poland, Eva (or Ewa as she was then) passed around
a notebook in class in which her schoolmates wrote ‘appropriate words of
good-bye’. Writing in a retrospective present tense, the author recalls:
Most of them choose melancholy verses in which life is figured as a vale
of tears or a river of suffering, or a journey of pain on which we are
embarking. This tone of sadness is something we all enjoy. It makes us
feel the gravity of life, and it is gratifying to have a truly tragic event
/ a
parting forever
/ to give vent to such romantic feelings.
It’s only two years later that I go on a month-long bus trip across
Canada and the United States with a group of teenagers, who at parting
inscribe sentences in each other’s notebooks to be remembered by. ‘It
was great fun knowing you!’ they exclaim in the pages of my little
notebook. ‘Don’t ever lose your friendly personality!’ ‘Keep cheerful,
and nothing can harm you!’ they enjoin, and as I compare my two sets of
mementos, I know that, even though they’re so close to each other in
time, I’ve indeed come to another country. (Hoffman, 1989: 78)
The contrast between her Canadian travelling companions’ inscriptions,
invoking fun, cheerfulness and friendliness, and the plangent farewell poems
of her Polish classmates, speaks volumes about the cultural distance she had
traversed. The girlish injunction to ‘keep cheerful’, in particular, with its
confidence in an ability to keep ‘harm’ at bay, connects clearly with the
Perspectives from Autobiographical Literature 145

touchstone of ‘control’ so important to Eva’s adult peers in New York, who tell
each other frequently, ‘I’ve got to get some control’ (Hoffman, 1989: 270). As
Hoffman brings out, the ‘insistence on cheerfulness’ is itself an approach to
painful feelings and experiences, an attempt to overcome them by denying
their force. At the same time, she pokes gentle fun at the element of romantic
exaggeration in her own and her schoolmates’ luxuriating in the sorrow of
lifelong parting, a trope that exalts the sadness people are fully permitted to
feel. Zhengdao Ye (2003) sees a similar divergence between attitudes to ‘worry’
reflected in Chinese and Australian English. She writes that for all the
accommodations she has made since her migration, she has been unable to
bring herself to use the Australian expression ‘no worries’ since, ‘for a Chinese
soul, life is heavy, filled with hardship and worries’.7
Baran̄czak and Hoffman each describe experiences of incommensurability
between emotion concepts in their two languages. Hoffman further suggests
that individual emotion concepts are embedded in a particular cultural ‘story’:
‘anxious’ in modern English is part of a story influenced by popular
psychology, according to which it is good to be in charge of one’s own life,
and consequently of feelings that could threaten such ‘control’; ‘boje˛ sie˛ ’ has no
such story attached, but rather, as Hoffman writes about her mother, is part of
a cultural outlook in which feelings are perceived as natural and the ‘most
authentic’ part of a person. In addition, and perhaps most importantly from
the point of view of the relationship between language and emotion, the
passages from Lost in Translation affirm the impact of specific emotion
concepts on emotional experience. On Hoffman’s account, when someone
uses a particular emotion word to describe a feeling, the word chosen helps to
shape that feeling, affecting how the person perceives and interprets it, and
hence how he or she experiences it.

Idioms: ‘Spettacolo’/‘Fare Festa’ versus ‘Spectacle’/‘Fuss’

English translator and writer Tim Parks came to Italy in his 20s, eventually
settling in Verona with his Italian wife Rita Baldassarre. The second of his
books about Italy, An Italian Education (1996), is dedicated to his ‘foreign
children’, and it describes the life of his family from a bilingual and cross-
cultural perspective. A distinctive quality of Parks’s approach to Italian and
English emotional experience is the way in which he offers sharp insights into
cultural differences yet half-jokingly, half-seriously persists in his own cultural
bias. Early in An Italian Education he writes of the cultural salience of the
notion of ‘spettacolo ’ in Italian, a word his neighbour Marta uses to express her
admiration for his newborn daughter Stefania:
Un vero spettacolo! It’s worth noting what positive connotations that
word attracts in Italian. After all, what would Marta wish you to say of
her own carefully kept house, her cotto floor and pietra serena fireplace[,]
. . . if not that it is uno spettacolo? Whereas my mother always used to say:
‘Tim, for heaven’s sake, don’t make a spectacle of yourself!’ Meaning,
don’t draw attention to yourself. And meaning, little children should be
seen and not heard, or better still neither seen nor heard. (1996: 97)
146 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

In a similar ironic vein, Parks explains the Italian concept of ‘fare festa a
qualcuno ’ as it makes its appearance during a typical, unannounced visit from
his wife’s parents, who live many miles away:
It would truly be hard to exaggerate the cooing and crying and sighing
and kissing and nose-tweaking and exclamations and tears and tickles
and cuddles that now have to take place. The children must imagine
they are the only people in the whole universe. Nonna lifts up Michele
and dances round and round with him and ‘O che bel bambino! O che
ometto splendido! O che spettacolo! ’ . . .
It’s what the Italians enthusiastically call fare festa a qualcuno , which,
literally translated, means ‘to make a party for someone’, and combines
the ideas of welcoming them and smothering them with physical
affection. Comparison of this expression with the slightly disapproving
‘to make a fuss of’ speaks worlds about the difference between Italian
and English approaches to such occasions. (1996: 142
/143)
Parks notes the disapproving tone implicit in both of the English phrases
‘make a spectacle of’ and ‘make a fuss of’, contrasting them with the entirely
positive connotations of ‘spettacolo ’ and ‘fare festa ’. As he suggests, the
understanding underlying a phrase like ‘make a fuss of’ seems to be that
expressing one’s love for a child by exclaiming over her would encourage her
in turn to express her own feelings on impulse
/ a bad thing, from an English
point of view. Historian of emotions Peter Stearns has shown the link between
the rise of the emotion of ‘embarrassment’ and the perceived childishness, in
early 20th century British and American societies, of showing one’s emotions
openly.8 Parks does something similar in his humorous dramatisation of the
meetings between his children and their nonni .
Yet he clearly retains some of that disapproval in the face of fare festa and of
spettacolo, suspecting his in-laws (and even his wife) of insincerity in their
displays of feeling, and wondering how effectively his children are imbibing
this modus operandi from their milieu:
[M]other and father, sons and daughters, all criticize each other
endlessly . . . [Y]et when they meet, when the Baldassarres are actually
face to face, the gestures of affection, the extravagant fare festa . . . could
not be more voluble or enthusiastic.
My wife embraces her mother rapturously. And her father. Michele
watches them. Everybody does seem perfectly . . . delighted to see each
other. The nonni are here! Evviva ! Yet Michele is surely aware, even at
five, that we complain a great deal about these [visits], . . . about not
knowing how long Nonno and Nonna are going to stay. . .. [N]o doubt
the children take all this in, this wonderful spettacolo of affection, this
carefully choreographed festa . And perhaps somewhere deep down they
are learning to associate it with the fact that they must remember to say a
huge and quite extravagant thank you to Nonno when he remembers to
bring them a present . . .
I have often wondered, in this regard, whether Italians can really
appreciate a story like King Lear. Why didn’t Cordelia put on a bit more
Perspectives from Autobiographical Literature 147

of a show for her foolish old father? Surely that was wrong of her. For
there are times when a little falsehood is expected of you, and can be
engaged in quite sincerely, because appearance has a value in itself. . . .
(1996: 146
/148)
Rather than saying that he can’t help suspecting his in-laws of insincerity,
Parks confidently characterises them as insincere. His amusement at his Italian
family’s expressiveness (‘everybody will laugh themselves silly, hand-
clapping, back-clapping, hugging and kissing’ (p. 147))
/ and perhaps his
awareness that his own restraint marks him as an outsider
/ translates readily
into a cynical reading. There is a degree of ethnocentrism in this.
At the same time, his observation that a sense of ‘spettacolo ’ is important in
Italian culture, that the visual element is significant when expressing one’s
feelings
/ making the expression seem theatrical from an ‘Anglo’ point of
view
/ is a strikingly insightful one. His children Michele and Stefi are, as he
presents it, caught up in a dramatic excitement when the nonni arrive, a kind
of performance into which they are drawn. This characterisation of the
emotional tenor of Italian interaction is borne out, albeit from a different
perspective, in Nino Ricci’s (1990) novel The Book of Saints, where what might
be called ‘scenes’ in English are, in the world of the novel, the stuff of everyday
life. Characters often preface their utterances to one another with the lively,
‘Ma scusa ’ (cf. e.g. pp. 29, 178, 187), or a sarcastic and vehement ‘Sı´’. ‘Ah, bello !’
(p. 154), a father angrily tells his daughter, dismissing her plans as fantasy;
‘Ah, perfetto , here
/’ (p. 95) the same daughter derides her absent husband to
an in-law’s face. I will return to the role of exclamations in Ricci’s narrative
later on in this paper.

Feelings Embedded in Forms of Speech: Diminutives and

Interjections
Diminutives: ‘Piccina’, ‘uccellina’, ‘ptaszku’, ‘córuchny’
Parks (1996) portrays himself as changing, however reluctantly, under the
influence of the language and culture he now lives in, ‘becoming a little bit
more Italian’ as he takes over, or gives in to, certain key idioms (p. 165). When
his little daughter Stefi excitedly runs into a desk, rather than scolding her as
he might have done once, he responds with the idiomatic cry of ‘che
capitombolo ’ (‘what a tumble that was!’) before gathering her up in his arms.
However, he still finds the diminutives with which strangers accost her when
she trips on a sunshade, excessive: ‘O che capitombolo! Che povera povera piccina!
Poor little thing!’ (p. 125).9 He recalls the string of diminutives with which his
wife greeted their daughter’s birth with affectionate amusement:
Within five minutes of its birth the child has already been smothered in
diminutives, many invented: sinfolina , ciccolina , ciccina . . . It must be one
of the areas where Italian most excels: the cooing excited caress over the
tiny creature, uccellina , tartarughina . . . Little birdie, little turtle. Rita is
ecstatic. (p. 68)
148 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Like fare festa , these diminutives are eloquently revealing of a cultural gap
between English and Italian approaches to expressing feelings. To emphasise
the unsentimentality of his own approach in contrast to Rita’s, Parks teasingly
describes his newborn daughter soon after this as having ‘dark eyes and an old
man’s face’ (p. 82). Rita is ‘ecstatic’
/ she makes no attempt to control her
feeling, and this is a source of humour for her husband (and for us as readers).
To dwell for a moment on some autobiographical material of my own, when
I compare uccellina and tartarughina with the Polish diminutives that I grew up
with and now say to my own baby daughter, I am struck
/ for all the warmth
of each
/ by a certain difference in tone. Whereas uccellina, ‘ciccina ’ and the
others seem to express a delight, admiration and celebration linked with the
notion of the baby as spettacolo for all to see, the Polish ‘ptaszku ’ (little bird),
‘kotku ’ (little cat) or ‘żabko’ (little frog) stress rather the speaker’s close bond to
and tenderness for the child, its tininess and hence a hint of fear or pain in the
love one feels for it (suggested also in the almost tearful word for tenderness in
Polish, ‘czulośc̄ ’). Where the Italian diminutives express the beholder’s
response to the child
/ Stefi’s Nonna calls out ‘Oh la ciccinina! . . . Oh la
civetta , the little flirt!’ (p. 443) when Stefi promises Nonno a kiss in exchange
for some chips
/ Polish diminutives like ‘ptaszku ’ are intrinsically forms of
address, as they are always used in the vocative case.
Some of the virtually untranslatable terms of endearment used by my Polish
grandparents in their wartime letters to one another give a sense of how
deeply embedded feelings may be in the forms of speech of a particular
language. Writing to my grandmother, who had been deported to a German
labour camp with their two young daughters (my aunt and my mother) during
the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, my grandfather would begin his despairing
letters full of longing with, ‘Marysieñko przenajumilowañsza i córuchny! ’ (so-
most-dearly-loved little Mary and sweet-daughters-of-mine!).10 The coined
adjective ‘przenajumilowañsza ’ adds the emphatic prefix ‘prze ’ to the super-
lative prefix ‘naj ’; ‘Marysieñko ’ is a diminutive from ‘Marysia ’, the informal
version of ‘Maria ’; the form ‘córuchny ’, from ‘córki ’ (daughters) is far more
tender than the standard diminutive ‘córeczki ’.11 My grandmother would write
back, ‘Tadziuleczku kochany! ’ (beloved little Tadzio). ‘Tadziuleczku ’, a form
possible only in the vocative case, is a diminutive of a diminutive
/ ‘Tadziulku’

/ based in turn on another diminutive, ‘Tadzio ’, from the adult name ‘Tadeusz ’.
From an ‘Anglo’ perspective, these variants seem almost baroque, yet in Polish
they are rich with feeling, more of it packed in with each additional syllable.
The difficulty of translating such words reveals the extent to which they shape
individual speakers’ feelings: since the meaning encoded in a word like
‘uccellina ’ cannot be directly translated into English; the feeling it expresses is
peculiarly dependent on, or bound up with, the word itself. Hence Parks’s
(1996) use of it in his account in English of his wife’s response to their
daughter’s birth. This is the sense in which feelings can be said to be
embedded in forms like diminutives. As the example of Lilian Ng’s (1994)
writing shows, the same can be said for interjections.
Perspectives from Autobiographical Literature 149

Interjections: ‘Aiyah!’
Like An Italian Education , Lilian Ng’s (1994) novel Silver Sister conveys a
different emotional world through the use of expressive forms of speech,
particularly the interjection ‘Aiyah ’. The protagonist differs from the narrators
of the other texts considered here in an important respect. Whereas they are all
bilingual in English and another language, the narrator of Silver Sister speaks
only her native Cantonese (and a smattering of Malay, acquired in Singapore).
However, her perspective is expressed through the bilingual author’s English,
and her immigrant experience generates some keen cross-cultural observa-
tions, as well as unwitting ironies. Lilian Ng, born to Chinese parents in
Singapore, was educated in both Chinese and English. Ah Pah is born into a
peasant family in the province of Canton (Guandong) early in the century, and
the novel follows her fortunes as a domestic servant from the city of Canton
(Guanzhou) to Hong Kong, Singapore and finally Australia, where she settles
in her old age as baby amah, or children’s nurse, to the daughter of her
Singaporean employer. There is a suggestion of an (auto)biographical
dimension to the novel in its dedication to Wong Ah Ngan, who appears to
be the baby amah that accompanied the author and her daughter to Australia
in 1972; Ah Pah comes to live with Kim to look after her baby daughter Suchin
in 1971.
With subtlety, Ng portrays Ah Pah as experiencing much that she would
never express or talk about to others (although she reveals it to the reader in
the course of the narrative). When her Australian visa is about to expire, she
does not voice her sadness at the prospect of leaving Kim, whom she nursed as
a baby, and Suchin:
And in my heart I wanted to say to Kim: ‘You are closest to me; I’ve
known you since the day you were born . . . I’ve cared for you like I
moulded clay with my hands and fingers, and now the same tie is
extended to Suchin. How can I ever bear to part from the pair of you?’
(Ng, 1994: 274)
Sexual longings are doubly taboo, being immodest for a woman and forbidden
to a ‘sor-hei ’ (‘comb-up’, i.e. one who wears her hair tied back), a sworn
member of a celibate Chinese Buddhist sisterhood. Gossip in the wealthy Tang
household in Canton which employs ‘Silver’, as Ah Pah is renamed there,
touches on such matters as the Master’s sexual exploitation of other servants.
In her own peasant family the only sexual references were her mother’s cryptic
warnings that now that she bled each month she must beware of drunken
men: ‘Mother never discussed such intimate topics, which were . . . frowned
upon, unmentionable especially in the presence of father and brother’ (p. 6).
Ng uses a Western psychological vocabulary to convey the ‘unmentionable’
experiences from the inside. Having witnessed the lovemaking of her mistress
Tai Tai and the Master, Silver later feels uneasy and ‘frustrated’ when she hears
the ‘muffled protests’ of the slave girls with the Master. She resorts to clasping
her bolster between her legs ‘until I attained that release which washed away
my tension and the anxieties of the day’ (p. 106). Instinctively, she keeps ‘this
secret act’ to herself, knowing that it is ‘improper, not ‘‘chaste or virtuous’’’.
150 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Despite the manifold prohibitions against women expressing their feelings

and wishes, an abiding feature of social interaction among both rural and
urban Chinese communities in the novel
/ true no less for women than for
men
/ is people’s readiness to voice certain feelings through shouting. During
a flood, Ah Pah tells us, ‘Mother bawled: ‘What have we done wrong to
deserve such calamity? Oh Kitchen God, didn’t you put in a good word to the
Gods of Heavens for us, after all I’ve smeared your lips thick with honey?’’
(p. 13). When Ah Pah wakes to find blood on her quilt one New Year’s
morning, she sits up and ‘howl[s], terrified’ (p. 6). Her mother chides her:
‘Aiyah! What bad luck you bring! . . . The curse on New Year
/ don’t you dare
shed tears on such a festive day’ (p. 6). Learning that her younger brother
belongs to a Triad, ‘with a shudder’ Ah Pah ‘shouts’ that she does not want his
‘dirty money’ (p. 163). As an elderly immigrant in Sydney, she is impressed
and bemused by the discipline of the audience at the opera to which Kim takes
her. They seem strangely quiet, compared with the listeners at the Cantonese
opera in Hong Kong, who would talk right through the performance unless
particularly impressed by the performer. Vendors called their wares during
performances. Ah Pah notes that Australians give themselves over to talk and
laughter only at the interval, outside the theatre. In the village of her childhood
the daily ‘shows’
/ dentists, charlatans and others displaying their goods
/
‘were interspersed with loud shouting and banging of gongs and cymbals’ (p.
10). The Chinese
/American writer Maxine Hong Kingston, whose parents,
immigrants to California, also came from a village in Canton, similarly
recounts in her memoir The Woman Warrior that she has ‘watched a Chinese
audience laugh, visit, talk-story and holler during a piano recital, as if the
musician could not hear them’ (Kingston, 1976: 172).
The most expressive cry, appearing on almost every page of dialogue in
Silver Sister, is ‘Aiyah’ . Generally characters exclaim ‘Aiyah ’ in the face of a
misfortune, or at least, in response to something seen as undesirable. Ah Pah’s
father, after counting 13 children in his household (‘the number of mouths he
had to feed at the New Year festival dinner’), complains: ‘Aiyah! Times are
bad, with the flooding and the poor harvest
/ and yet so many mouths to
feed. . .’ (p. 5). When the village is in danger of being attacked by Japanese
soldiers, he exclaims: ‘Aiyah , nowadays they fight with guns which trigger off
bullets which could pierce through the skull . . . from a great distance. . . .
Aiyah , the foreign devils invent such deadly weapons to invade and defeat us
Chinese’ (p. 17). ‘Aiyah ’ seems to be used in everyday interaction to express
surprise at the bad turn of events, or else to rebuke one’s interlocutor for
attracting bad luck (as Ah Pah did by menstruating and crying at the New
Year), or for ignorance: ‘Aiyah , you peasant’ (p. 130), ‘Aiyah , haven’t you
heard?’ (p. 120), ‘Aiyah , don’t you know?’ (p. 82). When Ah Pah learns that she
will be free to move around despite becoming a celibate ‘sor-hei ’, she asks her
mother’s friend Lee Sao, incredulously: ‘To take a vow and not be confined to
seclusion?’ and is told, ‘Aiyah , you listen to too many stories!’ (p. 34).
Ah Pah goes on speaking Cantonese with Kim in Australia, and each
expresses her surprise or dismay to the other through this same interjection,
with Kim (like Lilian Ng, a doctor) crying out ‘Aiyah , how unhygienic’ when
she hears of the practice of feeding babies food first softened in their amah’s
Perspectives from Autobiographical Literature 151

mouth (p. 108). Rather than being merely a way of lending a sense of local
colour to the story, the ubiquitousness of ‘Aiyah ’ reveals the importance of this
particular form of emotional expression in the life of the protagonist and of the
Cantonese-speaking communities, both mainland and diasporic, in which she
lives.

Nonverbal Expression of Feeling and Cultural Attitudes to

Emotion
Arguably, culture impinges on language in more ways than those captured
by the verbal. Nonverbal means of expression are part of a language as surely
as lexicon or syntax, and insofar as someone’s culture prompts them not to
speak about something, the silence on that topic can itself be seen as part of the
language. Zhengdao Ye’s (2003) essay ‘La Double Vie de Veronica: Reflections
on my life as a Chinese migrant in Australia’ shows how important certain
silences remain for her, in her life between Chinese (Mandarin as well as
Shanghainese) and English. Ye writes that the use of endearments and
affectionate gestures in public would make her ‘extremely uncomfortable’.
Whereas some of her attitudes towards aspects of public interaction, like
politeness, have gradually changed under pressure of Australian practice, she
continues to avoid overt expression of her feelings:
I remain fundamentally Chinese deep inside. My sense of self is Chinese.
And I feel most at home when I can express myself, especially my
feelings and emotions, in the Chinese way
/ subtle, implicit and without
words.
I smile to smooth over embarrassing situations. I wear big smiles even
when my heart is crying and bleeding. Feelings are my self, and should
only be known to me. I do not feel comfortable talking about my
feelings, as doing so, my inner self feels stripped and vulnerable.
(Ye, 2003)
Ye does not suggest, however, that the feelings which she equates with her
‘inner self’ are to be kept hidden from all other people. She portrays them not
as private, but as vulnerable, to be shared without words, and only with
‘zijiren’: a term she translates, tellingly, as ‘oneself person; insiders’. If zijiren
are ‘oneself’ people, not sharply distinguished from oneself, then one’s
feelings will not be so hard for them to read.
Ye (2003) clearly counts her parents and her husband among her zijiren.
Whereas she regularly hears Australians saying ‘I love you’ on the phone or
when parting, she and her parents have never said this to one another. She
recalls leaving them for the first time to go to Australia
/ 10,000 miles away
/
to live with her Australian husband12:
[A]t the airport, we fought back our tears and urged each other
repeatedly to take care; we wore the biggest smiles to wave good-bye
to each other, to soothe each others’ worries. Just like any other Chinese
parting between those who love each other
/ there were no hugs and no
152 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

‘I love you’. Yet I have never doubted my parents’ profound love for me.
(Ye, 2003)
The cultural meaning of smiling instead of letting oneself cry is clearly not
only to shield one’s own feelings from scrutiny but, and perhaps more so, to
protect the feelings of others. In his memoir of two years spent in the Chinese
province of Sichuan, River Town , American author Peter Hessler (2001) recalls
the smile of one of his students, whose father had died not long before, in
terms very close to Ye’s:
[S]he tried to smile, one of those brave Chinese smiles that held the
emotion at bay, compressed and controlled and pushed to the periph-
eries
/ a corner of the mouth, a line across the forehead. But today the
sadness was too much; her mouth trembled, and she looked away.
(Hessler, 2001: 394)
Describing the moment of his own departure from China, he comments,
likewise: ‘Chinese partings were never comfortable
/ no hugs, few words,
tears held back as long as possible’ (Hessler, 2001: 398).
Ye (2003) remarks that it has taken some years for her to learn to be ‘more
communicative’ in expressing her love and affection for her husband. She
continues to believe that, fundamentally, love is expressed through acts of
concern, such as ‘forcing’ her husband to eat (although she is aware that this
would seem funny to many Australians, and restrains herself in public). With
her mother, visiting her in Australia, she feels a ‘bond that is beyond words’.
She writes movingly of their walks together from the bus stop each day:
I see her emerging from behind a bush, walking towards me across the
street, and trying to take my bag, which is often heavily loaded with
books. We walk side by side in silence toward the house. . . . I always
wish that the road leading to the house would be longer so that I could
prolong the moment, and the eternity contained therein. The picture of
her face emerging from the hill is deeply etched in my memory. I know,
emotionally, that I will remain Chinese in Australia. (Ye, 2003)
It is important to acknowledge that Ye’s is one voice, among the voices of other
Chinese women, like those who speak on the pages of Xinran’s (2002) book The
Good Women of China
/ many of whom express unhappiness with the
Confucian and Mencian-inspired injunctions against physical and verbal
expressions of feeling. For Ye, ‘honeyed words’ such as ‘I love you’ still seem
to be mere ‘lubricants’ in a relationship. This is her experience of what she
finds in the new culture, an aspect of it that she baulks at making her own.
Another immigrant might remain less faithful to the ‘social reality’ shaped by
their upbringing. Ye (2003) writes that she has taken deeply to heart the
traditional value of jin xiaoxin (‘fulfil[ling] my filial duties and obligations’),
and continues to feel guilt for having ‘deprived’ her parents of ‘the tianlunzhile
(‘‘the happiness derived from natural bonds’’, ‘‘family happiness’’) of being
with their only child’. Yet she also writes, poignantly, of the decision she took,
during the flight to China on her way to her father’s funeral, to hug her mother
when she arrived:
Perspectives from Autobiographical Literature 153

All I could see in front of me was my father’s silhouette enveloped in the

mist of an early winter morning when the taxi taking me to the airport
backed out of the driveway nearly two years before. I regretted deeply
that I never hugged him. I decided that I would give my mother a big,
long hug when I saw her, to abridge the physical separation. So I did
when I saw her, a long and tight embrace; the first hug I have given to
either of my parents. (Ye, 2003)
Her words partly echo, after all, the very different experience of author Xinran
(2002), who writes that all her life she has ‘longed to be held’ by her mother:
‘My mother . . . never once hugged or kissed me when I was a child; when I
became an adult, any such display of affection between us was prevented by
traditional Chinese reserve’ (p. 119).
Ye’s comment that ‘the Chinese way’ to convey feelings is ‘subtle, implicit
and without words’ highlights the issue of how the expression of feelings is
viewed in different cultures: whether expressing one’s feelings at all is
considered a good thing, or not. The translingual novels and memoirs
discussed here suggest that cultures can vary not only in the specific emotions
they encourage, but also, and widely, in their attempts to regulate emotional
behaviour. As we have seen, in An Italian Education , British cultural norms
emerge as cultivating a suspicion of open expression of feeling, judging it self-
indulgent and intrusive. It sometimes appears as though emotions, in all their
chaotic range, were a more accepted part of the fabric of Italian society, with
Parks’s (1996) own English-speaking culture broadly discouraging their
expression. To conclude this so baldly, though, would be to ignore the
distinctive ‘emotional style’ of the book bound up with the concept of
‘affection’, perhaps particularly salient in British English. Parks’s in-laws
sometimes accuse him of ‘la tipica freddezza anglo-sassone ’ (1996: 444) (‘typical
Anglo-Saxon coldness’), but the tone that prevails in his book is one of
affection, in which there is always a strong note of humour. Warm feelings are
entirely acceptable
/ provided they are voiced tongue-in-cheek.
What is permitted in terms of emotional expression has a strong gender
inflection in the Apennine village culture of Nino Ricci’s (1990) novel, The Book
of Saints .13 The narrator’s grandfather, the mayor of the village (‘lu podestà ’), a
man respected for his courage, intelligence and integrity, freely expresses
contempt, for example for his bumptious and superstitious friend the barman
Di Lucci. But he never complains of the chronic physical pain caused by his
war injuries, and is capable of maintaining a bitter silence with his daughter
for two months at a time rather than vent openly his anger, shame and
disappointment over her conduct. This is clearly a point of honour with him.
There is no expectation of women that they conceal their pain
/ either
physical or psychological
/ with the narrator’s mother Cristina being
legendary for having given birth to him without making a sound. Vittorio’s
father is somewhat countercultural in crying openly, ‘without shame’ as
Vittorio says, when visiting his son in hospital after Cristina’s death, or on
being fired from a job a second time.14 Yet his recourse to violence, in brawls
with fellow workers, or, in Vittorio’s dim recollection, against his wife
(throwing a piece of crockery at her), is connected with the unseemliness of
154 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

expressing his painful feelings in words. What he feels about the presence of
his wife’s orphaned daughter in his house
/ not his own child
/ is conveyed
by his violently charged taciturnity and remoteness, his niece Gelsomina’s
urgent sense that she must keep the baby quiet while her uncle is about.15

The Emotional Resonance of One’s Mother Tongue:

Untranslatable Exclamations and Forms of Address
One motif that comes to the fore particularly in Lost in Translation
(cf. Besemeres, 2002) and ‘La Double Vie de Veronica’, but also, more
indirectly, in The Book of Saints, concerns the emotional possibilities that a
given language has for a bilingual, the sense of self that language makes
possible. Although more than one ‘translingual’ (Kellman, 2000) has written of
the freedom and pleasure that has come with writing in their second language,
the contrast between a ‘mother tongue’ and a ‘stepmother tongue’ (Novako-
vich & Shaphard, 2000) is pertinent to many bilingual memoirs and novels. Ye
(2003) calls her native Shanghainese her ‘heart language’; in the midst of the
English she reads and speaks each day, her ‘heart aches constantly for
Shanghainese’. The dialect is uniquely redolent of her Chinese life, and seems
to underlie all her conscious speech:
I miss the images and smells that it evokes of my hometown, and all the
memories of my past that it brings up. It surprises me constantly how all
my interjections are exclusively in Shanghainese, how I remember
numbers only in Shanghainese, and how I often unconsciously add a
particle of my own dialect to an English sentence. (Ye, 2003)
Ye (2003) affirms that her most spontaneous expression of feelings, through
‘interjections’, is in her first language. Her tendency to add a Shanghainese
particle ‘unconsciously’ to a sentence in English recalls Eva Hoffman’s
discussion of how phrases in Polish intermittently surface and subvert her
train of thought in English, like an ‘imp of the perverse’ (1989: 273).
In Ricci’s trilogy that begins with The Book of Saints , Italian, and specifically
the Abruzzese dialect, have a similar resonance for the young protagonist and
narrator, who emigrates as a child from Italy to Canada. The emotional
universe of his childhood is evoked through skilfully chosen snatches of
Italian speech, as well as through haunting descriptions of the landscape, like
the high, lonely slopes of Colle di Papa, where the seven-year-old Vittorio
Innocente herds the family sheep. Language and sense of place are thus closely
interwoven. Vittorio’s village, Valle del Sole, only begins to be displaced from
its centrality in his perception when he sees Naples for the first time, with its
great immigrant ships bound for foreign parts. From Canada he remembers
Valle del Sole hazily and painfully; his father renders the Italian past taboo by
refusing to acknowledge the baby daughter his wife died giving birth to on the
ship from Europe. Throughout The Book of Saints , it is the perspective of the
child that governs the narrative. Vittorio does not understand how his mother
has become pregnant, nor, very clearly, what it portends: gradual ostracism
from the village community; the break-up of his parents’ marriage; a journey
away from his known world; a baby sister. Events have a stark, symbolic
Perspectives from Autobiographical Literature 155

quality for him, with his mother’s snakebite (the incident with which the novel
begins), intuitively, a kind of metaphor for her adultery.
From a cross-cultural point of view, Ricci’s particular genius is for
portraying Italian dialogue via English, through the use of exclamatory
expressions like ‘Per l’amore di Cristo ’ and the characteristic shortened versions
of people’s names: ‘Ho, Vittò!’ (for Vittorio), ‘Basta , Luı́!’(p. 76) (for Luigi), ‘Sei
scimunita , Cristı́!’ (p. 154) (for Cristina), ‘Dai , Andò’ (for Andrea), ‘What’s the
big secret, Giuseppı́?’ (p. 55) (for Giuseppina). These abridged names, ending
abruptly and forcefully with a stressed vowel, for the most part the second-last
syllable, and identical in form for men and women (‘Luı́’ can also refer to
Luisa16), convey a singular impression of an atmosphere in which everyone
knows everyone else. They endow speakers’ interaction with a familial quality.
The driver of the battered truck that passes for a bus in the district, a man
picturesquely named ‘Cazzingulo’ (‘a nickname meaning ‘‘balls in your ass’’
/
what usually happened when you rode in his truck’ (p. 58)), calls out to
Vittorio’s mother: ‘‘‘Oh, Cristı́!’’ Cazzingulo knew everyone in the region by
name’ (p. 59). Even where the paesani are addressing someone from another
village, they still use an abbreviated version of the polite form, ‘O signò ’, for
both masculine ‘signore’ and feminine ‘signora ’ (e.g. p. 62), which implies a
similar familiarity.
When viewed with the whole trilogy in mind (including the sequels
In a Glass House (1993) and Where She Has Gone (1997)), these forms of address
mark a way of relating to others, and of being known by them
/ ‘Oh, Vittò!’
/
which Vittorio never experiences in his English-speaking Canadian
existence. They are part of an identity whose naturalness and stability he
yearns for, growing up in Ontario, where he feels a part neither of the
immigrant community nor, fully, of the loose-knit society that he enters
through school and university. Yet they are not incompatible with impatience,
mockery or resentment, expressing a kind of intimacy against which there is
no appeal.
The villagers express their feelings vigorously through exclamations, such
as those beginning with ‘che ’ or ‘quel ’, meaning roughly ‘what a. . .!’ or
‘that. . .!’. There is no holding back of negative opinions of others. These may
be conveyed to somebody’s face by means of ‘che ’, e.g. ‘che stronzo’ (what an
idiot); ‘quel’ or ‘quella ’ are reserved for the stupidity or malevolence of the
absent. ‘Che cretino!’ is Cristina’s angry response to her husband’s cousin, who
warns her Mario will learn of her adultery. ‘Quella cagna! Quella strega! ’ (that
bitch! that witch!) she says of a woman whose boy has struck Vittorio.
Vittorio’s grandfather is, again, more controlled in his expression than most: ‘
‘‘Brava ,’’ he muttered, spitting the word out with such restrained force and
contempt it seemed to hang in the air like ice. ‘‘God forgive me for raising you
to talk like an idiot’’’ (p. 95). Vittorio’s friend Fabrizio dismisses their
schoolteacher with the scornful: ‘Addio, quella porca!’ (p. 167).
The recurrent invocations of Jesus and Mary, ‘per l’amore di Cristo ’, ‘Crist’ e
Maria ’, ‘Gesù bambino ’ or ‘Madonna’, are uttered in response to a threatening or
unusual situation: an accident like Cristina’s snakebite (the work of ‘lu
malocchiu ’, the evil eye), the fall of ‘lu podestà ’ (the mayor), or a fight, as
when Cristina attacks Maria Maiale, whose son has taunted Vittorio. The
156 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

emotion these exclamations give voice to is a strong surprise, often coupled

with an urgent appeal for help: ‘Per l’amore di Cristo , what happened?’ (p. 106);
‘Hurry, per l’amore di Cristo ’ (p. 146). They can also be elicited by a fact that
strains belief, such as that, in America, there are ‘telephones in every room, per
l’amore di Cristo ’ (p. 163). As Ricci portrays it, they are called for when, in the
classical sense analysed by Jerome Bruner (1990), a ‘cultural narrative’
/ the
normal, expected flow of things
/ is disrupted.17 Stability is clearly important
in a community so reliant on tradition and communal practises in work and
family life. It is when it is threatened that the villagers appeal to God, or the
saints
/ whether or not they believe in them; Cristina herself appears to be
agnostic.
One of the most resonant phrases in Italian in the novel is ‘Figlio mio ’, which
registers a relationship, and a feeling, that are not captured by the English
words ‘my son’. It is significant that not only are these Cristina’s last words to
Vittorio, holding him close after the birth of his sister, but they are also what
his grandfather says to him in farewell on the eve of the boy’s departure
/ the
words of a man who has had no sons and has become estranged from his
surviving daughter. It is the Italian expressions most bound up with particular
emotions
/ exclamations and forms of address
/ which Ricci leaves in
the original, as if to make the point that they are the least translatable, and also
the most potent markers of the cultural world from which his narrator
emigrates.

Conclusion
In analysing the relationship between language and emotion in these
translingual texts I have assumed throughout the equal relevance of culture.
Just as the study of bilingualism cannot profitably ignore the perspective of
bilinguals who write about their lives between languages, neither, I would
argue, can it omit the whole issue of culture as linked with language,
particularly when the inquiry is into emotions. Anthropologists John Attinasi
and Paul Friedrich (1995) speak of ‘lingua-culture’ polemically to underscore
the interconnectedness, indeed inseparability, of the two. If Polish has words
like ptaszku and córuchna whereas English does not, this is not an arbitrary
idiosyncratic fact about the language, unrelated to other aspects of Polish
culture. For a Polish
/English bilingual, the emotional style made possible by
such words is part of the two emotional worlds that she lives in, which engage
different parts of her self.
Hoffman, Baran̄czak, Parks, Ng, Ye and Ricci offer insights not only into the
experience of bilingual immigrants but also more broadly into the relationship
between language and emotions. Their narratives suggest that emotional
vocabulary
/ expressive forms and emotion concepts alike
/ give a certain
distinctive shape to a speaker’s feeling. In particular, the emotion concepts that
are available to us contribute to how we interpret what we feel, how we
experience it, even how we act on it. The perspective of bilinguals like these
suggests that the problem of which comes first, the person’s feeling or the
emotional freight of the word, might be, if not a chicken and egg proposition,
practically irresolvable.
Perspectives from Autobiographical Literature 157

Finally, these authors’ writing highlights the diversity of cultural

approaches to emotional behaviour, an area in which, as Ye’s (2003)
essay demonstrates, the nonverbal communication of feeling is as salient
as emotion concepts, idioms or expressive forms. The experience of
migrating into a new language often prompts the recognition that
feelings that were previously felt to be purely personal are at least
partly dependent on cultural forms. At the same time it may confront the
bilingual with a struggle to choose between different ways of feeling
and differing cultural norms of expression, and hence with the possibility
of going beyond a particular emotional world. It is the linguacultural elements
in the autobiographical texts considered here
/ specific words for feelings,
forms of address, interjections, gestures, deliberate silences in a dialogue
/
that convey most powerfully a sense that different languages may indeed
mean different emotions.
Correspondence

Any correspondence should be directed to Dr Mary Besemeres, Division of

Humanities, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U1987, Curtin, WA
6845, Australia (M.Besemeres@curtin.edu.au).

Notes
1. ‘E.E.’ in the title refers to ‘the East European’.
2. See Diamond (1988: 268).
3. Cf. Anna Wierzbicka (1999: 248) on the historical evolution of ‘happy’ in English
from an emotion closer to the French ‘heureux ’ (and the Polish ‘szcze˛śliwy ’) to its
contemporary meaning.
4. This cultural mode is experienced as intrusive by immigrants like Japanese-born
author Kyoko Mori (cf. Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures
(1997)).
5. He arrived in the USA in 1981. Cf. the title essay of Breathing Under Water (1990).
6. Hoffman’s family emigrated from Poland to Canada in 1959.
7. Ye’s essay appeared in Mots Pluriels No. 23 (http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/
motspluriels/MP2303vzy.html). All references are to this webpage.
8. See Stearns (1994: 147).
9. More literally, ‘what a poor, poor tiny one!’.
10. Listy rodzinne Marii i Tadeusza Smolen̄skich z lat 1944
/46 (po powstaniu warszawskim) .
Unpublished collection of letters, transcribed by Marta Bichniewicz.
11. The suffix ‘uchna ’ occurs with only four nouns (other than proper names):
córuchna , matuchna (from matka , mother), babuchna (from babcia , grandmother),
ciotuchna (from ciocia , aunt). Presumably they are based on the model of adjectives
like mie˛ciuchny (soft little), miluchny (dear little), maluchny (small little), bieluchny
(white little), which all suggest something delicate and lovable. These are the only
adjectives with this suffix (Doroszewski (1959
/1968) Slownik Je˛zyka Polskiego ).
12. Ye migrated to Australia to join her Australian husband Tim in 1997, at the age of
23.
13. It is perhaps not incidental to the novel that Ricci’s own parents, like those of his
narrator, were immigrants to Canada from the Molisano region of the Apennines
(cf. Kirman, 2000). Unlike his narrator Vittorio, Ricci himself was born in Ontario.
14. The latter episode occurs in the sequel to The Book of Saints , In A Glass House (1993).
15. This, again, refers to a scene in In A Glass House .
16. As in Dr Cosabene’s order to his nurse, ‘Bring some ether, Luı́, sbrigati ’ (p. 223).
17. See Bruner (1990: 51).
158 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

References
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life-changing dialogue. In B. Mannheim and D. Tedlock (eds) The Dialogic Emergence
of Culture (pp. 33
/53). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Baran̄czak, S. (1989) The Weight of the Body: Selected Poems . (M.J. Krynski, R. Lourie, R.A.
Maguire and the author, trans.) Evanston, IL: TriQuarterly Books.
Baran̄czak, S. (1990) E.E.: The Extraterritorial. In Breathing Under Water and Other East
European Essays (pp. 9
/15). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Besemeres, M. (2002) Translating One’s Self: Language and Selfhood in Cross-Cultural
Autobiography. Oxford: Peter Lang.
Bichniewicz, M. (transcribed). (n.d.) Listy rodzinne Marii i Tadeusza Smolenskich z lat
1944
/46 (po powstaniu warszawskim) (Family letters of Maria and Tadeusz Smolenscy
from 1944
/1946, after the Warsaw Uprising). Unpublished correspondence.
Bruner, J. (1990) Acts of Meaning . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Diamond, C. (1988) Losing Your Concepts. Ethics (January), 255
/277.
Donald, M. (2001) A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness . New York:
W.W. Norton & Co.
Doroszewski, W. (ed.) (1958
/69) Slownik Je˛zyka Polskiego. 11 vols. Warsaw: PWN.
Haiman, J. (1989) Alienation in Grammar. Studies in Language 13, 129
/170.
Hessler, P. (2001) River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze . London: John Murray.
Hoffman, E. (1989) Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language . London: Vintage.
Kellman, S. (2000) The Translingual Imagination . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Kingston, M. (1976) The Woman Warrior: Memoir of a Girlhood Among Ghosts . New York:
Vintage Books.
Kirman, P. (2000) Interview with Nino Ricci. Suite101.com. At http://www.suite101.
com/article.cfm/canadian_literature/31651.
Mori, K. (1997) Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures . New York: Henry
Holt.
Ng, L. (1994) Silver Sister. Port Melbourne, Victoria: Mandarin Australia.
Novakovich, J. and Shaphard, R. (eds) (2000) Stories in the Stepmother Tongue . Buffalo,
New York: White Pine Press.
Parks, T. (1996) An Italian Education . London: Vintage.
Pavlenko, A. (2001) ‘In the world of the tradition, I was unimagined’: Negotiation of
identities in cross-cultural autobiographies. The International Journal of Bilingualism 5
(3), 317
/344.
Ricci, N. (1990) The Book of Saints . New York: Picador USA.
Ricci, N. (1993) In a Glass House . New York: Picador USA.
Ricci, N. (1997) Where She Has Gone . New York: Picador USA.
Stearns, P. (1994) American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style . New
York: New York University Press.
Wierzbicka, A. (1999) Emotions Across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals .
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Xinran (2002) The Good Women of China . London: Vintage.
Ye, V.Z. (2003) ‘La Double Vie de Veronica: reflections on my life as a Chinese migrant
in Australia.’ Mots Pluriels No. 23. At http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/motspluriels/
MP2303vzy.html.
Bilingualism and Emotion in the
Autobiographical Works of Nancy
Huston
Celeste Kinginger
Department of French, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA,
USA
Research on the links between bilingualism and emotion suggests that when a
second language is learned postpuberty or in adulthood, the two languages of an
individual may differ in their emotional impact. The works of bilingual writer
Nancy Huston offer unique insight into the process of ascribing differential
emotional value to first and second languages. In her autobiographical writing,
Huston explores the process of being and becoming bilingual in French and English,
detailing the evolving emotional impact of her two languages across the narrative of
her life. While she pointedly attributes her development as a writer to the learning of
French, her language of distance and detachment, she also retains and deliberately
cultivates strong emotional ties to English, her first language, and in fact, to the
creative distance between languages. This paper examines Huston’s reflections on
bilingualism and emotions as discursive constructions, illuminating the process of
electing a new emotional life through a foreign language. Analysis of Huston’s
writings suggests that the nuances of this personal story do not necessarily fit neatly
into extant categories of ‘motivation’ and ‘investment’, but must be subject to a
socioculturally and sociohistorically situated analysis.

Keywords: bilingualism, foreign language, autobiography, motivation, literature,

investment

Introduction
As a long-time foreign language teacher, I find the accounts of motivation in
the applied linguistics literature intriguing, but not satisfying. We learn what
factors are likely to motivate the largest number of people in the most
generalised contexts to achieve the greatest quantifiable gains in language
proficiency (e.g. Dörnyei, 2001; Gardner, 1985; Oxford & Shearin, 1994), but we
don’t learn much about the qualities of that motivation and how it is related to
people’s lives and times. It is hard to find any real reasons for voluntary
foreign language learning when motivation is everywhere reduced to flatly
utilitarian factors, be they instrumental or integrative, or even when the
justification for language learning tries to reach a higher ground in the form of
abstract intercultural awareness.
This study is inspired by the exceptional character of a life story, the story
recounted in the works of the bilingual writer Nancy Huston. The study seeks
to enrich our appreciation of ‘motivation’ by examining the insights this story
may provide into the reasons why people decide to learn foreign languages in
the absence of sociopolitical necessity or other coercion. Although she grew up

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159
160 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

in Western Canada and on the East coast of the USA, Nancy Huston is now an
accomplished writer in French, with over 25 books, one screenplay and
numerous translations and literary prizes to her credit. Yet, she characterises
herself as a ‘false bilingual’ (Nord perdu , 1999: 53) for whom there was no a
priori reason for adopting a second language or for choosing French:
Pas de bombes. Pas de persécution, pas d’oppression, pas de guerre
coloniale, de coup d’État, d’exode, pas de lois m’asservissant ou
humiliant mes parents, aucun risque, aucun danger m’acculant à l’exil,
me forçant à fuir, m’enfonçant le nez dans une autre langue, une autre
culture, un autre pays. Non. Je suis une privilégiée, il faut que les choses
soient claires et claironnées dès le début. (Désirs et realités: Textes choisis
1978
/1994, 1995: 231)
No bombs. No persecution, no oppression, no colonial war, coup d’etat,
exodus, laws enslaving me or humiliating my parents, no risk, no danger
driving me into exile, forcing me to flee, shoving a foreign language,
culture or country down my throat. No. I am privileged, these things
must be clearly announced from the beginning. (Here and further on
translated by C. Kinginger)
Everything about her story, she claims, is ‘platement personnel’ (flatly
personal). Even if the feminist perspectives learned in her youth would
encourage a view of the personal as political, the fact remains that all the
drama, in her case, is situated in her emotional life, and her autobiographical
works explore the relationship between second language learning, motivation
and emotion.
As summarised by Dewaele and Pavlenko (2002), several studies on the
links between bilingualism and emotion suggest that when a second language
is learned postpuberty or in adulthood, ‘the two languages of an individual
may differ in their emotional impact, with the first being the language in
which personal involvement is expressed, and the second being the language
of distance and detachment’ (p. 264). For many bilinguals, the first language is
preferred for the communication of emotions (Dewaele, 2003). For some
multilinguals, however, additional languages offer an attractive potential for
performance of new and different emotional selves (Kellman, 2000; Pavlenko,
2002a). In the case of Nancy Huston, what we find is a personal investment in
emotional distance and detachment, enabled by the second language. There is
relatively little distress or discomfort in the reduced capacity for emotional
self-expression in the adopted language, but active pursuit of the capacity for
self-control and refined sensibility enabled by it.
Nancy Huston’s accounts of her own bilingualism suggest that the study of
a foreign language can be driven by emotional investment and by richly
nuanced imagination. The pursuit of a foreign language can also emerge from
desire for new and more complex ways to compose a life, as Bateson (1989: 18)
puts it, ‘outside the frame’. My ambition is to show that, in the case of foreign
language learning as in other contexts, there is a potentially interesting
connection between the learner’s dynamic agency and investment in learning,
and emotions as discursive constructions shaped by the historic, cultural and
Bilingualism and Emotion in the Autobiographical Works of Nancy Huston 161

social conventions of the time and place where they are produced (Linde, 1993;
Pavlenko, 2001). Huston’s story offers an opportunity to look closely at what
happens when a foreign language learner gains full access to prestigious
sociocultural resources and then begins to craft a rationale for her achieve-
ments (to literally compose her life) within the ideological/discursive
conventions of a language that is new to her. Close reading of Huston’s story
offers a version of ‘motivation’ that is dynamic, nuanced, complex, tightly
interconnected with emotion and intensely personal.

A Brief History of ‘Motivation’

The moment we begin to wonder why people learn languages, we
encounter the construct of ‘motivation’, and attached to this construct we
find, on the one hand, the positivist’s overstuffed can of worms, and on the
other, the Pandora’s box of the relativist. In either case, the problem of defining
motivation is among the most compelling and complex issues related to
language learning. A well known specialist on language learning motivation,
Zoltan Dörnyei, prefaces his recent book with the claim that motivation is ‘one
of the most elusive concepts in the whole of the social sciences’ (Dörnyei, 2001:
2). In the meantime, within the profession of foreign language teaching in the
USA, motivation is most often understood in positivist, utilitarian terms: we
believe that in some form, a stable, unitary form of motivation exists, and if we
can only figure out how to find, build, nurture, or match it there will be an
increase in our effectiveness.
For the positivist, of course, the one move that is normally not envisaged is
to question the very existence of the construct. Yet, as the historiographer
Danzinger (1997) points out, ‘motivation’ is a notion of fairly recent vintage. In
fact, prior to the 20th century the construct did not exist, and its history is
closely linked to social and institutional history of psychology as a discipline.
An exponential growth of interest in motivation occurred in the 1920s and
1930s, traced by Danzinger (1997) to three sources: (1) the marketing
orientation of American college professors eager to prove the practical value
of their work; (2) the growth of popular interest in psychoanalysis with its
emphasis on uncovering deeply internalised meanings; and (3) the enormous
expansion and popularisation of the educational system, which led to a variety
of problem situations requiring efficient resolution. The response of the
psychological profession was to form the concept of motivation by abstracting
from diverse phenomena and reifying the result, thereby ushering in a new era
in which research in psychology could be applied directly to social,
educational, or commercial problems:
Once educationalists had begun to conceptualize some of their problems
in terms of the category ‘classroom motivation,’ there was a potential
market for psychological principles and techniques labeled as pertaining
to this problem. (Danzinger, 1997: 112)
From this point forward, the construct of motivation had secured a footing in
the professional discourses of education. ‘Motivation’ gained further ground
in such areas as the popular literature on personal efficiency, the problem of
162 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

control, rewards and incentives for workers in industry, and advertising

research, where it formed the basis of the new science of creating novel
consumer needs (Ewen, 1976). Thus, the concept ‘had its origins in the world
of management and had manipulative connotations from the beginning’
(Danzinger, 1997: 18). Danzinger (1997: 113) further notes changes in the
semantics of the verb ‘to motivate’, as they came to fit the contours of a
uniquely American understanding of social control:
The specific reference of the term was at that time directed at the
growing literature on the improvement of advertising and salesmanship,
industrial efficiency, teaching practice and personal advancement. It was
recognized that these improvements could not be achieved simply by
force or by manipulation of the environment. One had to play upon
what individuals wanted, what they were interested in, what they
privately wished for. Everyday terms like desire, want, interest, and also
motive, were used to represent what it was one had to influence. But in
American social science ‘social control’ also acquired a more general
meaning as a process that provided the basis for any kind of social
collaboration or conformity within a society imagined as an aggregate of
autonomous individuals.
Thus, ‘motivation’ became the cover term for the entire variety of personal
desires, needs or intentions that could be considered subject to external
influence. Furthermore, ‘motivation’ helped to resolve the contradiction
inherent in the American problem of governance, where the control of
individual desires could be legitimated by a democratic disguise of manipul-
able but personal attributes.
Within applied linguistics and language education, ‘motivation’ has been
the focus of intense scrutiny for over 50 years, although the plausibility of the
construct itself has rarely been questioned. In revisiting the history of research
in this domain, Spolsky (2000) suggests that language learning motivation has
rarely been disengaged from the positivist and utilitarian core values that
shaped the construct’s origins, that is, the primary goal of research on
‘motivation’ has been to increase the effectiveness of language education
through manipulation of personal attributes or contextual variables. The
classic, social psychological model of motivation introduced by Gardner and
Lambert defined language-learning motivation as ‘the combination of effort
plus desire to achieve the goal of learning the language plus favorable
attitudes toward learning the language’ (Gardner, 1985: 10). This work
contributed to the general acceptance of a causal model of motivation wherein
language attitudes and orientation led to motivation, which in turn led to
achievement.
Most of the subsequent work on motivation within applied linguistics has
been oriented toward refinement of the Gardner and Lambert model within
lines that continue in the utilitarian tradition noted above. On the one hand,
researchers have struggled to improve the predictive power of the model, via
ever-increasing complexity and numbers of variables included. On the other,
scholars have tried to orient research on motivation more directly toward the
needs of language-teaching professionals, specifically to provide those
Bilingualism and Emotion in the Autobiographical Works of Nancy Huston 163

professionals with research-based means to motivate language learners. For

Oxford and Shearin (1994: 15), for example, ‘the source of motivation is very
important in a practical sense to teachers who want to stimulate students’
motivation. Without knowing where the roots of motivation lie, how can
teachers water those roots?’. Thus we find that the construct of motivation,
emerging from a utilitarian world view, has been adopted into the discourses
of language education with its epistemological underpinnings left quite intact.

Analysing Stories of Language Learning

In the meantime, however, the ‘social turn in second language acquisition’
(Block, 2003) has led to increasing dissatisfaction with the field’s emphasis on
production of standardised products, such as a one-size-fits-all theory
of motivation. Critics of the positivist bias in motivation research, such as
Kalaja and Leppänen (1998; Leppänen & Kalaja, 2002), point to the paradox
involved in acknowledging the complexity of this phenomenon without
investigating the ways in which variation actually manifests itself in learners’
talk, writing and action. A key issue for these critics is the extent to which the
learner’s subjectivity and history are reduced to abstraction:
Endowed with a set of personal characteristics, such as motivation,
viewed as stable in nature and measured by objective means, the learner
is treated as a physical object operating under universal laws. Impor-
tantly, the learner is stripped of agency, or intentional actions, and
experiences of his/her own, taking place in particular contexts and in
relation to those of others. (Leppänen & Kalaja, 2002: 190)
The learner’s personal agency and experiences in particular contexts certainly
are relevant to understanding the qualities of motivation, and so is the sense of
personal coherence that each learner creates in explaining the rationale
underlying actions and decisions (Linde, 1993). The stories of language
learners, particularly those whose literacy achievements demonstrate high
levels of sensitivity to language, are in principle a reasonable source of insight
on the role language plays in the process of continual self-reinvention and
improvisation required for composing a contemporary life (Bateson, 1989).
Research on stories of language learning demands a comprehensive
theoretical stance, one that is conceived broadly enough to encompass the
learner’s history, agency and constructions of personal coherence, in short, one
that conceives of language learners as people rather than as bundles of
variables (Lantolf & Pavlenko, 2001). In summarising poststructuralist
approaches within applied linguistics, Pavlenko (2002b) outlines the common-
alities among recent attempts to theorise the social aspects of L2 learning and
use, all of which point to a comprehensive reconceptualisation of second
language learning. Poststructuralism is ‘understood broadly as an attempt to
investigate and to theorize the role of language in construction and reproduc-
tion of social relations, and the role of social dynamics in the processes of
additional language learning and use’ (Pavlenko, 2002b: 282). Therefore,
poststructuralist approaches have implications for the conceptualisation of
language, language learning and the language learner.
164 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Language in the poststructuralist framework is retheorised as symbolic

capital and as a site of identity construction along lines traced by Bourdieu. As
Pavlenko (2002b: 284) notes,
the view of language as symbolic capital has a significant advantage
over the notion of ‘instrumental motivation’, as it allows us to link the
individual and the social, tracing the processes by which particular
linguistic varieties and practices become imbued with value or devalued
in the linguistic marketplace.
Language learning is viewed as a process of socialisation into particular
linguistic communities during which negotiation takes place as learners
accommodate to or challenge the discursive practices they encounter. Most
significantly for the present study, language learners are no longer defined as
bundles of variables, but as individual agents, in charge of their own learning,
whose identities may be multiple, conflicting and subject to change and
negotiation over time (Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004; Weedon, 1997). ‘Motiva-
tion’ is thus replaced, in the poststructuralist view, by ‘agency’ and by
‘investment’ in the symbolic or material capital represented by competence in
additional languages. Citing Norton’s (1995, 2000) pioneering work in this
domain, Pavlenko suggests that the notion of investment captures the
complexity of learners’ personal history and occasional ambivalence toward
L2 learning and use. In comparison to the constructs of ‘instrumental’ or
‘integrative’ motivation, this view of the individual’s reasons for language
learning leads to greater nuance in the questions we frame about the origins of
investment and agency as they take shape over time.
In applying poststructuralist perspectives to the study of language learning
memoirs, Pavlenko (2001, 2004) cautions researchers to avoid the trap of
construing language learning memoirs as mere ethnographic data or
privileged insider information. Rather, interpretive guidance comes from
recognition that ‘the autobiographical self is culturally, socially, historically
and rhetorically constructed through discourses recognised by a specific
community’ (Pavlenko, 2001: 215). Bruner’s (2001) discussion of the
same question also emphasises that ‘self making depends heavily upon the
symbolic system in which it is conducted
/ its opportunities and constraints’
(p. 36). Narratives must be culturally comprehensible in their adherence
to canonical forms, but within these constraints they must also be interesting,
that is, exceptionally noncanonical. Literary genres, as stylised forms
of violation of the folk-psychological canon, have to violate canonical
expectancy in ways that are accessible to readers, thereby demystifying the
exceptional.
In this essay, I will first attempt to situate the autobiographical works of
Nancy Huston within the contemporary landscape of linguistic ideology in
France. Then, in light of their sociocultural context, I will examine in detail
several themes as they emerge from these works and as they relate to emotion
and reasons for using the French language.
Bilingualism and Emotion in the Autobiographical Works of Nancy Huston 165

Bilingualism and the French Literary Landscape

Although she is reaching an expanding audience in the USA through
translations of her work, Nancy Huston’s readership is situated primarily in
metropolitan France and Francophone Canada. As Huston testifies on her own
behalf, justifying her voluntary exile and choice of French as a language of
literary expression, her appeal is undeniable, if only because it occurs in a
context where the status of French is under constant scrutiny driven by a
history of linguistic insecurity, currently underscored by fears of domination
by American English (Ager, 1999). A gifted Anglophone writer who freely
elects to write in French, and in so doing praises the civilising qualities of the
language, is very likely to be well received. At the same time, however,
Huston’s history of close observation of the French language and associated
linguistic ideology, permits her to attach a note of irony as she invokes
canonical portrayals of the language or of bilingualism in French. This feature,
too, must be understood in the context of broader postmodern challenges to
the image of French and of its ideal native speakers in which the voices of
second language users are increasingly heard.
Current language ideology in France is quite obviously influenced by the
sociopolitical history of the language. In contrast to the situation in the USA,
monolingualism in France is commonly viewed as a long-term, deliberate,
state-sponsored achievement in which a particular variety of French was
enshrined as the standard, then imposed both in the colonial context and
within France, to the detriment of regional varieties. In a particularly apt
metaphor, Blanche-Benveniste (2001) characterised this gradual change of the
European landscape, with the triumph of nationalism and linguistic standar-
disation, as a transformation from a watercolour to a patchwork quilt (p. 456).
As documented in any textbook on French sociolinguistics, the political and
administrative imposition of the French language was accompanied by an
ideology in which French is framed as the language of universal rationality,
and is endowed with inherent clarity, logic and precision (e.g. Ager, 1990; Ball,
1997). Even as French loses prominence to English as a world language, the
imprint of this ideology on the national conscience remains clearly visible
(Noguez, 1998).
However, in a manner comparable to the recent history of language learning
memoirs in the USA as documented by Pavlenko (2001, 2004), the French
literary landscape has witnessed the rise of postmodern scepticism with
its obsessive focus on language, the influence of feminist and critical theory,
and the revival of ethnic consciousness. In the latter half of the 20th century
numerous writers have published memoirs and autobiographical works
of fiction in which the links between language, identity and sociopolitical
history are scrutinised at length. Such works as Annie Ernaux’s (1981, 1984,
1997) multivolume postmodern Bildungsroman, or Michel Peyramaure’s
(1982, 1994) pseudoethnographic accounts of the role of state-sponsored
schooling, testify to the broken links between traditional practices and family
members, the trauma and generalised sense of displacement caused by
language education policy of the late 19th and early 20th century in which
regional languages were gradually eradicated. Writers from the former
166 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

colonies of France, such as Patrick Chamoiseau (1990, 1994), examine diglossia

as a lived experience in which French is imbued with civilising power over
local languages. A growing autobiographical literature of first, second and
subsequent generation immigration emphasises the formation and mainte-
nance of hybrid identities in encounters with linguistic ideologies (e.g. Begag,
1986; Beyala, 1992; Pineau, 1995, 1996; Sebbar, 1985). Several pointedly
linguistic autobiographies, such as Claude Esteban’s (1990) account of a
bilingual childhood in Spanish and French, or the Greek journalist Vassilis
Alexakis’ (1989) story of learning French in adulthood, attempt to detail the
influence of bilingualism on the writers’ consciousness.
Indeed, the current status of the ‘défense de la langue française’ is fraught with
fundamental ambiguity in which the normative francocentrism of the past
conflicts with a more contemporary ideology of ‘généreuse ouverture à
l’universel ’ (generous openness to the universal) (Jouanny, 2000: 3) associated
with the European Union. These conflicts take place in a context of linguistic
insecurity in response to the dominance of English (Ager, 1999). In such a
context, and given the long history of public debate and state involvement in
language issues, it is no surprise that bilingualism itself has become a matter of
public interest: bilinguals embody the postmodern admiration for hybridity,
flexibility and mutability of the self, and are of course particularly admired for
having the good sense to choose French. Critics such as Jouanny (2000), in
noting the presence of numerous ‘Singularités francophones ’, or writers who
deliberately choose French as a medium of expression, also remind their
readership that many writers populating the literary pantheon of the 20th
century, such as Beckett, Sarraute, Cioran or Ionesco, were second language
users of French. More recently, the Franco-Russian author Andrei Makine
(1995) drew critical acclaim in his fictionalised autobiography, Le Testament
français , celebrating the genesis of poetic imagination as his grandmother
taught him French during summer vacations in Siberia. And in January 2002,
Bernard Pivot, the doyen of televised literary appreciation, has inaugurated a
new show for Antenne 2 ‘Double Je ’ (Double I), entirely devoted to interviews
with accomplished people who are bilingual in French and another language.

Nancy Huston’s Life Story

Huston is, without a doubt, among those accomplished people. In many
ways the crux of the matter is the fact that she moved to Paris from New
Hampshire in 1973 as a participant in a college study abroad programme, and
never moved back. Since that time, and despite the fact that her immersion in
French began in her early 20s, well beyond most estimates of the critical
period’s definitive end, she has authored over 25 books, numerous essays and
short stories, and one screenplay in that language, and for this effort has won
or been nominated for numerous literary awards, including the prestigious
Prix Goncourt des Lycéens.
Huston’s life story is presented in a series of autobiographical works of
varying genres, including essays, published correspondence and a journal.
These works have been selected for consideration here because they constitute
the main body of her reflective writing to date on the subject of her own
Bilingualism and Emotion in the Autobiographical Works of Nancy Huston 167

voluntary exile, including bilingualism and its impact on identity and literary
creation. It should be noted, however, that to some extent the decision to focus
on these works may be seen as arbitrary, as the details of Huston’s life story,
and in particular the emotional impact of bilingualism, are also artfully
represented in her works of fiction.
Most of the stand-alone essays appear in an edited volume, Désirs et réalités:
Textes choisis 1978
/1994 (1995). In the latter section of this volume, entitled
‘Exil, Langue, Identité’, Huston includes six autobiographical essays on the
theme of language and identity, originally published between 1981 and 1994.
Lettres Parisiennes
/ Autopsie de l’exil (1986), consists of an exchange of
correspondence with the French
/Algerian writer Leila Sebbar in which the
two authors probe the meaning of their choice to live and work in France. In
Journal de la création (1990), Huston maintained a journal of her pregnancy
while simultaneously reflecting on the theme of artistic creation through the
life stories of literary couples, including Sand and Musset, Virginia and
Leonard Woolf, Sartre and de Beauvoir. In this work she examines the question
of self-reinvention through literary creation and by extension, her own works.
Finally, Nord perdu (1999) presents Huston’s more mature reflections on the
meaning of her own ‘false’ (i.e. voluntary) bilingualism. This volume also
includes a series of 12 short vignettes, entitled Douze France, in which the
author present various ways of apprehending life as a voluntary exile in that
country. In addition to these works, I have also consulted a published
interview with Nancy Huston which appeared in a volume devoted to
L’Aventure du bilinguisme (Kroh, 2000).
As portrayed in these autobiographical writings, the general outline of
Nancy Huston’s life story is as follows. She was born in 1953 in Canada, in
Calgary, Alberta. When she was six years old, her parents’ divorce coincided
with her mother’s definitive departure from the family. Her mother’s
departure coincided with a trip to Germany, accompanied by her step-
mother-to-be, during which Huston discovered her first foreign language. In
1968 the family relocated to the USA and Huston was educated at Sarah
Lawrence college. Her initial experience of France took place in the context of a
study abroad programme in Paris. Afterwards, Huston remained in Paris and
enrolled at the Ecole de Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales where she studied
with Lacan and Foucault, then wrote a graduate thesis under the aegis of the
great semiotician, Roland Barthes. She credits the growth of her competence in
French on the one hand to her participation in the mass subjugation to these
mythic intellectual figures, and on the other to a thesis on Sade that she typed
for her boyfriend. She also became involved with a group of feminist writers
who launched several journals. It was at the invitation of this group that she
first began to write in French for a general audience. Her first novel, Les
variations Goldberg (1981) was composed shortly after the death of Roland
Barthes, and was followed by Mosaı̈que de la pornographie (1982), Histoire
d’Omaya (1985), Lettres parisiennes: Autopsie de l’exil (with Leila Sebbar, 1986),
and Trois fois septembre (1989). She began to compose her first novel in English,
Plainsong (1993), in 1989. Instruments des ténèbres (1996) was composed in both
languages. Since that time she has been ‘condemned’ to bilingualism and to
168 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

creating two versions of each of her books (‘En Français dans le texte’, in Désirs
et réalités: Textes choisis 1978
/1994 (1995: 236)).

Bilingualism and Emotion in Huston’s Self-analysis

Perhaps the most striking and consistent theme in these works is the
repeated assertion that the second language exerted a liberating effect on
Huston’s life and literary creativity through the emotional detachment it
affords. For Huston, at least initially, French was an invitation to reinvent
herself, and by extension, a lifeline:
Je crois que je perçois la langue étrangère comme une bouée de
sauvetage. Ce n’est pas une conquête, c’est quelque chose qui m’est
tendu comme une possibilité de vivre.
I believe that I perceive the foreign language as a lifeline. It is not a
conquest but something that is held out to me as possibility for living.
(Kroh, 2000: 33)
While numerous writers have explored the metaphor of language learning as
reinvention or translation of the self (Besemeres, 2002), it is relatively unusual
for a writer to attribute such emancipatory salvation to a foreign language,
chosen at will.
Huston credits a foreign language not only with her own psychological
survival, but also with the genesis of her literary works. Bilingualism is ‘une
stimulation intellectuelle de tous les instants ’ (Nord perdu , 1999: 46), a constant
source not only of inspiration to write in the first place, but also of thematic
and stylistic material surfacing throughout Huston’s oeuvre. Her novels are
populated by characters who speak French as a second language and whose
subjectivity is therefore richly multiplied. Her style is infused with bilingual
polysemy in which the meanings of words are far from straightforward. In
Huston’s first novel, Les Variations Goldberg (1981), for example, each of the 30
celebrated variations is ‘performed’ from within the subjectivity of a different
member of the audience while the musician/narrator dreams of a perfect
instrument that will only play one note: mi/me.
Huston’s need for detachment from the intensity of her own emotional life
is based on a carefully crafted rationale for rejection of the past, in particular
the landscapes of her childhood and the turmoil of her mother’s departure
from the family. The nature of this same detachment is shaped by ideologies
surrounding the qualities of the French language, including the reverent
attitude of its users and the belief that the language itself exerts a civilising
force upon its speakers.
For Huston, echoing Virginia Woolf, language is invested with the
possibility of establishing an ironic distance from the ‘catastrophes’ of
everyday life. A woman who writes these catastrophes is on her way to
salvation from drowning in mundane details:
Je ne sais pas ce que je ferais si je n’avais pas le recours du langage, des
mots qui me donnent au moins une distance ironique par rapport aux
catastrophes de la vie quotidienne. (Lettres Parisiennes , 1986: 44)
Bilingualism and Emotion in the Autobiographical Works of Nancy Huston 169

I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have recourse to language, to

the words that give me at least an ironic distance from the catastrophes
of everyday life.
However, in order to write, Huston, unlike Woolf, needed to achieve a double
distance from reality by writing in a second language. Her discovery of
pleasure in writing in French is detailed in the letters to Leila Sebbar,
published as Lettres parisiennes
/ Autopsie de l’exil , in 1986. Here she recounts
her involvement with the feminist movement, and the invitation she received
to submit a piece to the first issue of a new journal entitled Sorcières. At that
time, she was ‘forced’ to write in French:
. . . ce que j’ai fait, avec beaucoup de trépidation et de maladresse, mais
aussi avec un plaisir que je n’aurais même pas pu imaginer en anglais.
(Lettres parisiennes , 1986: 102
/103)
. . . which I did, with a lot of trepidation and awkwardness, but also with
a pleasure that I could not even have imagined in English.
The English language, like a stillborn child, had lost its emotional resonance,
and this loss is blamed on the academic uses of the language in which the
blank page functioned as a ‘death warrant’:
. . .je n’entendais plus ma langue; elle m’habitait comme un poids mort.
Et là, un jour de septembre. . . la page blanche, d’arrêt de mort, s’est
transformé d’un seul coup en champ de possibilités. Les mots à ma
disposition étaient moins nombreux, mais ils avaient un goût, ou plutôt
un volume, ils étaient vivants. . . (Lettres parisiennes , 1986: 103)
. . .I no longer heard my language; it lived in me like a dead weight. And
then, one day in September. . . the blank page was transformed from a
death warrant into a range of possibilities. The words I had at my
disposition were fewer, but they had a flavour, or rather, volume. They
were alive.
The liveliness of words in French Huston later attributes to their ‘exotic’
nature, and to the ‘constant stimulation’ of bilingualism which permits her to
shed the weight of her linguistic past. Like Beckett, Huston is drawn by the
literary value of the distance between her two languages, explained via
transposition of the teaching of Roland Barthes into the domain of bilingu-
alism. For Barthes, as Klein-Lataud reminds us, any automatic association
between words prompted artistic nausea (‘La nausée arrive dès que la liaison de
deux mots importants va de soi ’, Barthes, 1973: 70, cited in Klein-Lataud, 1996:
214) and only those associations which can be read as novel are properly
literary. Huston discovered in French an infinite variety of words which would
never ‘speak for themselves’ as far as she was concerned. Her initiation as a
writer is intrinsically linked to French, not because it is a more beautiful or
expressive language than English, but because it is foreign: ‘étrangère, elle est
suffisamment étrange pour stimuler ma curiosité ’ [foreign, it is sufficiently strange
to stimulate my curiosity] (Lettres parisiennes , 1986: 158).
170 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

. . . dans une langue étrangère aucun lieu n’est jamais commun : tous sont
exotiques. ‘can of worms’ était une banalité jusqu’à ce que j’apprenne
‘panier de crabes’: ces deux façons de dire un grouillement déplaisant et
inextricable me sont devenues intéressantes en raison de l’écart entre
elles. Le bilinguisme est une stimulation intellectuelle de tous les
instants. (Nord perdu , 1999: 46)
. . . in a foreign language no place is commonplace : everything is exotic.
‘Can of worms’ was a banal cliché until I learned ‘panier de crabes’
(basket of crabs ). These two ways of describing an unpleasant, inextricable
seething became interesting to me because of the distance between them.
Bilingualism means constant intellectual stimulation.
Huston’s rejection of the banal is extended into her efforts to make a coherent
story from her feelings of ambivalence toward the locus of her childhood.
Alberta, in Huston’s writings, is a place characterised by nothingness of
terrifying, mythic proportions, where vaguely magnificent landscapes and
anonymous, modern cities are inhabited by people whose history is forgotten
and whose culture is reduced to neutral, Anglo-Saxon propriety. In
La rassurante étrangeté (1981, in Désirs et réalités: Textes choisis 1978
/1994 ),
and later, in Lettres parisiennes (1986), Huston self-consciously crafts a vision of
Alberta to match the absence of imagery in the minds of her French readers:
même enfant, la réalité albertaine me semblait d’une fadeur et
d’une homogénéité écoeurantes: partout ce fut la règne des bons
sentiments et du bon voisinage; partout était installée la platitude du
neutre. (La rassurante étrangeté , in Désirs et réalités: Textes choisis 1978
/
1994, 1995: 178)
even as a child, to me Albertan reality seemed pointlessly and
sickeningly homogeneous: proper feelings and neighbourliness domi-
nated everywhere; the neutral platitude was permanently installed
everywhere.
Huston frames her life as a quest, not for identity, but for intellectual intensity,
emerging from a childhood that was profoundly isolated, culturally alienating
and boring: ‘L’histoire de ma vie est celle d’une quête non pas d’identité mais
d ’intensité.’ (La rassurante étrangeté , Désirs et réalités: Textes choisis 1978
/1994,
1995: 177) [The story of my life is that of a quest, not for identity but for
intensity.] The culture and history of Alberta were not sufficient in and of
themselves to provoke a strong emotional reaction or to offer a sufficiently
meaningful frame for such intensity. The only way to make something intense
of her childhood, according to Huston, is to translate it.
Mon pays, sans être dépourvu de problèmes politiques, ne m’a pas
fourni ce cadre haut en couleur, cette scène striée d’antagonismes, cette
longue histoire sanglante. Je me dis parfois que ce contexte si vital, ce
«cadre». . . je ne l’ai trouvé que dans la langue française; que l’intensité
qui t’a été donné d’emblée, dans ton enfance, ne peut auréoler la mienne
que si je la traduis . (Lettres parisiennes , 1986: 76)
Bilingualism and Emotion in the Autobiographical Works of Nancy Huston 171

Even if there is no lack of political problems in my country, it did not

furnish me with this colourful background, this backdrop streaked with
antagonisms, this long, blood-soaked history. I tell myself sometimes
that this vital context, this ‘frame’. . .I could only find it in the French
language; that the intensity that was given directly to you in your
childhood, can only be made to radiate from mine if I translate it.
In the early years of her life in Paris, Huston was attracted to the study of
taboo words in French, in part because she felt herself to be at a particular
advantage, as a non-native speaker, for their analysis. Under the tutelage of
Roland Barthes, she composed a graduate thesis, Dire et interdire: Eléments de
jurologie (1980), confident that these words were more accessible to her than to
natives because they carried absolutely no affective weight. Later, in Nord
perdu (1999), this advantage is extended to the reconstruction of her relation-
ship to the entire language. To write in English, it is implied, might have been
dangerous, whereas the absence of emotional resonance in French rendered
that language accessible to a cold approach:
Oui, je crois que c’était là l’essentiel: la langue française (et pas
seulement ses mots tabous) était, par rapport à ma langue maternelle,
moins chargée d’affect et donc moins dangereuse. Elle était froide, et je
l’abordais froidement. Elle m’était égale. C’était une substance lisse
et homogène, autant dire neutre. Au début, je m’en rends compte
maintenant, cela me conférait une immense liberté dans l’écriture
/ car
je ne savais pas par rapport à quoi, sur fond de quoi, j’écrivais. (Nord
perdu , 1999: 63)
Yes, I think that was the essential thing: compared to my mother tongue,
the French language (and not only its taboo words) was less burdened
with emotion and therefore less dangerous. She was cold and I
approached her coldly. She was uniform. It was a smooth and
homogeneous substance, one might say neutral. In the beginning, I
realize now, this conveyed an enormous liberty to me in writing
/
because I didn’t know with respect to what, or against what background
I was writing.
This sense of relative liberty is also related to Huston’s awareness of the
reverent attitude of native speakers in relation to the French language. Huston
claims an ability to violate the norms of the language precisely because, as an
outsider, she can attach irony to this attitude:
. . .il est plus facile pour moi étrangère que pour eux autochtones de
transgresser les normes et attentes de la langue française. C’est une très
grande dame, la langue française. Une reine, belle et puissante.
Beaucoup d’individus qui se croient écrivains ne sont que des valets
à son service; ils s’affairent autour d’elle, lissent ses cheveux, ajustent ses
parures, louent ses bijoux et ses atours, la flattent, et la laissent parler
toute seule. Elle est intarissable, la langue française, une fois qu’elle se
lance. Pas moyen d’en placer une. (Nord perdu , 1999: 46
/47)
172 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

it is easier for me, as a foreigner, than it is for them as natives, to violate

the norms and expectations of the French language. The French
Language is a great lady. A beautiful and powerful queen. A lot of
people who think of themselves as writers are in fact little more than
lackeys at her service; they busy themselves around her, comb her hair,
adjust her ornaments, admire her jewels and finery, flatter her and let her
talk all by herself. Once she starts talking she is inexhaustible. You can’t
get a word in edgewise.
Huston repeatedly asserts that the process she is describing is not dependent
on the particular foreign language in question, and that her choice of French
was arbitrary, based mainly on the availability of French language instruction
in school. It is also clear, from the passage above, that Huston views the
ideology of French with an outsider’s scepticism. Nonetheless, there are many
indications that this very ideology has directly influenced her construction of
coherence. This is true not only of the manner in which the world of western
Canada is drained of historical significance, if not of cowboys, country music,
beer, dust and the Calgary Stampede, but also of the manner in which Huston
directly characterises her repertoire of emotion discourse. In the passage
below, for example, the writer credits French with a civilising effect on her
expression of anger:
Du reste
/ à propos de crier fort
/ , je trouve que vivre à l’étranger m’a
civilisée. Non pas parce que la France est un pays plus civilisé que
l’Amérique (ce qui est sans doute vrai), mais parce qu’il y a toujours
quelque chose de ridicule à s’emporter dans une langue étrangère:
l’accent s’empire, le débit s’emballe et achoppe. . .on emploie les jurons à
tort et à travers
/ et, du coup, on doit s’ingénier à trouver des moyens
plus raffinés pour exprimer sa colère. (Lettres Parisiennes , 1986: 23)
Moreover
/ speaking of screaming out loud
/ I find that living abroad
has civilised me. Not because France is a more civilised country than
America (which is no doubt true), but because there is always something
ridiculous about getting carried away in a foreign language: the accent
gets worse, the rhythm runs off and stumbles. . . you use the wrong
swear words in the wrong way
/ and, as a result, you have to work at
finding more refined ways to express your anger.
Later, again in Nord perdu , French is once more characterised as a civilising
language, an instrument of refinement permitting control of the emotions.
Here, Huston establishes the ‘secret paradigm’ in which English is connected
to the emotional turmoil of her youth, and in particular the events surround-
ing the divorce of her parents, whereas French, the ‘lifeline’, offered an
attractive alternative in which self-expression would be politely neutralised:
La langue française ne m’était pas seulement égale, elle m’était
indifférente. Elle ne me disait rien [. . .] Elle ne me parlait pas, ne me
chantait pas, ne me berçait pas, ne me frappait pas, ne me choquait pas,
ne me faisait pas peur. Elle n’était pas ma mère.
Bilingualism and Emotion in the Autobiographical Works of Nancy Huston 173

De manière fortuite, il se trouve que l’apprentissage de la langue

française a coı̈ncidé dans ma vie avec la découverte du clavecin (1971).
Et que, deux ans plus tard (1973), l’abandon de ma langue maternelle a
été accompagné d’un abandon analogique du piano. Ce paradigme
secret, aberrant peut-être, me forme et me déforme depuis un quart de
siècle. L’anglais et le piano: instruments maternels, émotifs, roman-
esques, manipulatifs, sentimentaux, grossiers, où les nuances sont
soulignées, exagérées, imposées, exprimées de façon flagrante et incon-
tournable. Le français et le clavecin, instruments neutres, intellectuels,
liés au contrôle, à la retenue, à la maı̂trise délicate, une forme
d’expression plus subtile, plus monocorde, discrète et raffinée. Jamais
d’explosion, jamais de surprise violente en français, ni au clavecin. Ce
que je fuyais en fuyant l’anglais et le piano me semble clair. (Nord perdu ,
1999: 63
/65)
The French language was not only ‘all the same’ to me, she was
indifferent. She didn’t say anything to me, [. . .] She didn’t talk to me,
didn’t sing to me, didn’t rock me, didn’t slap me, didn’t shock me, didn’t
scare me. She wasn’t my mother.
It so happened that the learning of French coincided in my life with the
discovery of the harpsichord (1971). And that, two years later (1973), the
abandonment of my mother tongue was accompanied by a parallel
abandonment of the piano. This secret, perhaps aberrant paradigm has
been shaping and reshaping me for a quarter of a century. English and
the piano: maternal instruments, emotional, romantic, manipulative,
sentimental, vulgar, where the nuances are underlined, exaggerated,
imposed, expressed in a flagrant and unavoidable manner. French and
the harpsichord: neutral instruments, intellectual, linked to control,
discretion, delicate mastery, a more subtle, monotonic, discreet and
refined form of expression. Never an explosion, never a violent surprise,
neither in French nor at the harpsichord. It seems clear to me what I was
running away from when I left English and the piano behind.
It would appear that for Huston, rather than a world entirely ‘outside the
frame’, the French language, learned in adulthood, is valued for the quality of
the alternative frame it provided, one that is associated with adult affect, self-
control and subtle artistry, but also with history, refinement and civilisation. In
this attractive package, French offered escape from the ‘unavoidable’
emotional residue of a childhood of ‘violent surprises’. (The reader of Huston’s
autobiographies does not learn anything precise about the nature of these
events, only that the failure of her attempts at psychoanalysis is attributed to
the fact that they, too, took place in French, the language that protects her.)
In time, after over a decade of life in French and success as a French
language writer, the ‘prolonged refrigeration’ of Huston’s childhood came to
an end, and with it, the rediscovery of the emotional valence of English, and
the genesis of a novel about western Canada, Plainsong (1993). Once again,
Huston demonstrates acute sensitivity to her own conceptual restructuring of
emotion categories and the cultural scripts that accompany this process:
174 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

On n’est vraiment intégré à un pays que lorsqu’on parvient à s’y

ennuyer, et à reconnaı̂tre que certains de ses habitants sont aussi
médiocres que les plus médiocres chez soi. Quelle est à mes yeux
la quintessence de l’ennui à la française? C’est l’apéritif. Un apéritif servi
avec lenteur et ostentation par des hôtes aux attitudes empesées. . . (Nord
perdu , 1999: 127)
You are not really integrated into a country until you achieve boredom
there, and you recognize that certain of its inhabitants are just as
mediocre as the most mediocre people at home. What is in my view the
quintessential French boredom? It is ‘l’apéritif.’ An ‘apéritif’ served
slowly and ostentatiously by hosts with stuffy attitudes. . .
Such an event, writes Huston, makes her want to pull out her old cowgirl yell
(‘Yip yip yipee!’), jump out the window onto the horse that has been waiting
patiently there for decades, and, presumably, ride off into the sunset.

Conclusion
To return to the question posed at the beginning of this essay: what does
Nancy Huston’s story have to do with reasons for learning foreign languages?
In the first place, it is clear that the rationale given in Huston’s works cannot fit
neatly into the categories of motivation in the sociopsychological research
literature; she cannot be said to have instrumental motivation, because the
language is so clearly linked to the whole of her emotional life; she cannot be
said to have integrative motivation, either, because integration into French
society is clearly not her goal. Rather, whether she writes in French or in
English, what she values is the place in between, the place of critical,
emotional detachment, where the world appears in its exotic guise, language
is not what it seems, and stories
/ especially stories about that most
contemporary theme of lives outside of frames
/ are generated. Nancy
Huston’s rationale for second language use can only be understood if the
analytic categories applied are broad enough to encompass both the personal
and the sociohistorical and to account for dynamism and change over time.
Thus the term ‘investment’ (Norton, 2000) may be more appropriate for this
case, but here again there is a slight lack of fit. ‘Investment’ is normally a
practical matter, where one expects a return upon effort in economic, cultural
or symbolic value. For many, if not most second language users, the term no
doubt accurately captures the urgency of need for language competence and
dire practical consequences of failing to develop it. It is clear that in setting
forth to reinvent herself as a French language writer, Huston was in fact
investing in the symbolic value of French, and a prestigious variety of French
at that. It is less clear, however, that the term ‘investment’ captures the entirety
of a story in which voluntary engagement with foreignness is credited with
stifling self-hatred and saving a life by opening the way toward creativity.
Huston’s is a personal story of grappling with the emotional and the literary
consequences of second language use which are in some ways entirely
detached from practical concerns. It is also a story crafted from the elements of
its own discursive environment, one in which an investment in French makes
Bilingualism and Emotion in the Autobiographical Works of Nancy Huston 175

perfect sense, because of the value assigned to second language users of

French in the contemporary public eye, and because, ultimately, French is still
considered to be a vehicle for achievement of universal clarity and rational
sensibility, that is, it is suitable as a language of adulthood.
Clearly, there are many aspects of Huston’s story that do not necessarily
correspond in straightforward ways to the life history of the average foreign
language learner. The most obvious of these is the very extraordinary nature of
Huston’s achievement in turning herself into a successful French language
writer. Also somewhat remarkable, in the case of voluntary language learning,
is the extent to which Huston rationalises her desire for an adult language of
refinement and civilised restraint in terms of escape from a murky and
turbulent psychological past. The second-language-as-escape-route is a
common trope in the autobiographical writings of bilingual authors (see
Kellman, 2000, 2003), particularly those whose personal history is shaped by
immigration and various forms of sociopolitical upheaval in which the first
language becomes physically or ideologically inaccessible. Jorge Semprun
(1994), for example, after surviving the Spanish Civil War, an ousting from the
Communist Party, and deportation to Buchenwald, claims to have chosen
French over his native Spanish as a way to establish critical distance from
political action and to overcome the weight of personal experience. In such
cases, linguistic choice is linked to ideology and to historical facts in ways that
are simply not part of a story with ‘No bombs. No persecution, no oppression,
no colonial war, coup d’etat, exodus, laws enslaving me or humiliating my
parents, no risk, no danger driving me into exile, forcing me to flee, shoving a
foreign language, culture or country down my throat’. In crafting a story of
escape from the past, we may wonder to what extent Huston merely
transposes this powerful metaphor onto a personal and affective backdrop.
There are other aspects of Huston’s story, however, which speak directly to
the reasons why foreign languages are attractive in general. The construction
of her childhood environment as a place that is nowhere in particular, where
history is invisible and culture reduced to propriety, is one that fits
comfortably into the expectations of its French audience. It is also a story
that I have heard before, in many versions, from other Americans eager to
improve their lives or to enhance self-images through access to foreign
languages. These learners often do, in fact, come from places where the
expectations they are enjoined to hold for themselves and the access to
symbolic resources they enjoy are limited, and they see in a foreign language a
way to reimagine their future in unpredictable ways.
For young North American women, motives for learning French in
particular may be shaped in part by ideologies propagated via the American
mass media or via instructional materials. Here, Frenchness is equated with
exotic romance and high culture, and France is portrayed as a vast,
monument-studded, wine-soaked land of leisure, a playground specialising
in consumption of upper-class products and experiences (see Kinginger, 2004,
for a relevant case study). For example, the recently published memoir of the
popular novelist Judith Krantz (2000), Sex and Shopping: The Confessions of a
Nice Jewish Girl , dwells at length on the importance of learning how to shop for
the proper Hermès scarf or tasteful hat for an intense and varied social life in
176 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Paris (‘from the bohemian to the aristocratic’ (p. 390)). Of course, the linking of
French to luxury also occurs on the backdrop of language ideology in the USA,
where monolingualism in English is idealised and foreign languages in
general are framed as an add-on to an elite education. Meanwhile, the
discourse of language teaching methodology continues to emphasise the
utilitarian value of foreign language competence in ways that may not
correspond to the imaginations of the people served by the profession.
For any learner, self-expression in a foreign medium presents the possibility
of imagining oneself anew, and of experiencing the feeling of unlimited
exoticism that Huston so amply praises. Perhaps the most intriguing of the
themes in Huston’s work is her emphasis on the sense of freedom she
experienced as a user of French. This liberation resembles the phenomenon
that Kramsch (1997) has called the ‘privilege of the non-native speaker’, that is,
the freedom to appropriate or reject the norms of the foreign language and to
make of language learning a personal, creative act.

Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Professor Celeste Kinginger,
Department of French, 203B Burrowes Building, Pennsylvania State Uni-
versity, University Park, PA 16801, USA (cxk37@psu.edu).

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‘Stop Doing That, Ia Komu Skazala!’:
Language Choice and Emotions in

Aneta Pavlenko


Parent Child Communication
/

Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

The goal of this paper is to discuss the role of emotion-related factors in language
choice in bi- and multilingual families. Most of the time, factors other than emotions
govern language choice and use in such families, among them language dominance,
social context and linguistic competence of the interlocutors. However, quantitative
and qualitative analyses of bi- and multilingual parents’ webquestionnaire
responses suggest that perceived language emotionality and affective repertoires


offered by particular languages also play a role in language choice and use in parent /
child communication, in particular in emotional expression.

Keywords: language choice, emotions, emotional expression, bilingual families

Introduction
In monolingual communication, emotions can be conveyed directly (I am
angry) or indirectly (You are such an IDIOT!), with a variety of linguistic and
paralinguistic cues available for performing affect. In multilingual contexts,
speakers have one more resource at their disposal, linguistic juxtaposition,
whereby affect can be signalled through language choice, codeswitching, and
language play. ‘Stop doing that, ia komu skazala ! (literally: who am I talking
to!)’, I yell in a mix of English and Russian, when my son throws his yo-yo all
around the living room, narrowly missing fragile objects. ‘Umnitsa moia,
lapushka (my bright little paw)’, I coo when he brings home an ‘A’ on the
science exam. And yet our home language is mostly English, while Russian,
my first language (L1) surfaces to signal more intense affect, be it positive and
negative. What my English-dominant son responds to is not necessarily the
meaning of the Russian expressions, but the fact that I have switched into my
L1, which signifies that I ‘mean it’.
Studies of codeswitching have long established that bilinguals may
codeswitch to mark an affective stance. Speakers may switch into L1 to signal
intimacy, we-ness, or to express their emotions, and to the second language
(L2) to mark distance, an out-group attitude, or to describe emotions in a
detached way (cf. Gumperz, 1982; Zentella, 1997). They may also mix two or
more languages to convey intimacy or distance, as identities and group
boundaries are constructed in interaction and are not always straightforwardly
linked to a single language or language variety (cf. Sebba & Wootton, 1998). To
date, however, language choice in emotional expression and the affective
function of codeswitching have been examined only as a peripheral issue in
codeswitching studies (cf. Breitborde, 1998; Grosjean, 1982; Scheu, 2000). No

0143-4632/04/02 179-25 $20.00/0 – 2004 A. Pavlenko

J. OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT Vol. 25, No. 2&3, 2004

179
180 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

systematic investigations known to this researcher focus on the influence of

affective factors on language choice in bilingual talk (here and further on the
term ‘bilingual’ will be used in accordance with the common usage in the field
to refer to users of two or more languages).
To examine the role of affective factors in bilingual talk, the present study
focuses on one linguistic space, the private space of the bi- or multilingual
family, where communication is often fraught with emotions, conveyed not
only through prosody or lexical choices, but also through language choices
and codeswitching. The investigation is further narrowed to parental choices
in parent
/child communication, asking in particular what it means for parents
to be raising a child or children in a language different from the one they
themselves were socialised into. Is it true that L1 is the language of emotions
and L2 the language of detachment in parent
/child communication? Do all
bilingual parents prefer their L1 for emotional expression? And if not, how do
bilinguals use their multiple affective repertoires? And is there a language one
can use to get the kids to finally, please, finally clean that room?

Language Choice in Bi- and Multilingual Families

The present study will examine language choices in bi- and multilingual
families, i.e. families where more than one language is used by at least some of
the family members. Two types of choices will be considered: overall and local.
Overall choice will refer here to the language choice or choices consciously
made by the parents for daily communication with the child or children, while
local, or interactional, choices will refer to choices made for particular speech
acts, consciously or spontaneously. Particular attention will be paid to
codeswitching, i.e. choices which diverge from the home language or from
the base language of the interaction.
The overall choice or choices are typically examined in studies of private
language planning (Piller, 2001), language socialisation and language shift.
Clearly, not all families or speakers have the luxury of considering several
choices. Minority speakers who do not speak the majority language do not
have a choice in the matter, nor do poor and less-educated parents who have
few if any resources to help them with native language maintenance. As Piller
(2001) correctly points out, a careful weighting of all options may be most
common in the case of ‘elite bilinguals’, middle- and upper-class professionals
who speak more than one language and are comfortable transmitting these
languages to their children. For other parents, in particular immigrants from
lower-middle-class and working-class backgrounds, what is at issue is not
bilingualism per se but rather minority language maintenance.
Studies conducted to date suggest that parents commonly describe
bilingualism as an investment in the children’s intellectual development,
academic success and wider opportunities in the job market (Döpke, 1992;
Piller, 2001). Parents invested in the transmission of the mother tongue
underscore the importance of teaching the children their linguistic, cultural
and religious heritage, and maintaining cross-generational communication
and family ties (Mills, 2004; Okita, 2002; Pease-Alvarez, 2003; Schecter &
Bayley, 1997; Tuominen, 1999). Those who decide against or fail to transmit
Language Choice and Emotions in Parent
/Child Communication 181

their native language, talk about the challenges involved in such maintenance
in the presence of a powerful majority language (Mills, 2004; Pease-Alvarez,
2003). These parents may also display negative attitudes towards the country
of origin and/or its child-rearing traditions (Okita, 2002) and see language
shift as a way to break loose of the past and advance socially and economically
(Constantinidou, 1994; Gal, 1978; Mascarenhas-Keyes, 1994; McDonald, 1994).
It is clear that some of these reasons are linked to speakers’ emotional attitudes
and investments, yet, until now, the role of emotions in parents’ linguistic
choices has remained largely in the background.
Local choices, made within specific speech events, are commonly examined
in studies of bilingual language socialisation conducted from an interactional
sociolinguistic perspective (cf. Döpke, 1992; Lanza, 1997; Zentella, 1997). The
findings of these studies show that communicative purposes, linguistic
competence and dominance of the interlocutors, interactional setting, com-
munity norms and status of the parent’s language, are all among factors that
impact parental language choice in bilingual families. Since the main goal of
these studies is to understand the relationship between parental language
strategies and children’s linguistic development, only a few have paid
attention to the interplay between language and emotions.
In one study of the Puerto-Rican community in the USA, fathers were
shown to favour Spanish to reprimand, discipline and scold the children,
while mothers gave short commands in English (Hoffman, 1971). In another
study, a Puerto-Rican mother in New York City spoke to the children in
Spanish when she was angry: her Spanish comments were commands or
threats that followed the English versions and served to underscore them
(Zentella, 1997: 75). A similar behaviour was observed in German immigrant
families in Brazil, where German was used more often for scolding the
children, and Portuguese for songs and storytelling (Heye, 1975). In turn, in a
Mexican-descent family in Texas, bilingual parents favoured English as an
overall language of family communication, with Spanish reserved for
endearments, such as mijita (my daughter) (Schecter & Bayley, 1997). And in
bilingual Aymara
/Spanish households in Bolivia, parents drew on both sets of
linguistic resources to communicate emotions (Luykx, 2003). Spanish was used
by the Aymara parents for tender ‘baby talk’, characterised by high pitch,
childish pronunciation, and the use of affectionate names, such as wawita (little
baby) or mamita (little mother). Aymara was used for scolding, disciplining
and commands. In the Aymara household where the researcher had stayed,
the mother’s commands to her children were almost always in Aymara.
Spanish commands were often followed by their Aymara equivalents, or
combined a Spanish verb root with the Aymara imperative suffix, e.g.
‘Dejamcha!’ (‘put that down’, deja (Spanish)//m/imperative (Aymara)//
cha/sentence suffix (Aymara)).
Together, these studies suggest that bi- and multilingual parents are often
engaged in multilingual parenting, with L1 used somewhat more often for
disciplining, reprimands and scolding (Heye, 1975; Hoffman, 1971; Luykx,
2003; Zentella, 1997). Specific language use patterns may however be hard to
pin down, as L2 may also be used for disciplining and commands (Hoffman,
1971), while affection may be expressed both in L1 (Schecter & Bayley, 1997)
182 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

and L2 (Luykx, 2003). Consequently, rather than looking for language choice
patterns, I will focus on affective factors that influence language choice,
including that for emotional expression.
Why should these factors require a separate investigation, one may ask?
Several reasons may justify such an enterprise, but one stands out to me as
primary: a linguist’s responsibility to parents who are or would like to raise
their children bilingually and who are often offered contradictory advice on
the issue. Elizabeth Lanza (1997: 75), an American linguist living in Norway
and an expert in childhood bilingualism, recalls:
Once I encountered a French woman, married to a Norwegian, who was
addressing her 18-month-old child (apparently begrudgingly) in non-
native Norwegian. After conferring with her husband, I discovered that
at a recent visit to the paediatrician, the parents were given advice that. . .
it was the best for the child to acquire one language first. As this advice
came from the mouth of an ‘expert’, the parents felt they should comply,
a situation which especially rendered the mother quite unhappy.
Similar to this mother, other parents may also find themselves in situations
where they are using the second language reluctantly and are unable to
establish an emotional connection in it. Not surprisingly, bilingual family
newsletters, websites and practical guides for parents of bilingual children (cf.
Baker, 2000; Cunningham-Andersson & Andersson, 1999; Harding & Riley,
1986; Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2003a) often emphasise the emotional force of the
L1, suggesting that communicating with the child in the L1 would ensure a
maximally close relationship. Yet many parents are also apprehensive about
advice such as ‘Mom, speak only your native language; Dad, do the same.’
(Tokouhama-Espinosa, 2003b: 113). The monolingual standards underlying
such recommendations belie many parents’ experiences of establishing a
connection in a second language or through the use of two or more languages.
To address future parents’ questions and concerns about establishing an
emotional connection with their children, the present study will examine bi-
and multilingual parents’ experiences and perceptions of emotional reality of
bilingual family talk.

Emotions in Bilingual Family Talk: Theoretical Framework

In order to examine the role of emotions in language choice and code-
switching in bilingual family talk, I will approach the relationship between
language and emotions from two distinct perspectives. The first perspective
highlights perceived language emotionality, i.e. parents’ perceptions of emotion-
ality of their respective languages. Previous research suggests that these
perceptions are grounded in neurophysiological reality, in particular in
autobiographic memory associations and in levels of autonomic positive and
negative arousal elicited by a particular language (see also Harris’ paper, this
issue). Lamendella (1977) and later Paradis (1994) have argued that because
the first language is always acquired in a natural environment, through
perceptual and affective channels, it becomes integrated into the limbic
system, which, among other things, is responsible for emotions, drives, desires
Language Choice and Emotions in Parent
/Child Communication 183

and motivation. In the process of first language socialisation, L1 words and

phrases acquire affective connotations and become integrated with emotion-
ally charged memories. Some of these links are positive, while other words
become taboos enforced by parents and other socialising agents (Dewaele, this
issue). The forbidden words and topics, as well as words and phrases linked to
traumatic and emotional experiences, become ‘conditioned stimuli for
affective arousal’ (Bond & Lai, 1986: 180). In contrast, in a language learned
in adulthood, even in a natural environment, the speaker may escape strict
socialisation common for L1 acquisition and thus experience less arousal in
response to L2 words and expressions. As a result, swearing or retelling a
painful childhood memory in L2 may be easier because L2 words ‘are devoid
of associative triggers leading to the emotive soil in which the affective roots of
these memories lie’ (Aragno & Schlachet, 1996: 25).
Consequently, it is hypothesised that the study participants may have
different perceptions of emotionality of their languages, depending on the
context of their acquisition and use. They present a particularly interesting
group for exploring this issue, because most are raising the children in more
than one language, and some in a language different from their own L1. As a
result of being parents, as well as being in a relationship with a speaker of
another language, and/or living and working in another language, they have
undergone
/ or are still in the process of
/ intense second language
socialisation, where they perform simultaneously as agents (socialising their
children) and subjects (being socialised by children and partners). This case
allows us to ask: can intense second language socialisation influence
perceptions of language emotionality or does L1 forever remain the language
of one’s emotions?
The second perspective taken in this paper is a discursive one; it shifts the
focus from the relationship between languages and emotions to languages of
emotions, i.e. speakers’ affective repertoires and emotion discourses. Affective
repertoires here refer to linguistic means for emotional expression offered by a
particular language. Some of these means may overlap in the two or more
languages in question, for instance, in the lexical domain of emotion or
emotion-laden terms (e.g. love/amor ). Others may be language-specific:
Among these are certain intonational contours, vocalisations, such as the
French [bz] that signals irritation, or the Russian [fu:] which signals disgust,
morphosyntactic means, such as the Russian or Polish diminutives (for
examples, see Wierzbicka, this issue), or language-specific terms, such as the
Spanish cariño (affect, love, tenderness) or the Japanese amae (a feeling of
dependence on someone). These differences allow us to inquire whether
parental choices are also influenced by linguistic means of affect performance
offered by their respective languages.
In turn, emotion discourses provide a cultural lens through which emotional
expression is located, assessed and interpreted within a network of moral
order and power relations in a particular speech community. Some speech
communities may put more value on direct emotional expression, while others
prefer the indirect means, framing direct expression as inappropriate. Take for
instance the US democratic primary election of 2004. Before the primaries
began, former governor of Vermont Howard Dean had emerged as the number
184 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

one contender in the polls. Yet his ‘shrill’ election-night speech in Iowa, which
ended with a high-pitch frat-boy scream, raised concerns about his tempera-
ment and judgment, and ultimately cost him the election. The sound bites
from the speech were replayed time and again in the media, yet no
commentary was ever offered as to why the speech was considered
inappropriate. Rather, the journalists assumed that they and their audience
share a common cultural framework
/ one that places negative value on
excessive emotionality in political speeches. While it is not hard to think of
other times and places where shrill speeches from political leaders were the
norm rather than the exception, in a culture that favours ‘cool’ and reserved
behaviour (Stearns, 1994), high pitch and shrill voice coming from a middle-
aged man vying for the highest office in the country became markers of an
unstable emotional state, undesirable for a potential president.
Emotion discourses may also serve to construct particular languages as
more or less emotional, either in terms of chronology (e.g. mother tongue
versus languages learned later in life) or typology (Italian and Spanish
constructed as warm and affectionate and German and Dutch as cold and
harsh). A consideration of emotion discourses which frame certain behaviours
as legitimate and desirable and others as strange and inappropriate, allows us
to ask whether parental language choices are also influenced by ways in which
emotionality is valued and expressed in their speech communities.

Research Design and Questions

The present study analyses data collected through an on-line ‘Bilingualism
and emotions’ webquestionnaire which contained 34 questions (Dewaele &
Pavlenko, 2001). The questionnaire was advertised through several listservs
and informal contacts with colleagues around the world. A total of 1039
multilinguals contributed to the database (731 females, 308 males). The
following sociobiographical information was collected from the participants:
gender, age, education level, ethnic group, occupation, languages known,
dominant language(s), chronological order of language acquisition, context of
acquisition, age of onset, frequency of use, typical interlocutors, and self-rated
proficiency scores for speaking, comprehending, reading and writing in the
languages in question. The first part of the questionnaire consisted of closed
questions with five-point Likert scales, the second consisted of open-ended
questions where the participants had to write a response. Language choice
was determined for self- and other-directed speech, for emotional and
nonemotional speech.
Two types of answers are analysed in the study. The first type involves
answers to closed questions about the frequency with which the participants
use their languages with the children in general, and in particular to discipline
and praise them (rated on the Likert scale from ‘never’ (1) to ‘all the time’ (5)).
As the questionnaire did not exclusively target parents, these questions were
answered by 389 participants only. Their responses are analysed quantita-
tively.
The second type involves answers to five open-ended questions which
asked about: (1) the weight of the phrase ‘I love you’ in their respective
Language Choice and Emotions in Parent
/Child Communication 185

languages; (2) their linguistic preferences for emotion terms and terms of
endearment; (3) emotional significance of their languages; (4) language of the
home and language in which they argue in; and (5) ease or difficulty of
discussing emotional topics in languages other than the first. Notably, none of
these questions involved parent
/child communication per se and did not
require the participants to comment on it. Hence, I analyse responses from 141
participants who addressed this issue spontaneously. These answers are
analysed through a combination of thematic analysis and discourse analysis,
with the focus on lexical choices made by the respondents to rationalise their
linguistic preferences.
Among the 141 participants, there were 101 women (72%) and 40 men
(28%); these numbers mirror the gender distribution in the larger sample of
389 and in the overall database. The ages of the respondents ranged between
28 and 67 years of age. All respondents were college-educated: BA, 35 (25%);
MA, 43 (30%); PhD, 63 (45%). These characteristics also mirror the distribution
in the larger sample and in the database (see also Dewaele, this issue). Clearly,
these respondents are not representative of the more general bi- and multi-
lingual population
/ the overwhelming majority are well educated ‘elite
bilinguals’, people who have time and resources to invest in searching for
information about and reflecting upon issues in bilingual child-rearing. The
overrepresentation of well educated professionals is easily explained by the
advertising procedure (our informal contacts were other PhDs who in turn
knew other language professionals; similarly the listservs we advertised on
were most likely to be read by well educated parents who knew how to find
these resources). In addition, the fact that this was a webquestionnaire limited
the population to participants with easy access to the internet. The dominance
of female respondents is perhaps best explained by the topic itself, as it is quite
possible that as a group women may be more comfortable discussing
emotions, parenting and relationships. This overrepresentation of women
and PhDs undoubtedly skews the sample and suggests the need for better
balance in the future. At the same time, it does not devalue the findings of the
study, as, regardless of their education level and material resources, all bi- and
multilingual mothers and fathers deal with some of the same issues, struggling
to maintain an emotional connection with their children across cultural,
linguistic and generational boundaries.
In terms of the number of languages spoken by each individual, the sample
consists of 17 bilinguals (12%), 35 trilinguals (25%), 34 speakers of four
languages (24%) and 55 speakers of five or more languages (39%). Twenty-five
L1s are represented in the sample, with the number of speakers of each
language as the L1 as follows: English /58; French /17; German /14;
Spanish /13; Dutch /7; Finnish/6; Italian /6; Swedish /5; Russian /4;
Hungarian/3; Portuguese /3; Slovene /3; Romanian /3; Welsh /3; Serbo-
Croatian /2; Bengali /1; Chinese /1; Danish /1; Greek/1; Hebrew/1;
Japanese /1; Oriya /1; Polish /1; Sindhi /1 and Slovak/1 (with 16 people
bilingual from birth).
Altogether, the multilinguals in the sample spoke 47 languages: Arabic,
ASL, Basque, Bengali, Bosnian, Breton, Burmese, Catalan, Cantonese, Danish,
Duri, Dutch, English, Farsi, Finnish, French, German (including Swiss German
186 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

and High German), Greek, Hebrew, Hindhi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian,

Japanese, Latin, Latvian, Malay, Mandarin, Navajo, Norwegian, Nugunu,
Oriya, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Sindhi, Slovak,
Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese and Welsh.
Two research questions are asked in the data analysis:
(1) What emotion-related factors influence parental language choice in bi-
and multilingual families?
(2) Do perceptions of language emotionality change in the process of
language socialisation?

Results
Factors affecting parental language choice
Quantitative analyses of responses from 389 participants identify language
dominance as the key factor affecting language choices, overall and in
emotional expression. A one-way ANOVA with language dominance as
independent variable (three groups: L1 dominant, L1/LX dominant, LX
dominant, with LX referring to any language that is not L1) and child-directed
language use in L1 as dependent variable showed a highly significant effect of
language dominance (F(2, 389) /69.6, p B/0.0001, h2 /0.261) on language
choice. This means that if parents are dominant in the L1, they are most likely
to use the L1 in communication with the children, but if they are dominant in
LX or in two or more languages, they are less likely to use the L1. This pattern
is evident in Table 1, which summarises language choices for 141 respondents,
dividing them into three subgroups based on language dominance. We can see
that in each subgroup the highest number of respondents opted to use the
language(s) in which they were dominant. Among the 141 respondents, only
one parent chose to use LX while dominant in L1, and there are no

Table 1 Respondents’ language dominance and language choices

Language dominance Language used in the family Parents in the sample

L1 L1 37 respondents (26%)
LX 1 respondent (0.7%)
L1/LX 25 respondents (18%)
LX L1
LX 10 respondents (7%)
L1/LX 4 respondents (3%)
L1/LX L1 23 respondents (16%)
LX 11 respondents (8%)
L1/LX 30 respondents (21.3%)
Language Choice and Emotions in Parent
/Child Communication 187

respondents who see themselves as dominant in LX and use exclusively L1

with the children.
A MANOVA revealed that there was also a significant and strong L1
dominance effect for praise and disciplining (Wilks l/0.71, F(2, 251) /22.7,
p B/0.0001, h2 /0.154), suggesting that language dominance strongly impacts
language choice for emotion speech acts as well. An analysis of the between-
subjects effects suggests that the effect is highly significant both for praise
(F(2, 251) /46.63, p B/0.0001, h2 /0.271) and for disciplining (F(2, 251) /37.06,
p B/0.0001, h2 /0.228). According to Cohen’s (1992) criteria for assessing the
predictive power of a set of independent variables, the h2 value for
disciplining indicates a medium effect size, while the higher h2 value for
praising indicates a large effect size. This means that parents dominant in L1
and LX, or in LX, are somewhat more likely to use the L1 for disciplining their
children and LX for praising them (see Figure 1).
How did perceived language emotionality contribute to their linguistic
choices? The average value of perceived emotionality of the L1 is 4.31,
compared to 2.82 for the L2, 1.98 for the L3 and 1.61 for the L4, which suggests
that L1 is much more emotional for the participants than their other languages.
Statistically there appears to be no relationship in L1 between language
emotionality and language choice (F (4, 382) /0.047, p/ns, h2 /0.005). Rather,
the choice of L1 appears to be strongly governed by dominance and there is no
statistical relationship in L1 between dominance and perceived emotionality
(F(2, 384) /0.86, p /ns, h2 /0.004), as even LX-dominant parents continue to
perceive their L1 as highly emotional. An ANOVA revealed, however, a weak
effect of perceived emotionality of the L2 on the overall choice of that language
(F(4, 351) /2.00, p /0.094, h2 /0.022) (see Figure 2), which means that the
parents are more likely to select this language if they perceive it as more
emotional.
A MANOVA showed a significant effect of perceived emotionality on the
choice of the L2 for disciplining and praising (Wilks l /0.89, F (2, 213) /3.22,
p B/0.001, h2 /0.057) (see Figure 2). An analysis of the between-subjects effects

Figure 1 Influence of language dominance on parental language choice

188 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Figure 2 Influence of perceived language emotionality on parental language choice

suggests that the effect is highly significant for disciplining (F(4, 214) /6.15,
p B/0.0001, h2 /0.103) and significant for praising (F (4, 214) /4.53, p B/0.002,
h2 /0.078). However the effect sizes are small. In contrast, in L3 and L4, a
MANOVA showed no overall effect of perceived emotionality on language
choice for praising and disciplining (L3: Wilks l/0.96, F (2, 149) /0.67, p/ns,
h2 /0.018; L4: Wilks l /0.90, F (2, 102) /1.37, p /ns, h2 /0.05). A marginally
significant between-subjects effect emerged however in the L4 for disciplining
(F(4, 102) /2.42, p /0.053, h2 /0.086) (the L5 group was too small to carry out
a reliable statistical analysis). These results suggest that perceived language
emotionality particularly affects the choice of L2 for emotional speech acts,
such as praising and disciplining. General language use seems less influenced
by the perceived emotionality of the L2. The absence of significant relations in
the L3 and L4 (despite similar trends) is probably linked to the lower average
values of perceived emotionality in these languages (which limits the size of
possible individual differences) and their extremely low frequency of use. The
average use of the L1 with children is 4.3, compared with 2.8 for the L2, 1.9 for
the L3 and 1.5 for the L4. These values are so low that their link with the
independent variables can at best be tenuous.
Overall then, according to the quantitative analysis, perceived language
emotionality does not play a very significant role in overall language choice for
family communication
/ this choice is mostly affected by language dom-
inance. In other words, parents dominant in LX may still see their L1 as highly
emotional yet prefer the LX to communicate with their children. On the other
hand, perceived language emotionality does play a role in choosing L2 overall
and in particular for praising and disciplining. This means that parents are
more likely to choose a language learned later in life if they see it as more
emotional. Needless to say, these results do not point to a cause-and-effect
relationship because higher perceived emotionality may in fact be an outcome
of more frequent language use and also because language dominance or
emotionality are not objective phenomena existing independently of human
agency and social context. Rather, they are corollaries of complex linguistic
Language Choice and Emotions in Parent
/Child Communication 189

trajectories of individuals who make choices about what language to use,

when and with whom. To understand how these choices are made, we will
have to go beyond statistical trends towards participants’ own words.

Parenting in L1
The qualitative analysis of the data suggests that the statistics may not be
telling the whole story and that perceived language emotionality is an
important factor for many parents, both in overall language choices and in
choices made for particular emotion speech acts. As far as the overall choice is
concerned, perceived emotionality of L1 appears to strengthen the conviction
of parents who reproduce their own language socialisation experiences:
(1) French (L1) it is the language in which I best feel/perceive (and use)
the connotations carried by emotion terms. Plus when speaking to my
son I think they are part of a mother
/child affective pattern I reproduce
because I experienced it as sweet and wants to transmit it in the same
language my mother uses with me. (Pauline, 31, French
/Dutch
/English,
dominant in L1 French, uses L1 French
/ here and further on references
to language use imply language use with children, A.P. All quotes are
reproduced with original spelling, A.P.)
Note that Pauline begins by justifying her choice as a rational one through
her superior linguistic competence in connotations of L1 emotion terms.
Although she adds that she would like to recreate her own ‘sweet’ childhood
experience with her child, she couches this desire in technical terms borrowed
from linguistics and psychology, such as ‘reproduction of a mother
/child
affective pattern’. In doing so, she exhibits a concern with presenting a
rational, rather than a purely emotional, persona in her response. We will see
later that this concern is shared by several other respondents.
At the same time, Pauline is explicit about affective reasons which shaped
her language choice with her son. In contrast, the majority of L1-dominant
respondents who are raising their children in the L1, take L1 emotionality for
granted and rarely comment on it. This issue mostly comes to the foreground
for respondents who attempt, at least initially, to use the LX, the language of
their partner and/or environment. For Ioanna and Anne Marie below, this
private language planning has failed as the two women found themselves
unable to interact with their children in a language that wasn’t the language of
their own childhood and did not have appropriate affective connotations:
(2) I guess my preference is L1 again
/ in English it just doesn’t feel right
somehow. When my daughter was born I was planning to start talking
English to her as soon as possible (to comfort her when she cried etc.) but
found out I couldn’t
/ I either didn’t know the words or they didn’t feel
good enough to express what I felt. (Ioanna, 37, Polish
/English
/Russian,
dominant in L1 Polish and L2 English, uses L1 Polish with the child in
the L2 environment)
I have a preference for French. When my children were born I wanted to
use English just so that they would be accustomed to it from an early age
190 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

but I just couldn’t. It sounded untrue. (Anne Marie, 36, French
/Dutch
/

English, dominant in L1 French and L3 English, uses L1 French with the
children in the L1 environment)
To clarify their perceptions of LX words sounding hollow, the two mothers
appeal to the notions of right and wrong (‘it just doesn’t feel right somehow’),
true and untrue (‘it sounded untrue’) or good and bad (‘they [the words]
didn’t feel good enough to express what I felt’). These experiences contradict
the advice frequently given to bilingual parents to decide who is going to
speak which language to the child ‘before the child is born because for many
people it is extremely difficult to change the language you speak to a person
once you established a relationship in one language’ (Cunningham-Andersson
& Andersson, 1999: 18). ‘Establishing a relationship’ with a newborn in LX did
not prove feasible for either woman, both had to reconsider their original
linguistic choices. Their comments suggest that while in the majority of the
cases issues other than emotionality determine parental language choice,
emotionality (or rather lack of it) may lead a parent to reject a particular
language, at least for a while, or to feel unhappy about using LX and appeal to
L1 for emotional expression, including baby talk. Susan Fries (1998: 133), an
American woman living in France and married to a Frenchman, remembers
how surprised she was when her husband decided to adopt English as the
family language:
Despite my fluency in French, had we been living in the US I would
never have spoken French to my children initially. Since I feel closer to
my emotions in English, to this day I feel awkward cooing to babies in a
language other than English.
Other respondents concur, pointing out that trying to create an emotional
connection in a second language feels ‘fake’ and ‘unnatural’, as if one were
‘acting’:
(3) Welsh is the language which is the one that feels natural for
expressing feelings. Expressing endearment in English has a false
‘acting’ ring to it. I would inevitably talk to babies and animals in
Welsh. (Maureen, 47, Welsh
/English, uses L1 Welsh)
Expressing strong emotions in a language other than my mother tongue
French seems artificial. (Stephanie, 50, French
/Dutch
/English
/
German, uses L1 French)
Some participants who reverted back to the L1 after having lived in the LX
for a while, comment on the ‘healing’ properties of this shift, saying that
parenthood allowed them to ‘reconnect’ with the language of their childhood
and feel more ‘whole’:
(4) . . .since I started talking German at home with my children again I
guess I’m a linguistically more integrated person again. (Ingrid, 32,
German
/English
/French
/Swedish, uses L1 German and L4 Swedish)
Language Choice and Emotions in Parent
/Child Communication 191

English is MY language
/ I’ve reconnected with the language and being

English since I’ve had children. (Laura, 36, English
/Catalan
/Spanish,
uses L1 English in the L2/L3 environment)
These and similar responses suggest that perceived language emotionality,
in particular emotionality of the L1, may affect the overall language choice in
parent
/child communication. It appears a particularly important factor in the
use of terms of endearment. Several respondents made links between their
childhood experiences and language choice for the terms of endearment,
suggesting that discursive histories imbue L1 words with memories and affect
and make them a more meaningful choice even when the L2 is otherwise the
language of the family:
(5) English comes more spontaneous. I use the same words for my
children that my parents used with me. (Mary Ellen, 41, English
/Italian,
uses both languages)
I probably tend to think of parent-to-child or grandparent-to-child terms
of endearment primarily in German since those are the terms I heard
from my parents and grandparents. Some English words for emotions
are a bit ugly
/ ‘infatuation’ for example. So are some German ones
come to think of it. (Konrad, 43, German
/English
/French, dominant in
L2 English, uses mostly L2 English)
Some participants go even further and state, like Susan Fries (1998) above,
that they are unable to use the terms of endearment in LX, precisely because
these terms are not permeated with interactional history, meaning and affect.
In the words of one bilingual mother, to use LX endearment terms would be
almost like offering the children ‘emotions of a different person’:
(6) My children get all the ‘Schatzilein’ and ‘Spaetzchen’ ‘Liebchen’ and
whatever from me. But to use English terms of endearment seems almost
wrong to me as if I was doing something forbidden. I am not an English
mother and if I were to say ‘darling’ a lot I would give them the
emotions of a different person. In my mothering I definitely feel German.
(Bertha, 38, German
/English, uses mostly L1 German)
I know how to express the deepest and the most subtle feelings in my
mother tongue English because most of my present loved ones are
English speakers and because the terms are freighted with lots of
childhood and later history for me. The words ‘sweetheart ’ ‘honey’ etc.
come very easily while I have never been able to use standard terms of
endearment such as ‘aelskling’ (darling) or ‘soetnos’ (honey-bun) in
Swedish even with lovers. (Edith, 44, English
/German
/Swedish, uses
L1 English)
What is particularly intriguing about the comments made by Bertha, Edith
and earlier Konrad, is the perception of LX terms as false, ‘forbidden’ or ‘ugly’.
These perceptions are echoed in other responses which contrast the ‘mean-
ingful’, ‘sincere’ and ‘natural’ L1 endearment terms with ‘silly’ and ‘false’ LX
terms, used to convey irony or distance:
192 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

(7) I have a preference for L1 [Russian] terms because they seem more
sincere and natural. Terms from L2 [English] seem to be a little bit silly
sometimes sound false. For example ‘honey’ or ‘pumpkin’ or ‘honey
bun’ etc. I just translate them into Russian and then they are just funny.
When I want to say something lovingly to my family I definitely use
Russian terms. I can use English terms ironically or just jokingly.
(Natasha, 31, Russian
/English, lives in the USA, husband is a speaker
of L1 but children favour L2)
I guess Spanish is more intimate whenever I want my children to
understand or behave in certain way specially true when I want to
express tenderness. (Alejandro, 32, Spanish
/English
/French, dominant
in L1 Spanish, uses Spanish, English and French with children who go to
an American school in a Spanish-speaking country)
All in all, we can see that the perception of the superior emotionality of L1 may
influence both the overall choice of language (seen in cases in which LX was
chosen initially) and the choice of language for terms of endearment. We also
see that speakers of different languages, unfamiliar with each other, are
surprisingly alike in the way they word their responses. The choice of L1 is
presented as ‘sincere’, ‘intimate’, ‘spontaneous’, ‘right’ and ‘natural’, while the
choice of LX, at least as far as the terms of endearment go, is constructed as
‘forbidden’, ‘false’, ‘artificial’, ‘untrue’, ‘silly’, ‘funny’ and ‘wrong’. This
consistency of lexical choices reflects a common experience of many bilinguals
for whom the translation equivalents of their emotion-laden words are not
‘equal’. The L1 terms of endearment, linked to autobiographic memories,
appear to elicit higher levels of positive arousal and mental imagery, perceived
by the speakers as the feelings of tenderness, intimacy, sincerity, spontaneity
and ‘wholesomeness.’ In contrast, LX terms, at least those without a discursive
history, appear to elicit lower levels of positive arousal and few if any
associations, hence the feelings of dissonance and artificiality. Consequently,
L1 words, grounded in emotional autobiographic experience, are viewed as
‘real’ and LX ones as ‘play’ words which do not invoke the same intense
feelings (Pavlenko, forthcoming). These perceptions explain why the French
woman encountered by Lanza (1997) felt reluctant to use Norwegian with her
18-month-old child.
At the same time, a closer analysis of the respondents’ backgrounds
suggests that this perception may not necessarily be common to all bi- and
multilinguals. All of the respondents who commented on L1 emotionality are
speakers of standard varieties of Western languages: French, German, English,
Polish, Welsh, Russian and Spanish. It is quite possible that what we see here is
not a phenomenon that exists across the board but rather a reflection of
romantic ideology of first language primacy, associated with European
languages. It is not clear whether speakers of non-Western languages, or
those who grew up speaking a dialect rather than a standard variety feel (or
rather are ‘taught to feel’ the same way). The ideology of first language
primacy is inextricably linked with another romantic Western ideology, that of
the mother
/child relationship characterised by a strong emotional attachment
and special intimacy. Scholarship on language socialisation across cultures
Language Choice and Emotions in Parent
/Child Communication 193

shows that the insistence on emotional communicative bond with infant

children, created through baby talk, may also be a uniquely Western
phenomenon (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986).
The romantic discourse of first language primacy naturalises the L1 as the
‘right choice’, the only reasonable language to use with one’s child, at least in
emotional communication, and allows parents to legitimise their insistence on
using the L1. At the same time, this discourse may be used to tie speakers to
particular languages against their will and to penalise them for making new
allegiances. The negative impact of this discourse is particularly visible in the
cases of minority women, who refuse to transmit their native Breton, Scottish
Gaelic, Welsh or Sami, and are positioned as ‘language killers’, blamed for the
language demise (Romaine, 1999: 180). Let us examine now what happens
when parents choose to use LX, overall and for emotional expression
/ does
this experience make them feel detached, ‘fake’, and ‘artificial’?

Parenting in LX
A closer look at the data reveals that the LX is not necessarily perceived as
the language of detachment by respondents who are married to LX speakers
and/or are bringing up children in that language. As seen in responses below,
daily communication in LX, with one’s partner and/or children, led many
participants to forge emotional links to their new language:
(8) Hebrew [is my favorite language for emotional expression] because
it is the one I use most with my children and husband. (Camille, 40,
French
/English
/Dutch
/Hebrew
/Italian, dominant in L1 French, uses
L4 Hebrew with the children)
L4 [Polish] is my second family language it is one of the three languages
of my children my partner’s native language it is of exclusively personal
or emotional significance for me (i.e. not very useful outside that
context). (Liliane, 34, German
/English
/French
/Polish
/Dutch)
I spoke mostly Spanish to my husband until we had children. Then we
spoke English when the children were present because we wanted them
to learn English and we were in a Spanish-speaking country. . .
[Nowadays], with my daughters I speak mostly English because that
is what I have always spoken with them. But I might switch to Spanish
if I am really emotional. (Francis, 56, English
/Spanish
/French
/
Portuguese)
Here, Francis, a native speaker of English, who spoke English to her
daughters most of her life, sees herself switching to her L2 Spanish in
emotional situations. And for Liliane and Camille it is their L4, which also
happens to be the language of their partners, that became the favourite
language of emotional expression and a language of utmost emotional
significance.
The socialisation process affects not only the overall language use but also
the use of particular emotion speech acts and terms, including the terms of
194 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

endearment, which some prefer to coo and whisper in LX, sometimes

regardless of their overall competence in the language:
(9) I tend to use Italian endearments to my husband and children
because it relates more to the reality of my every day life. (Patricia, 49,
English
/Italian, uses L2 Italian and some L1 English with her children,
lives in Italy)
Even though we speak mostly English at home, [I prefer] the words
(terms of endearment) for which my husband only uses Farsi and he
uses them a lot with me and our 4-year old son. So those are the words I
use and prefer as well. He also says them with such emotion and we
have been living together for ten years so I got very use to the words
they are my words too. (Aida, 33, Spanish
/English
/French
/Farsi, uses
predominantly L2 English)
It appears that a prolonged and intense interactional history of LX
communication, which engages the speaker’s emotions and thus the limbic
system, results in a shift in the bilingual mental lexicon, whereby LX lexical
items acquire affective connotations, imagery and episodic associations, and
thus become ‘their’ words. Some are very conscious of this unique aspect of
second language socialisation in adulthood, which Shelley names ‘emotional
internalisation’:
(10) I am very aware of the emotional internalisation process that
happened as I became more proficient. The language moved inside me
and the more it did the more I got the connotations of my vocabulary
and the easier retrieval became for speech. It became more vivid
internally. (Shelley, 47, English
/French, uses L1 English with some L2
French)
A similar feeling is expressed by an Afrikaans-speaking woman married to
an English speaker in de Klerk’s (2001: 207) study of linguistic intermarriage in
South Africa:
I always had hoped that maybe we could stay a two language family,
that I could keep alive my [Afrikaans] side. There was a point where I
felt guilty that I wasn’t doing it, and then it’s not so much that I gave up,
but I stopped feeling guilty. That was the point at which I started
developing an English language of the heart, and was able to use English
endearments with the children.
For some participants, the secondary socialisation and resulting shift in
language dominance are also accompanied by L1 attrition, including in the
domain of emotional expression:
(11) I cannot understand why I have lost the ability to express most of
feelings in French but it has happened. Somehow it seems easier [in
English]; doing it in French requires more effort, concentration and
involvement. (Helene, 32, French
/English
/German, L1 French, domi-
nant in L2 English)
Language Choice and Emotions in Parent
/Child Communication 195

Importantly, however, Helene has lost the ease of expression, not necessa-
rily the perception of her L1 French as highly emotional. Dewaele’s (2004)
analysis of the webquestionnaire responses from self-reported L1 attriters
suggests that perceived L1 attrition had no effect on the perceived emotion-
ality of the L1. Rather, what we see is that in the process of second language
socialisation these respondents have shifted the perception of emotionality of
their LX and have formed multiple emotional connections. It is not surprising
then that while some participants have a favourite language of emotional
expression, be it L1 or LX, others are comfortable expressing their emotions in
two or more languages:
(12) with my parents and children English seems to be deeper
emotionally while with my partner Hebrew seems more emotional.
Until our children were born we spoke only Hebrew. (Elana, 29,
English
/Hebrew, born in the US, lives in Israel, uses L1 English)
My second and third language [Dutch and English] have become my
dominant languages. therefore it is natural to use them for emotional
topics. (Christine, 36, French
/Dutch
/English
/Spanish, married to a
speaker of Dutch, uses L2 Dutch and L3 English)
English is the first language that comes to mind with my immediate
family so that is my preference but I share love with dear friends whose
first language is Spanish so that must be ranked a close second. As an
example when my daughter was in Spain or Puerto Rico and I was home
in the U.S. we usually used Spanish over the phone to express our love
and now that she’s nearby in Connecticut we’re back to English most of
the time. With my sons or parents I automatically use English but with
my Spanish-speaking friends or bilingual daughter Spanish is usually
easier or we may jump back and forth. (Laura, 51, English
/Spanish, uses
L1 English and L2 Spanish)
We can see that for Elana, emotionality and language choice depend on the
interlocutor
/ her L1 English works better with her parents and children,
while her L2 Hebrew seems more emotional with her husband, who was the
primary agent of her second language socialisation. In turn, for Laura
language choice for emotional expression depends on the context and the
interlocutors
/ Spanish is chosen to talk to bilingual friends and daughter, in
particular when the daughter calls home from Spain or Puerto Rico. And
Christine favours two languages learned later in life, rather than her native
Dutch.
The comments presented in this section highlight two important findings:
(1) second language socialisation may affect both perceived language
emotionality and language preference for emotional expression; and (2) as a
result, many bi- and multilinguals are comfortable expressing their emotions
in more than one language. In other words, while bilingual parents prefer to
perform affect in the language most meaningful and emotional to them, this
language is not always the L1; LX may also function as the language of their
emotions.
196 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Since the respondents are predominantly women, the discussion above may
have created an impression that secondary socialisation is a gendered
phenomenon. Yet this is not the case at all. Fathers may also be socialised
into language by their partners and children and adopt new languages of
emotional expression. Take, for instance, the case of George, L1 speaker of
English, who adopted L3 Czech as the language of reprimands, because it was
most effective, bound to elicit the most visceral response in the children, used
to Czech reprimands from the mother:
(13) We spoke English at home; I spoke English to the children and my
wife spoke Czech. This is why I still often scold them in Czech as I
picked it up from my wife (and when they have to respond in a hurry
they still often react more quickly to a Czech command!). (George, 40,
English
/German
/Czech, uses predominantly L1 English with some L3
Czech)
In fact, some fathers
/ or for that matter, mothers
/ may appeal to the new
language to reinvent themselves and to create a new ‘parenting personality’,
especially if they are not eager to reproduce their own childhood experiences.
Susan Fries (1998), the American woman married to a Frenchman, thus
explained his decision to speak to their children in English:
I believe that using English with his children enabled him to reinvent his
role as a father. His own father had never taken part in day-to-day
childcare, so there was no model to follow. In adopting English, my
husband also adopted certain expressions that he heard me using in my
mothering. As the children got older, however, he began using French
more often, especially for intellectual discussions, when he felt he lacked
the precise vocabulary in English. (p. 133)
Fries’ comments
/ just like the responses above
/ highlight the fact that
many bi- and multilingual parents use more than one language to create an
emotional connection to their children. Let us examine then whether they go
about it randomly, or whether there are certain factors that inform their
linguistic preferences in emotional expression.

Multilingual parenting
The discussion above complicates the role of emotions in bilingual family
talk in three ways. First of all, it suggests that the view of L1 as the language of
emotions and the LX as the language of detachment oversimplifies the
complex reality of bi- or multilingual existence, where second language
socialisation in adulthood may change perceived language emotionality,
language dominance and preferred language of emotional expression.
Secondly, it points to the dissociation between perceived language emotion-
ality and the preferred language of emotional expression. While for many
speakers the most emotional language is also the language they prefer to
express their feelings in, this is not necessarily the case for everyone. Some,
like Helene (11), may still perceive their L1 as emotional, but no longer be at
ease at expressing their feelings in that language. Others may favour the
Language Choice and Emotions in Parent
/Child Communication 197

language of detachment precisely because it allows them to be in control of the

situation. And yet others may express their emotions in more than one
language, sometimes even within the same sentence.
This means in turn that perceived language emotionality is not the only
emotion-related factor that influences language choice in emotional expres-
sion. A thematic analysis of participants’ responses suggests that their
linguistic decision-making is equally influenced by the interlocutors’ interac-
tional histories with each other, their linguistic competence in performance of
affect in the language in question, and by cross-linguistic differences in
affective repertoires and emotion discourses. For instance, for Kumiko, a
native speaker of Japanese, it is easier to express emotions in her L2 English.
English offers her numerous linguistic resources with which she can express
emotions directly, while in Japan emotions are commonly expressed in subtle
and indirect ways, often nonverbally:
(14) It is easier for me to express things emotionally in English since
culturally open expression is condoned. In Japanese culture people are
less open with their feelings and expression is not as open. You learn to
read subtle signs and signals which may not be verbal. For example it is
easier to scold someone in English because the expressions are more
direct. In Japanese scolding may be done through distance-creating acts
rather than verbal scolding. (Kumiko, 40, Japanese
/English, uses both
L1 and L2)
Like Kumiko, some L2 users embrace the possibilities offered by affective
repertoires of the new language. Taciturn Americans, for instance, may
welcome the Japanese ways, while some Japanese speakers may be attracted
to English in part because it offers them new means of emotional self-
expression. In the case of such differences, affective repertoires may become a
deciding factor not only in language choice for particular speech acts but in
fact in the speaker’s whole linguistic trajectory:
(15) What attracted me to England as a young girl was the fact that
people said ‘I love you’ with more ease. There wasn’t such a big thing
about love. Love was more accessible. People ‘sent their love’ on the
phone, signed letters with ‘Love’, sent each other huge Valentine cards.
In Germany ‘Liebe’ was a much more serious business. . . I don’t say ‘Ich
liebe dich’ to my children only ‘Ich hab dich lieb’ but I happily embrace
the opportunity given to me by the English language to say ‘I love you’
to them. (Bertha, 38, German
/English, uses mostly L1 German)
Interestingly, Bertha is not the only one who uses L2 to express her love for
her children:
Finnish emotions are rarely stated explicitly. Therefore it is easier to tell
my children e.g. that I love them in English. . .I rarely tell my children
that I love them in Finnish (L1); it is easier in L2. (Marita, 45, Finnish
/
English
/Swedish, lives in the USA, uses L1 Finnish and L2 English with
the children)
198 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

I say [‘I love you’] to my children all the time and never in Dutch
whereas they are raised both in Dutch (my mother thongue) and English
(my husband’s). I usually speak Dutch to them but I love you is always
said in English. In Dutch it just sounds so unnatural. . .By filling out your
questionnaire I became aware of the fact that I use my native language
for routine but when it comes to expressing my feelings I always do that
in English. I speak Dutch to my kids but when it comes to punishing or
behaviour or emotions I invariably use English and have the impression
it works better. Very strange feeling. (Rita, 31, Dutch
/French
/English)
What we see here is that some parents who move from speech communities
where direct emotional expression is frowned upon to ones where such
expression is not only condoned but encouraged, adopt the values of their new
community and with them, the affective repertoires that allow them to express
their love for the children in an uninhibited fashion. The examples in (15) and
(16) also illustrate another trend visible in the data
/ the tendency to single out
English as the language that makes saying ‘I love you’ possible on the daily
basis. Simultaneously, other respondents, many of them native speakers of
English, complain about its paucity of terms of endearment as compared to
other languages (see also Wierzbicka, this issue):
(17) [I] tend to use L2 and L3 terms of endearment to children
/ just
seems to express what you fell better. no equivalent in English. (Silvia,
36, English
/Malay
/Tamil, uses mostly L1 English with some L2 and L3)
Whilst I use the English terms with my own children they are also very
‘worn out’. I have had my children in Norway and the ‘new terms’ I
have learnt and heard my husband use have a ‘novelty’ which is special
and has emotional connections. In Norway many of the endearment
terms and emotional terms are more ‘appropriate’ for use with children

/ they say what they mean
/ ‘little friend’ and ‘my girl/boy’ instead of
‘dear’, ‘treasure’, ‘darling’ and other callnames in English. (Sophia, 32,
English
/Norwegian, uses L1 English and L2 Norwegian)
[I prefer terms of endearment in] Spanish, because there are more ways
to refer to my son in Spanish endearingly. (Natalia, 28, English
/
Spanish
/French, uses predominantly L1 English)
It is quite possible that what we see is not necessarily a preference for a
particular language, but rather a preference for creative possibilities offered by
the use of languages other than the first where the terms of endearment
acquire ‘sparkle’ and ‘novelty’ (see also Kinginger, this issue). At the same
time, it appears that in some domains, certain languages offer more resources
than others. Thus, while English emerges as a favourite language of the daily ‘I
love you’s, the rich morphosyntactic system makes Spanish a favourite for
terms of endearment (see responses from Francis (8), Laura (12) and Natalia
(16)). In turn, Brenda, who is dominant in L1 English and lives in France, coos
in a creative mix of French and Spanish:
(18) I use Spanish terms of endearment with my daughters but I
Frenchify them like ‘mamita’ which becomes ‘maminette’. French
Language Choice and Emotions in Parent
/Child Communication 199

because I live in France. There is only one term of endearment I use in

English and that’s ‘honey’ but this is mostly phatic and unfelt as in
‘What is it honey?’ ‘Listen Hon. . .’ and actually if I am speaking English
I’ll say ‘Honey Baby’ but ‘mon bébé’ ‘mon amour’ and made-up words
(on French sound patterns) are more frequent. (Brenda, 44, English
/
Spanish
/Portuguese
/French, dominant in L1 English, uses L1 English
and L4 French)
Thus, it appears that affective resources offered by different languages enable
bi- and multilingual parents to make different linguistic choices for distinct
emotion speech acts, and to exercise their creativity making up new terms at
linguistic crossroads. In my own case, I use Russian to shower my son with
elaborate diminutives, since even his name, a paltry Nik or Nikita in English,
can be transformed in Russian into a dazzling array of Nikitochka, Nikochka,
Nikushechka, Nikitushechka and so on. I also marvel at his ushki (dear-little-
ears), ruchki (dear-little-hands), and nosik (dear-little-nose). At the same time, I
tell him that I love him much more often in English than in Russian, simply
because in Russian the direct statement Ia tebia lubliu/‘I love you’ is associated
with the discourse of romantic love and is not commonly used in parent
/child
communication. Furthermore, I do not always maintain strict linguistic
boundaries, allowing our two languages to merge whereby the tender ushki
and ruchki become even more affectionate and humorous ‘little ushkis ’ and
ruchkis .
In short, it appears that in expressing positive affect bilingual parents may
appeal to more than one language, depending on linguistic options offered by
the languages, as well as their own creativity. But what about negative affect?
How much do we think about cross-linguistic options when we fly off the
handle? The earlier research (Heye, 1979; Hoffman, 1971; Luykx, 2003;
Zentella, 1997), as well as quantitative analyses performed in the present
study, suggested that, regardless of language dominance, many bi- and
multilingual parents prefer to perform authority, and thus scold and
discipline, in their native language. This finding is not surprising as this is
the language in which they have the best command of multiple linguistic
repertoires and do not have to stop to think about word choices (thus losing
face at a crucial moment in the interaction):
(18) Italian is a language that I talk with my husband and his family so
there I’m speaking as a wife. I talk German to my children with more
authority and I am probably also more a authority speaking in German
with them. (Monika, 35, German
/Italian
/English, uses L1 German)
As started above I know I have a limited vocabulary within emotional
topics. I realise by doing this questionnaire that I have never ‘learnt’
these words at a course or by reading a textbook and neither have I read
books about emotional issues/psychology/pop psychology etc. I do
read the Norwegian subtitles when watching English films and TV
programmes on TV so I believe I UNDERSTAND what others say about
emotions perfectly but I very rarely can express emotions in Norwegian
as I would in English. I can remember several times when I know I have
200 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

used the wrong expression
/ especially regarding cultural differences.

For example I have said ‘angry’ in Norwegian where I was really only
‘irritated’. I know the word for irritated in Norwegian but when
emotional I feel limited in my vocabulary and concepts. This is rather
difficult since as stated above Norwegians especially with children are a
lot less ‘angry’ and more ‘calm’ than I believe Australians and other
English speakers to be. (Sophia, 32, English
/Norwegian, uses L1 English
and L2 Norwegian)
In fact, as Katherine, below, points out tongue-in-cheek, the lack of
familiarity with LX linguistic means of performing anger may make one
appear a ‘nicer mum’, at least for a while:
(18) The first time I started speaking Danish to my children it felt
strange as if I was acting out somebody else’s role. I was a nicer mum
then too as I lacked the vocabulary to tell them off properly.
Unfortunately time has taught me the necessary words. . . (Katherine,
32, German
/English
/Danish, uses L1 German and L3 Danish with the
children in the L3 environment)
In sum, we can see that language choice for emotion speech acts is governed
not only by language dominance, social context, linguistic competence of the
interlocutors and perceived language emotionality, but also by affective
resources offered by the languages in question (and the speakers’ competence
and level of comfort with these resources). Some languages offer an appealing
array of terms of endearment, others possess diminutives that can be adopted
creatively, and yet others allow parents to utter ‘I love you’ ten times a day.

Conclusions
Together, the quantitative and qualitative analyses of the webquestionnaire
responses allow me to add perceived language emotionality and cross-
linguistic differences in affective repertoires to the list of factors that influence
parental language choice in bi- and multilingual families. The data also
suggest that L1 is not always the language of emotions for bilingual parents.
Adult second language socialisation in the private space of the family may
make other languages seem equally
/ if not more
/ emotional than the first.
This means that parental choices are not an either/or proposition: Many draw
on multiple linguistic repertoires, uttering ‘I love you’ in one language,
endearments in another, and ‘Go clean that room!’ in yet another.
Clearly, these are preliminary results, based on self-reports and not
observations (but see Luykx, 2003; Zentella, 1997). They are, however, still
helpful in a number of ways. Firstly, they call into question the popular and
oversimplified assumption that in late bilingualism, L1 is always the language
of emotions and LX the language of distance or detachment. Secondly, they
point to a dissociation between perceived language emotionality and language
choice for emotional expression. This dissociation allows me to question what
is meant by the ‘language of emotions’, whether it is the language that elicits
the highest negative or positive arousal, or the language which one favours for
Language Choice and Emotions in Parent
/Child Communication 201

emotional expression, as the two are not necessarily the same, especially for L1
attriters.
The qualitative analysis of the responses also points to the underlying
discourse of emotional primacy of the first language whereby the use of the L1
is seen as ‘natural’ and the preference for the LX may appear as ‘strange’ and
requires justification. While this discourse reflects the perceptions of many
speakers, it may also be harmful in ‘locking people into’ a particular language
and making their own verbal choices and behaviours seem ‘strange’ if they opt
for the LX. The discourse of first language primacy oversimplifies the reality of
multilingual existence, where additional language socialisation may change
speakers’ perceptions of language emotionality and allow them to invent new
emotional personae. At the same time, the emotional tie of many speakers to
their first language is a reality that deserves to be acknowledged. It is this
reality that underlies the plight of many immigrant parents and grandparents
who feel that they are losing the emotional connection to children who grow
up in a language different from their own. This plight is poignantly worded by
Mrs Vela, a Spanish-dominant grandmother of English-dominant children in a
family of Mexican descent in Texas:
Serı́a muy bonito que. . . mis nietas me entendieran bien lo que yo les
querı́a decir porque era una forma de, acercarme más a ellas pa’
conocerlas, o que ellas me conocieran a mi. . . Porque yo podı́a
expresarles mis sentimientos, mis sueños con ellas, aconsejarlas, y ellas
me entendı́an. . . Y se me hace que en español es más DULCE. . . emotiva
más: la conversación de una abuelita con su. . . nieta. Y en inglés pos no
podrı́a. . . hablarles con el corazón. . .
It would be beautiful for. . . my granddaughters to truly understand
what I wanted to say because it was a way of, getting closer to them and
knowing them, or for them to know me. . . Because I could express my
feelings, my dreams with them, to advise them, and they could
understand me. . . And it seems to me that it’s sweeter in Spanish,
more emotional: the conversation of a grandmother with her. . . grand-
daughter. And in English well I couldn’t. . . speak to them from the
heart. . . (Schecter & Bayley, 1997: 534)

Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful to the webquestionnaire respondents who shared their
experiences with us, informing our research. I am equally indebted to Jean-
Marc Dewaele, Yasuko Kanno and Ingrid Piller, who offered outstanding
advice and insightful critique, as colleagues and as multilingual parents, as I
struggled to interpret the numbers and words and to construct a larger picture
of bilingual family talk. All errors and inconsistencies are exclusively mine.
202 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Dr Aneta Pavlenko, College of
Education, CITE Department, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA
(apavlenk@temple.edu).

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The Emotional Force of Swearwords and
Taboo Words in the Speech of
Multilinguals
Jean-Marc Dewaele
School of Languages, Linguistics and Culture, Birkbeck College,
University of London, London, UK
This paper investigates the perception of emotional force of swearwords and taboo
words (S-T words) among 1039 multilinguals. It is based on data drawn from a large
database collected through a web questionnaire on bilingualism and emotions.
t -Tests revealed that the perceived emotional force of S-T words is highest in the L1
and gradually lower in languages learned subsequently. Self-reported L1 attriters
were found to judge S-T words in their L1 to be less powerful than those who are still

partly naturalistic / context gave higher ratings on emotional force of S-T words in


dominant in their L1. Participants who learned their language(s) in a naturalistic / or

that language than instructed language learners. Self-rated proficiency in a language

and frequency of use of language significantly predicted perception of emotional
force of S-T words. Age of onset of learning was found to only predict perception of
emotional force of S-T words in the L2.

Keywords: multilingualism, perception of emotion, swearing

Introduction
One of the most graphical illustrations of the power of swearwords is
undoubtedly the scene in The Crab with the Golden Claws (Hergé, 1940) where
Tintin and Captain Haddock find themselves surrounded by armed Arab
bandits in the desert. After Captain Haddock’s bottle of whiskey is shot to
pieces by the assailants, he becomes so enraged that he recklessly charges
them, ignoring the bullets, waving his gun above his head, and releasing an
unbroken torrent of swearwords in his mother tongue. As the book is aimed at
children, the actual words are rather harmless, the most famous expression
being ‘mille milliards de mille sabords’, translated into English as ‘billions of
blue blistering barnacles’. It is unclear whether the bandits understand French,
but the swearwords are so powerful that they somehow get the message and
flee into the desert. Whether words really have more power than bullets
remains to be seen, but it is true that some swearwords and taboo words
(S-T words) are the verbal equivalent of nitroglycerine. This might be the
reason why some native speakers (NSs) avoid using them in public and why
non-native speakers (NNSs) seem generally reluctant to use them. Indeed,
inappropriate use of swearwords or taboo words might have devastating
social consequences.
The study of S-T words among multilinguals is located at the intersection of
and contributes to research in bilingualism, psychology, pragmatics, second
language learning and emotions. In the present study I will investigate the

0143-4632/04/02 204-19 $20.00/0 – 2004 J-M. Dewaele

J. OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT Vol. 25, No. 2&3, 2004

204
Emotional Force of Swearwords and Taboo Words 205

relationship between languages and emotions in bi- and multilingualism,

focusing on one specific area: the perception of emotional force of S-T words.
The key reason for this investigation is an interesting paradox concerning the
use and perception of swearwords in the L2. These words are often among the
first ones to be learned in an L2, typically outside the classroom with a gleeful
NS of that language. Yet, they rarely figure in textbooks or in the classroom
discourse because of their offensive character. As a consequence, instructed
language learners seem to have a limited general knowledge of these words
and use them infrequently. They do fascinate learners as the proliferation of
websites containing swearwords and vulgar expressions in multiple languages
testifies. One of these sites, Foreign profanity exchange
/ ‘where people can
exchange profane words and phrases in a variety of languages’
/ boasts:
Knowing how to swear in a foreign language can make you seem
sophisticated, well-traveled or at least give you a means to swear in front
of others without them thinking of you as the foul-mouthed person you
really are. It can also provide cocktail-party type conversations. . .
impress you friends by informing them that one of the worst things
you can tell a French Canadian is that you’re going to ‘Christ’ them to
death, or that in one of the Balkan countries (Croatia?) one of the worst
things you can tell a person is ‘Your mother is Easter’. (http://
www.halfbakery.com/idea/Foreign_profanity_exchange)
In other words, knowledge of swearwords and expressions in an L2 allows
one to show off at cocktail parties. Yet it can also be a source of potential
embarrassment when used inappropriately with NSs. Such inappropriate use
may be perceived as rudeness, and it might take a moment before the NS
remembers the mitigating circumstances, namely that the interlocutor is a
NNS and might therefore not possess complete sociopragmatic competence in
the target language. The absence of S-T words in an L2 might not be as glaring
as their unexpected presence, but taking heed of the Russian proverb
‘Speaking without swearing is like cabbage soup without tomato’, it might
contribute to a perception that the NNS’s speech is bland.

Previous Research
Defining swearwords
S-T words are multifunctional, pragmatic units which assume, in addition to
the expression of emotional attitudes, various discourse functions. They
contribute, for instance, to the coordination of the interlocutors, the organisa-
tion of the interaction and the structuring of verbal exchange; in that they are
similar to discourse markers (Drescher, 2000). The use of S-T words is also a
linguistic device used to affirm in-group membership and establish bound-
aries and social norms for language use (Drescher, 2000; Rayson et al ., 1997;
Stenstrom, 1995, 1999). Usage of S-T words varies both diaphasically (i.e.
stylistic variation) and diatopically (i.e. geographic variation). It is not very
surprising therefore to find that different variants of the same language can
have different S-T words. Léard (1997) performed a comparative analysis of S-T
206 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

words and expressions in French from mainland France and from Québec and
found that despite the fact that both variants of French share the same
grammar, S-T words in Québec French with a religious origin (Crisse/Christ,
tabernacle/tabernacle, hostie/host, calice/chalice, vierge/virgin) are not S-T
words in France. An expression like hostie de voisin ‘damn neighbour’ would
be considered forceful in Québec but meaningless in France where the
expression salaud de voisin would be a better formulation of the communicative
intention to negatively describe one’s neighbour.

L1 studies on S-T words

The use and the perception of S-T words have been extensively studied with
monolingual speakers. Psychologists have investigated whether S-T words
stand out from neutral words in the L1. Lieury et al . (1997) investigated the
role of emotion in word memory using vulgar or taboo words of spoken
French. An experiment involving short- and long-term recall revealed superior
recall of words with emotional value in relation to neutral words. This effect
was most significant for the vulgar/taboo words (four times greater than
neutral words in long-term recall). Emotion words also seem more prone to
the so-called ‘false memory effect’ (Pesta et al ., 2001), i.e. false remembering of
items in recall tests.
Sociolinguists have analysed the effect of independent variables such as
gender, age and social class on the use of S-T words. Rayson et al . (1997)
performed a frequency analysis of vocabulary items in the conversational
component of the British National Corpus. They found that males and
speakers under 35 used more taboo words and that social class did not affect
the use of swearwords. Stenstrom (1995), in her analysis of taboo words in The
Bergen Corpus of London Teenager Language, confirmed the generational
difference (teenagers swearing more than adults, possibly as a way to establish
group identity). She also noticed qualitative differences, with teenagers
primarily using taboo words related to sex and drinking, and adults taboo
words derived from religious subjects. No gender differences were observed
in choice and frequency of swearwords among the teenagers but adult women
were found to use more but ‘weaker’ taboo words than adult men. Stenstrom
(1999) analysed a 21,000-word subcorpus of the same corpus, equally divided
between females and males, aged 16, presumed to be upper-middle-class,
engaged in same-sex conversations. She found that girls use intensifiers
(bloody, fucking) more often than boys, but use a more restricted set of terms
than boys, who include more swear words in their expanded set.
Bayard and Krishnayya (2001) analysed New Zealand university students’
expletive usage through quantitative analysis of casual unstructured dialogue
and purpose-oriented, more structured conversation. The authors found little
gender difference in the strength of the expletives used, although males did
tend to use stronger ones. They also found that females swore slightly less
than males, but reduced expletives to a lesser extent in more structured
contexts.
Emotional Force of Swearwords and Taboo Words 207

In sum, studies of the use and perception of S-T words in the L1 suggest that
these words stand out psycholinguistically, and that their use is often linked to
gender and generation of the speaker.

Emotions and S-T words in multilingualism and SLA research

The emotional resonance of languages known to bi- and multilingual
individuals is highly variable. Both psycholinguistic investigations and
psychoanalytic case studies suggest that languages learned after puberty
may differ from previously learned language(s). Languages learned early in
life seem to have a stronger emotional resonance than languages learned later,
which seem to have a weaker emotional hold on the individual (Amati-Mehler
et al ., 1993; Javier, 1989; Santiago-Rivera & Altarriba, 2002). Bond and Lai
(1986) and Javier and Marcos (1989) show that bilinguals may codeswitch to
their second language to distance themselves from what they say. Ideas that
would be too disturbing when expressed in the first language are less anxiety-
provoking in the second language. Similarly, studies on emotion vocabulary in
the first and second languages of bilinguals who learned their second
language beyond early childhood showed a greater emotional resonance in
the native/first learned language (Gonzalez-Reigosa, 1976; Javier, 1989). Harris
et al . (2003) and Harris (this issue) measured fluctuations in reactivity for
emotion words in the L1 and the L2 of bilinguals. Results suggest that for late
L2 learners taboo words and childhood reprimands are more physiologically
arousing in the L1 than in the L2. The authors suggest that the L1 vocabulary
may have more emotional connotations, given the proliferation of neural
connections in early and middle childhood. Anooshian and Hertel (1994) show
that Spanish
/English and English
/Spanish bilinguals who acquired their
second language after the age of eight, recall emotional words more frequently
than neutral words following their presentation in the L1. Altarriba and
Santiago-Rivera (1994) found that late bilinguals in therapy prefer the native
language to express personal involvement. This is nicely illustrated by Nancy
Huston (English L1, French L2), who emigrated as an adult from Calgary in
Canada to France where she has become a major writer (see also Kinginger’s
paper, this issue):
Chaque faux bilingue doit avoir sa carte spécifique de l’asymétrie
lexicale, pour ce qui me concerne, c’est en français que je me sens à l’aise
dans une conversation intellectuelle, une interview, un colloque, toute
situation linguistique faisant appel aux concepts et aux catégories appris
à l’âge adulte. En revanche, si j’ai envie de délirer, me défouler, jurer,
chanter, gueuler, me laisser aller au pur plaisir de la parole, c’est en
anglais que je le fais. (Huston, 1999: 61)
Every false bilingual must surely have their own particular asymme-
trical lexical map. To take my case, if I am involved in an intellectual
conversation, an interview, a colloquium or any linguistic situation that
draws on concepts and categories learned as an adult, I feel most at ease
in French. On the other hand, if I want to go mad, let myself go, swear,
208 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

sing, yell, be moved by the pure pleasure of speech, I do all that in

English.
Research confirms that perception and expression of emotion as an illocu-
tionary act is more difficult in the L2(s) (learned later in life) than in the L1(s).
Rintell (1984) found that English as a second language (ESL) learners had
greater difficulty in accurately identifying and rating the intensity of different
emotions in taped conversations between two NSs of English than a control
group of English NSs. Linguistic and cultural background, and language
proficiency played a crucial role in the students’ performance. While advanced
students scored significantly higher than beginners and learners at an
intermediate level, they still fell short of the results of the NSs. Chinese
students were also found to have greater difficulty in performing the task
accurately than Arabic- and Spanish-speaking students. Using a similar
research design, Graham et al . (2001) also found a strong effect of cultural
competence on the recognition of emotion in English voices by Japanese and
Spanish ESL learners. The results of both groups of L2 learners were
significantly lower than those of a control group of English NSs. Within the
learner group, the scores of the Spanish students were superior to those of the
Japanese students. However, level of proficiency did not significantly affect
the percentages of correct judgments of intended emotions. It thus seems that
the perception of emotion in a second language is linked both to typological
similarity with the first language, but also to cultural similarity, with regard to
emotion scripts (Dewaele & Pavlenko, 2002).
Dewaele and Regan (2001) analysed the proportion of colloquial words
(including swearwords) in a cross-sectional corpus of advanced oral French IL
of Dutch L1 speakers. The amount of authentic interactions in the target
language (TL), as well as total immersion in the TL culture, were found to be
linked to a more frequent use of colloquial vocabulary. Length and intensity of
formal instruction in the TL was not found to have any predictive value on the
use of colloquial vocabulary. The low frequency of S-T words and colloquial
words in general in interlanguage (IL) might also have been linked to
psychological variables. Using the same corpus of Dutch L1 speakers and a
corpus of advanced French IL by British students, Dewaele (2004b) found that
highly extroverted students used more colloquial vocabulary. Using a S-T word
or a colloquial word is socially risky, something more anxious introverts want
to avoid, but which extroverts enjoy. Frequency of contact with the TL and
proficiency levels in the TL were also positively correlated with proportions of
colloquial vocabulary, but gender and social class were not.
However, Register (1996) did find a gender effect in her analysis of
comprehension and self-reported use of English taboo words and expressions
by university-level ESL learners in the USA. Male learners comprehended
more taboo terms than female learners and reported that they would use them
more frequently. Toya and Kodis (1996) point out that the use of swearwords
and the pragmatic use of rudeness in an L2 are linked to the variety of registers
in the input and the confidence of L2 users. They found that English NSs were
more expressive in their verbal and nonverbal display of anger than Japanese
students with advanced English proficiency. The latter tended to avoid
Emotional Force of Swearwords and Taboo Words 209

swearwords. The authors point to the considerable gap between the L2 users’
knowledge of the definition of swearwords and understanding of their
emotional load: ‘Subjects reported that they knew swearwords were ‘‘dirty’’
but they had little idea regarding the degree or typical use’ (1996: 292). Toya
and Kodis suggest that the lower degree of expressiveness in the L2 could be
linked to the more restricted input to which the learners had been exposed and
the fact that learners lack confidence in using angry words and fear
miscommunication. Female NNSs expressed concern ‘over what swearwords
were appropriate for women because Japanese rudeness heavily corresponds
to male/female language’ (p. 292). Some informants who had stayed in
English-speaking countries reported a preference for swearing in English
rather than in Japanese.
In sum, research in multilingualism and SLA suggests that the emotional
resonance of S-T words is stronger in the L1. Instructed L2 users seem to use
fewer stigmatised words than NSs, which could be a reflection of their
narrower stylistic range, linked to the lack of variety in registers in their input.
The use of colloquial words is clearly also linked to the self-confidence of L2
users, which is related in turn to the L2 user’s personality and amount of
contact with NSs.

Research Design
Rationale for the present study
Consistent patterns emerge in the studies mentioned before, but limited
sample sizes make it difficult to make more general claims. Ideally one needs a
sufficient amount of comparable data (by asking many people the same
questions) that could be analysed quantitatively and combined with partici-
pants’ own intuitions. The use of a webquestionnaire allows the collection of
self-reported data from a very large sample of multilinguals from all possible
linguistic backgrounds. The combination of quantitative data collected
through Likert-scale type responses and of qualitative data collected through
open questions makes it possible to draw a fairly detailed picture of
multilinguals’ speech behaviour and perceptions.

Research questions
In the present research we will firstly investigate whether the perception of
emotional force of S-T words is similar in multilinguals’ several languages.
Based on previous findings, the analysis will focus on the effects of gender,
type of instruction, age of onset of learning, self-rated proficiency in speaking
and frequency of use of the languages.

Participants
A total of 1039 multilinguals contributed to the database (731 females, 308
males). The participants spoke a total of 75 different L1s. English speakers
represent the largest group: n /303; followed by Spanish: n/123; French:
n /101; German: n /97; Dutch: n/76; Italian: n /52; Catalan: n /32;
210 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Russian: n /29; Finnish n /28; Portuguese: n/20; Greek: n /15; Swedish:

n /15; Japanese: n /11; Welsh: n/10, and 61 other language groups with
fewer than 10 participants.
The population could be described as highly polyglot with 144 bilinguals,
269 trilinguals, 289 quadrilinguals and 337 pentalinguals. The L2 was defined
as the second language to have been acquired by the individual, the L3 as the
third language etc. A closer look at the ages of onset for learning the L2
revealed that 157 L2 users are in fact ‘bilingual first language’ users, having
learned the L2 from birth. This represents 15% of the L2 group. Similarly, 19 L3
users are ‘trilingual first language’ users (representing 1.8% of the L3 group).
There are no ‘quadrilingual first language’ users. More than half of the
participants declared to be dominant in the L1 (n /561); a smaller proportion
reported dominance in two or more languages including the L1 (n /373); and
about 10% reported dominance in language(s) not including the L1 (n /105).
The participants are generally highly educated with 115 having a high school
diploma or less, 273 a Bachelors degree, 308 a Master’s degree, and 338 a PhD.
Age ranged from 16 to 70 (mean /35.6; sd/11.3). A majority (n /837)
reported working in a language-related area. The strong proportion of highly
educated female participants means that the sample is not representative of
the general population. This potential pitfall (cf. Dörnyei, 2003: 75) is
inevitable with web-based questionnaires and it needs to be kept in mind
when interpreting the patterns, as results might be different for a sample of,
for example, males with high school education. To partially remedy this
problem, data were collected through a printed version of the questionnaire
from about 50 multilinguals in the London area who did not finish high
school. Statistical analysis revealed no significant differences between
this group and the rest of the sample for the dependent variables under
consideration in the present study.1

Methodology
Data were gathered through an online webquestionnaire with 34 questions
related to bilingualism and emotions (Dewaele & Pavlenko, 2001). The
following sociobiographical information was collected: gender, age, education
level, ethnic group, occupation, languages known to the participant, dominant
language(s), chronological order of language acquisition, context of acquisi-
tion, age of onset, frequency of use and typical interlocutors. Self-rated
proficiency scores for speaking, comprehending, reading and writing in the
different languages were obtained. The first part of the questionnaire consists
of closed questions with 5-point Likert scales, the second consists of open
questions where the participants had to write a response. Language choice
was determined for self- and other-directed speech, for emotional and
nonemotional speech. The questions also asked about language choice for
swearing and perceived emotional weight of S-T words. The data obtained to
the latter question constitute the basis for the present quantitative analysis.
This analysis will be supported by participants’ comments about the use and
perception of swearwords in their different languages.
Emotional Force of Swearwords and Taboo Words 211

The use of the on-line web questionnaire allowed us to gather data covering
a wide area of topics from a large sample of learners and long-time users of
multiple languages from across the world and from a wide age range, i.e. not
only the 18
/22 year olds which are predominantly used in empirical research
in applied linguistics and psychology. The present approach is not without its
own methodological limitations (cf. Pavlenko, 2002). The problem of respon-
dent self-selection has been mentioned before. To fill out the questionnaire,
participants needed access to the internet and a certain degree of metalinguis-
tic awareness, which has skewed the sample further. The sample is also
dominated by female respondents, which is interesting in and of itself.
At the same time, doubts about the validity of this research instrument can
easily be assuaged as questionnaires with Likert scales responses have been
tried and tested extensively in sociopsychological research (cf. Dörnyei, 2003).
They can offer excellent baseline data, provided they are backed up by
different types of data. We argued in favour of triangulation in bilingualism
research in Dewaele and Pavlenko (2002). Wierzbicka (2003) makes a similar
argument, stating that researchers need ‘to link the ‘‘soft’’ subjective
experience of bilingual persons with ‘‘hard’’ objective evidence’ (p. 577).
This is the reason why the questionnaire also included open-ended questions,
which invited respondents to share their subjective experiences.

Dependent variables
The quantitative analysis is based on the scores (five-point Likert scales)
provided in response to the following question (and repeated for a maximum
of five languages):
Do swear and taboo words in your different languages have the same
emotional weight for you? Please circle the appropriate answer.
(1 /does not feel strong, 2 /little, 3 /fairly, 4 /strong, 5 /very strong).

Independent variables
The variable ‘context of acquisition’ has three levels: naturalistic, mixed and
instructed. There is no doubt that real contexts of acquisition are infinitely
richer than the crude distinction between ‘classroom only’, ‘classroom/
outside communication’ and ‘no-classroom, but only outside communication’.
Learning practices at school have evolved over the years, and still vary hugely
geographically and socially; but they all share one aspect: the learning happens
within the confines of classroom walls, in the presence of a teacher and
classmates. Similarly, despite the wide range of ways one can learn a language
naturalistically, all these ways have a common denominator, namely that the
learning process was not guided by a particular teacher or programme, but
developed gradually through interaction with speakers of the TL.
Self-perceived proficiency reflects the individual’s perception of his/her
competence in a language. It was measured through feedback on the following
question:
On the scale from 1 (least proficient) to 5 (fully fluent) how do you rate
yourself in speaking?
212 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Similar self-report measures have been proved to correlate highly with

performance measures of proficiency (e.g. Kroll et al ., 2002).
Data on frequency of language use were collected through the following
question:
How frequently do you use each of the languages? (Never /0, every
year /1, every month/2, every week /3, every day /4, several hours
a day/5)

Research hypotheses
It was hypothesised:
(1) that the perceived emotional force of S-T words would be highest in the
first language of speakers and would be gradually lower in languages
learned subsequently;
(2) that gender, education level and age might be linked to perceived
emotional force of S-T words;
(3) that the perceived emotional force of S-T words in the L1 would weaken if
the L1 is no longer the dominant language of the speaker (L1 attrition);
(4) that participants who learned their language(s) in an instructed setting
would give lower ratings on emotional force of S-T words in that
language;
(5) that participants who started learning a language at a younger age, or are
more proficient in the language, or use the language more frequently
might have higher scores in perception of emotional force of S-T words.

Research design
Paired t -tests to check differences in perceived emotional force of S-T words
in the L1, L2, L3, L4 and L5 were conducted. Multivariate analyses of variance
(MANOVA) and Scheffé post-hoc tests were used to check for intergroup
differences (gender, education level, language dominance, context of acquisi-
tion). Pearson correlation analyses were used to check for a link between age of
the participant and perception of emotional force of S-T words. Multiple linear
regression analyses were used to identify and predict the effects of age of onset
of acquisition (AOA), proficiency and frequency of use of a language on the
perceived emotional force of S-T words in that language.

Results
Pair-wise comparisons (t-tests) revealed that S-T words in the L1 are
perceived to have much more emotional force than S-T words in the L2:
(t(944) /18.2, p B/0.0001). The same pattern is repeated when comparing S-T
words in the L2 with S-T words in the L3: (t(689) /12.8, p B/0.0001) and S-T
words in the L3 compared to S-T words in the L4: (t(433) /8.05, p B/0.0001).
The perceived emotional force of S-T words in the L4 is not significantly
different from that in the L5: (t(232) /1.02, p/ns) (see Figure 1 for mean
scores).
Emotional Force of Swearwords and Taboo Words 213

Figure 1 Mean scores on perceived emotional force of S-T words in five languages

These results are confirmed by participants’ responses to the open-ended

questions. Some report that they use S-T words in different languages but that
the strongest emotions expressed to oneself tend to be in the L1:
Kevin (Finnish L1, English L2, Swedish L3, German L4): I very rarely
swear in Finnish but ‘oh shit’ or ‘fuck’ can easily escape my mouth even
in quite trivial occasions
/ they just don’t feel that serious to my (or my
hearers’) ears, even though I know they would sound quite horrible to a
native speaker (milder English swear words like ‘damn’ for example
don’t even sound like swear words to me). If I would happen to hit
myself with a hammer the words coming out of my mouth would
definitely be in Finnish.
S-T words in the L1(s) are often preferred because of their greater perceived
strength and exact calibration:
Estela (Romanian L1, German L2, French L3, English L4, Italian L5):
Romanian is more appropriate for hurting and insulting because it
carries more weight and I can distinguish more nuances.
Roberto (German L1, English L2, French L3, Spanish L4): I’m pretty
much aware of the force of swear words in English, and yet they seem
less immediate than swear words in German.
A number of participants with partners not proficient in the participant’s L1
still report swearing at them in the L1:
Erica (Spanish L1, English L2, Italian L3, Portuguese L4): We speak
English and we argue in English because he doesn’t speak Spanish.
However, many times I find myself swearing at him in Spanish.
Ellen (English L1, Catalan L2, Spanish L3, French L4): We only use
Catalan as he doesn’t speak English. We argue in Catalan although I
always use English swear words!
Several participants reported an inability to swear in their L1 because of a kind
of psychological barrier erected in their childhood:
214 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Ken (English L1, French L2): I was brought up not to swear or use slang
so I am perhaps a cultivated Englishman.
Maria (Spanish L1, English L2): I never swear in Spanish. I simply
cannot. The words are too heavy and are truly a taboo for me.
S-T words in the L1(s) may be perceived by some participants as being too
strong, hence their preference for S-T words in the ‘other’ language as these do
not seem to have the same emotional force to the speaker:
Nicole (English L1, German L2, French L3, Italian L4, Spanish L5): My
parents were quite strict and I still have the phrase ‘I’ll wash your mouth
out with soap and water’ in my head! I’d never swear in English, but it’s
easier in German!
Anne (English L1, German L2, French L3, Russian L4, Lithuanian L5): I
have noticed that I will swear more in Russian when I’m in the U.S. and
more in English or German when in Russia. I feel perhaps that it is ‘not
as bad’ to swear in a ‘foreign’ language.
Many participants are aware that their perception of emotional force of S-T
words in a second, third, fourth or fifth language is weaker than that of L1
speakers, and that, as a consequence, their swearing in the L2 may have
unwanted illocutionary effects (Sbisa, 2001):
Maureen (English L1, Italian L2): I prefer to express anger in my L2
Italian because I do not hear the weight of my words so everything
comes out quite easily. Which unfortunately means that I probably hurt
people more than I intend to!
Melissa (Greek L1, English L2, German L3): I have noticed is that I can
swear much more easily in English than in Greek. I sometimes use quite
strong swear words in English but as I can’t really ‘hear’ or ‘sense’ how
strong they are.
Many participants underline that swearing happens within clearly defined
cultural contexts. Scripts for swearing differ between languages, not only in
the metaphors used but also in what is deemed acceptable. In other words,
multilinguals do not simply use translation equivalents of S-T words in their
different languages:
Sandra (German L1, Italian L2): If I am really angry only German words
come into my mind if I use Italian instead I may not use the right
measure. Swearing in Italian means talking about God, Maria etc. in an
obscene way which in German doesn’t mean a thing. The other way
round in German you might use animals names to insult a person in
Italian it wouldn’t mean anything.
Martine (English L1, Spanish L2, French L3): It is easier to shout and get
excited in Spanish. It’s possible to say things that would be unacceptable
in English especially if the expressions are negative. Spanish speakers
seem to be able to insult one another without anybody getting very upset
Emotional Force of Swearwords and Taboo Words 215

whereas in English you would make enemies for life. English insults
more subtly.
The second research question dealt with the effect of gender, education level
and age on perception of emotional force. The analysis used ANOVAs rather
than t -tests in order to measure the strength of the gender effect. Overall the
female participants gave higher scores to perceived strength of swearwords.
The difference between male and female participants was significant in the L1,
although the effect was very weak (F /5.3, p B/0.022, h2 /0.005). The gender
difference was only marginally significant in the L2, with an equally weak
effect (F /3.0, p B/0.085, h2 /0.003). It was stronger in the L3 (F /4.6,
p B/0.032, h2 /0.007), but was no longer significant in the L4 (F /0.89,
p /ns, h2 /0.002) and nonexistent in the L5 (F /0.02, p /ns, h2 /0) (see
Figure 2 for mean scores).
Education level turned out to have no effect at all on the perception of
swearwords in the different languages (L1: F(4) /1.34, p /ns, h2 /0.006; L2:
F (4) /0.62, p /ns, h2 /0.003; L3: F(4) /0.41, p/ns, h2 /0.002; L4: F (4) /0.37,
p /ns, h2 /0.002; L5: F (4) /0.72, p/ns, h2 /0.009 (see Figure 3 for mean
scores).

Figure 2 Effect of gender on perceived emotional force of swearwords in five languages

Figure 3 Effect of education level on perceived emotional force of swearwords in five

languages
216 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

A Pearson two-tailed correlation showed that age of participants was

not linked to perception of emotional force in swearwords in any of the
five languages: L1: r(962) / /0.003, p /ns; L2: r(946) / /0.012, p /ns;
L3: r(698) /0.006, p /ns; L4: r(454) / /0.048, p /ns; L5: r (247) / /0.026,
p /ns).
Does self-reported L1 attrition affect perception of emotional force of
swearwords? In other words, do participants for whom the L1 is no longer
their dominant language (the LX category in Figure 4) perceive swearwords in
the L1 to be weaker than those participants who are still dominant in the L1?
A one-way ANOVA with language dominance as the main independent
variable and perception of emotional force of swearwords in the L1 as a
dependent variable revealed a significant effect but a small effect size
(F(2, 967) /3.7, p B/0.024, h2 /0.008). A Scheffé post-hoc test showed a
significant difference (p B/0.025) between those who reported dominance in
two or more languages including the L1 (n/344) and L1 attriters (n /97). The
difference between L1-dominant speakers (n /527) and L1 attriters was only
marginally significant (p B/0.059). There was no difference between the
L1-dominant speakers and those who reported dominance in two or more
languages including the L1 (see Figure 4).
One self-reported L1 attriter noted that his L1 was particularly suited for
swearing, because he disliked it so much:
Jan (Dutch L1, English L2, German L3, French L4, Fijian L5): Dutch is a
language I would only use to swear in or express anger. It’s good for that
as it’s such an ugly sounding language.
The effect of instruction type turned out to be very significant for the L2:
(F(3, 945) /20.7, p B/0.0001, h2 /0.061). A Scheffé post-hoc analysis revealed
that the difference is highly significant between the instructed group and the
mixed and naturalistic groups (p B/0.0001 in both cases). The difference
between the mixed and the naturalistic group is however not significant.

Figure 4 Effect of language dominance on perceived emotional force of swearwords in

five languages
Emotional Force of Swearwords and Taboo Words 217

The same pattern appears for the L3. The effect of instruction type is
very significant but the effect size is smaller: (F (3, 697) /12.3, p B/0.0001,
h2 /0.050). A Scheffé post-hoc analysis revealed that the difference is highly
significant between the instructed group and the mixed and naturalistic
groups (p B/0.0001 in both cases). The difference between the mixed and the
naturalistic group is not significant. The effect of instruction type is similarly
significant for the L4 (F (3, 453) /14.1, p B/0.0001, h2 /0.086). A Scheffé post-
hoc analysis shows a highly significant difference between the instructed
group and the mixed and naturalistic groups (p B/0.0001 in both cases). The
difference between the mixed and the naturalistic group is not significant.
Instruction type also has a significant effect in the L5 (F (3, 246) /5.4, p B/0.001,
h2 /0.063). A Scheffé post-hoc analysis shows a significant difference between
the instructed group and the mixed and naturalistic groups (p B/0.015 and p B/
0.032 respectively). The difference between the mixed and the naturalistic
group is not significant. Mean scores are presented in Figure 5.
Although no participant complained about the absence of S-T words in the
school curriculum, some did regret the fact that they had not been taught how
to communicate anger in the L2:
Bart (Dutch L1, French L2, English L3), an instructed user of French: in
school we learn how to use French in a polite and friendly way but when
I am calling to the Customer Service of a French company to complain
about something and want to sound a bit more severe irritated angry. . .
then it is difficult to find that severe irritated angry tone because you are
concentrating on French grammar and vocabulary. . . I wouldn’t have to
do that in Dutch.
Talking about S-T words in her L4 and L5, both learned in an instructed setting,
one participant observes that one should refrain from using specific words if
one is not aware of their illocutionary effects:

Figure 5 Effect of instruction type on perceived emotional force of swearwords in five

languages
218 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Isabelle (French L1, English L2, Italian L3, German L4, Japanese L5): you
cannot possibly go around and use words without understanding/
knowing the impact these words will have on your interlocutors!
Standard multiple linear regression was used to examine the hypothesised
relationships between (1) AOA, (2) self-rated speaking proficiency and (3)

Table 1 Mean scores for age of onset, self-rated proficiency in speaking, frequency of
use of the L2, L3, L4 and L5

Variable L2 L3 L4 L5
Age of onset (in yrs) 8.34 13.24 17.69 21.72
Speaking proficiency (maximum/5) 4.17 3.26 2.59 2.40
Frequency of use (maximum /5) 3.82 2.76 2.16 2.13

Table 2 The regression of age of onset, self-rated speaking proficiency and frequency of
use of the language on perceived emotional force of swearwords in five languages

R square F p
L2 0.101 24.7 0.0001
L3 0.163 31.5 0.0001
L4 0.166 20.6 0.0001
L5 0.191 12.3 0.0001

Table 3 The predictive value of individual variables on perception of emotional force

Language Predictors Standardised t p

coefficients Beta
L2 Age -0.113 -2.9 0.003
Speaking proficiency 0.159 3.2 0.001
Frequency of use 0.158 3.3 0.001
L3 Age -0.061 -1.4 0.151
Speaking proficiency 0.289 5.6 0.0001
Frequency of use 0.14 2.7 0.006
L4 Age 0.036 0.7 0.5
Speaking proficiency 0.224 3.5 0.0001
Frequency of use 0.234 3.6 0.0001
L5 Age 0.038 0.5 0.6
Speaking proficiency 0.192 2.1 0.038
Frequency of use 0.287 3.1 0.002
Emotional Force of Swearwords and Taboo Words 219

frequency of use of the language. Mean values for these three variables are
presented in Table 1.
The regressions of AOA, self-rated speaking proficiency and frequency
of use of the language were highly significant for the L2, L3, L4 and L5
(see Table 2).
AOA, self-rated proficiency in speaking and frequency of use of language
were significant predictors for the L2 (see Table 3). AOA ceases to be a
significant predictor in the L3, the L4 and the L5 where self-rated proficiency
in speaking and frequency of use of language are the best predictors. The three
independent variables thus explain between 10% and 20% of the variance.
Using Cohen’s (1992) criteria for assessing the predictive power of a set of
independent variables in a multiple regression model, the proportion of
variance indicates a small to medium effect size.2

Discussion and Conclusion

The results of this study show that the perception of emotional force of
swearwords in the multilinguals’ different languages is determined by several
independent variables, mainly those related to the individual’s linguistic
history (how and when the language was learned, what general level of
activation does the language have, how frequently has it been or is it being
used). Sociodemographic variables seem to have a weaker effect.
To sum up, the findings of the study fully support hypothesis 1 (perceived
emotional force of S-T words is higher in the first language of speakers and is
gradually lower in languages learned subsequently), partially support
hypothesis 2 (female participants tended to give higher scores to perceived
emotional force of S-T words but education level and age had no effect), fully
support hypothesis 3 (perception of emotional force of S-T words in the L1
weakens if the L1 is no longer the dominant language of the speaker), fully
support hypothesis 4 (participants who learned their language(s) in an
instructed setting gave lower ratings on emotional force of S-T words in that
language than those who learned the language in a naturalistic or mixed
context) and partially support hypothesis 5 (participants who started learning
a language at a younger age (for the L2 only), or are more proficient in the
language, or use the language more frequently have higher scores in
perception of emotional force of S-T words).
The data show that L1 S-T words are usually felt to have greater emotional
force, which can either favour or hinder their use (depending on commu-
nicative intention). Secondly, S-T words from languages learned later in life are
usually felt to have less emotional force. Participants report some detachment
when performing in these languages, including a perception of lower
emotional force of S-T words, which can, again, either favour or hinder their
use. Most users of S-T words also admit that their perception of the emotional
force might not be accurate, hence the danger of undesirable perlocutionary
effects. The present study focused on perception of emotional force only, but
we found similar patterns for the actual reported use of swearwords (Dewaele,
2004a). Significant positive correlations emerged between perception of
emotional force and frequency of use of swearwords. Finally, it seems that
220 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

swearing is as much self- as other-directed. The stronger the emotion, the more
likely for it to be expressed in the L1 (especially if it is the dominant language).
It doesn’t seem to matter in that case whether the interlocutor understands the
language. The swearwords in the L1 allow the speaker to vent his/her anger
efficiently, and the communicative intention and emotional force can probably
be interpreted through nonverbal cues.
The present study seems to confirm the findings of smaller-scale
studies using different methodological approaches, namely that languages
other than the first are the languages of distance and detachment, or at
least languages that don’t have an emotional resonance that is quite as
strong. Language users seem to avoid use of linguistic ‘nuclear’ devices if they
are unsure about the yield (emotional force), and potential illocutionary
or perlocutionary effects. The effect size of the sociodemographic variables
was largely surpassed by the more powerful effect of type of instruction. It is
not surprising that if one’s contact with a TL has been limited to the classroom,
one will have been relatively ‘sheltered’ from swearwords and therefore
lack a complete understanding of their meaning and emotional force. Those
who have experienced and used the TL in a wider variety of situations
are more likely to have developed the necessary conceptual representations
and the confidence to use these words in appropriate contexts. This point
is further strengthened by the finding that frequency of use of the language
and self-reported proficiency in speaking are the strongest predictors
of perception of emotional force. Sociopragmatic competence can only develop
through actual use of the language in authentic interactions. A proficient
and frequent user of a language not only possesses the correct perception
of emotional force but may also feel he/she is close enough to the in-group
to dare use these powerful words. The younger one starts learning a
language, the better one’s perception of emotional force of swearwords,
with a break-off point somewhere after the age of 12. This finding is in
line with Kasper’s (1998) observation that ‘early and sustained contact
with the target language and culture may be required to attain
native pragmatic knowledge and skill’ (p. 200). It also confirms Anooshian
and Hertel’s (1994) finding that for balanced bilinguals the emotional
resonance of a language depends more on age of acquisition than on
proficiency.
These findings have two important pedagogical implications. Firstly,
instructed learning should ideally rely on a rich source of diverse types of
written and visual authentic material allowing learners to familiarise
themselves with a wide range of registers in the TL, including those rich in
S-T words. Secondly, instruction should be complemented by ‘beyond the
classroom’ encounters with members of the TL culture (cf. Byram et al ., 2001),
preferably by spending a period in the TL community. Finally, using swear-
words in an L2 could be a hit at parties, but in interaction with NSs, it is
probably better not to put too much tomato (or pepper) in the soup, and to
taste it oneself before serving.
Emotional Force of Swearwords and Taboo Words 221
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Jean-Marc Dewaele, Birkbeck
College, University of London, School of Languages, Linguistics and Culture,
43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD, UK (jmdewaele@aol.com).

Notes
1. The danger of respondent self-selection is more acute if the dependent variable
under consideration has a perceived ‘desirable’ end as it might discourage a
sizable proportion of potential participants (Dörnyei, 2003: 75). As the main
dependent variables in the present study are relatively value-neutral: ‘how often
do you use language X to express Y. . .’, it seems less likely that respondent self-
selection would unduly skew the results.
2. According to Cohen (1992), squared partial correlations values between 2 and
12.99% suggest small effect sizes, and values between 13 and 25.99% indicate
medium effect sizes.

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Bilingual Speakers in the Lab:
Psychophysiological Measures of
Emotional Reactivity
Catherine L. Harris
Psychology Department, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
Bilingual speakers report experiencing stronger emotions when speaking and
hearing their first language compared to their second. Does this occur even when
a second language is learned early and becomes the dominant language? Spanish /
English bilinguals who had grown up in the USA (early learners) or those who were


first exposed to English during middle childhood while residing in a Latin American
country (late learners) listened to words and phrases while skin conductance was
monitored. Stimuli included taboo words, sexual terms, childhood reprimands (‘Go
to your room!’) and single words which functioned as a neutral baseline. Consistent
with the hypothesis that a second language is less emotional for the late learners,
emotional expressions (i.e. reprimands) presented in the first language elicited larger
skin conductance responses than comparable expressions in the second language.
For the early learners, no such difference was obtained, indicating that age of
acquisition of the second language and proficiency modulate speakers’ physiological
reaction to emotional language.

Keywords: language, skin conductance, bilingualism, emotion, Spanish
/English

bilinguals, auditory processing

Introduction
Second language (L2) users commonly report that the subjective experience
of language use differs systematically for their first (L1) and second languages
(Bond & Lai, 1986; Dewaele & Pavlenko, 2002; Ervin, 1964; Gonzalez-Reigosa,
1976; Pavlenko, 1998, 1999, 2002). A well known example is the case of taboo
words, which reportedly generate more anxiety when spoken in one’s L1
(Dewaele, this issue; Ferenczi, 1916; Greenson, 1950; Javier, 1989). Using self-
report questionnaires with closed and open-ended questions, Dewaele (this
issue) asked bilingual and multilingual speakers to rate the emotionality of
swear words in their various languages. Swear words in the native language
were rated as most forceful, with perceived forcefulness declining mono-
tonically with age of acquisition and the languages’ rank-order of acquisition
(i.e. swear words in a multilingual’s L1 were perceived as more forceful, on
average, than swear words in the L2, L3 or later-learned languages).
Naturalistic learning contexts also lead to more perceived emotional force
than formal instruction. Similar age and learning context trends were found
for preferences in expressing anger (Dewaele & Pavlenko, 2003). Interview
data and written comments confirmed the following hypothesis about why
multilinguals sometimes prefer using their L1 for cursing, and at other times
prefer a later-acquired language: if emotionality is desired, then the native

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J. OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT Vol. 25, No. 2&3, 2004

223
224 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

language is preferred, but if the emotionality of swear words is uncomfortable,

multilinguals choose a later-learned language.
Differences in emotionality have been documented by soliciting oral or
written narratives, speech samples and autobiographical memories (Clachar,
1999; Dewaele & Pavlenko, 2002; Ervin, 1964; Javier et al ., 1993; Pavlenko,
1998). Bilingual speakers feel freer to discuss embarrassing topics in their L2
(Bond & Lai, 1986). Studies of codeswitching describe how a change to the L2
often serves a distancing function (Gumperz & Hernandez, 1971; Javier &
Marcos, 1989). The bilingual therapist Gonzalez-Reigosa (1976) described
Spanish
/English bilingual patients who employed English when discussing
anxiety-arousing topics, and used English for portraying a persona of self-
confidence, calm and emotional reserve (see also Altarriba & Santiago-Rivera,
1994). Immigrants’ childhood memories were more emotionally charged when
described in their native language (Schrauf, 2000). However, research has not
invariably found the L1 to be the language which facilitates emotional
expression. Koven (2001, 2003) found greater affect and more complex story
telling (e.g. use of quoted speech) when the children of immigrants used the
language of the host country, which was also the language of peer socialisa-
tion.
One of the few laboratory studies of emotional responsiveness to words in
the L1 versus L2 is that of Anooshian and Hertel (1994), who used word recall
as their dependent measure. Recall of words is known to be influenced by
emotionality (Rubin & Friendly, 1986). Anooshian and Hertel (1994) hypothe-
sised that emotion words in the L2 would lack the emotional connotations
which render them easy to recall. They did in fact find an effect of emotionality
on recall only in the L1. However, a recent attempt to replicate this failed.
Turkish sojourners in the USA who were late learners of English showed
similar recall of emotion words in L2 English rather than in L1 Turkish
(Ayçiçegi & Harris, in press). Because recall of emotion words has led to
contradictory findings, it would be beneficial to use a measure of emotion
processing which more closely reflects physiological aspects of emotional
arousal.

Why Study Bilingualism Psychophysiologically?

There are several reasons for using psychophysiological techniques to
verify the intuition that the subjective, emotional experience of using a L2
differs from that of using a L1. The theoretical perspective adopted is that
subjective experience is mediated by physical states of the nervous system,
and that experiences which are commonly reported by many people will have
measurable physiological correlates. This will be referred to as the ‘brain-
based perspective’. Being able to quantify emotional aspects of language with
psychophysiological data will thus contribute to a science of the subjective
experience of cognitive processing (following Damasio, 1999; O’Regan & Noe,
2001; Schumann, 1997). If age of acquisition of a language influences
autonomic arousal, then researchers will have a new source of data with
which to evaluate claims about the sensitive period for language. One might
be able to show that words learned very early in life are associated with
Psychophysiological Measures of Emotional Reactivity 225

greater autonomic responses than are later-learned words which are similar in
other respects. Adopting a brain-based perspective on the emotional experi-
ence of language also allows one to make more sophisticated hypotheses than
simply that the L1 will be experienced as more emotional. In particular,
aspects of the language-learning history which have consistent effects across
many individuals are likely to do so via common brain mechanisms. They are
thus candidates for having an effect on the emotionality and the autonomic
nervous system. For example, the dominance of the L1 can be supplanted by
the L2 through constant exposure and use, as when children acquire the L2
following immigration (Köpke, 2003). In these cases, the dominance of the L2
has a physical basis, which can be assessed via neuroimaging (e.g. Kim et al .,
1997) or behavioural tasks (e.g. reaction time tasks). As proficiency and
dominance of the L2 have physiological correlates, the ‘brain-based perspec-
tive’ makes the predictions that proficiency and dominance will affect
emotional reactivity and can be measured with autonomic nervous system
arousal. Indeed, this was the rationale in the current study for seeking
individuals whose L2 had become their dominant language.
The brain-based perspective has heuristic value. It specifies that subjective
experiences have their origin in measurable brain states. What conclusions
should be drawn if individuals’ subjective reports are at odds with
psychophysiological measures? Such a finding would mandate new theore-
tical development. This would falsify the brain-based perspective or would
force one to develop an explanation for why subjective and physiological
reports differed. For example, one could propose that informants were relying
on stereotypes or had fashioned an incorrect or incomplete story about their
emotional states.

Language and Psychophysiology

The autonomic nervous system responds to danger or threat cues by
readying systems of the body to take action, including fighting or fleeing
(Hugdahl, 1995). Physiological responses include sweating of palms and
fingertips, a signal that can be quantified by measuring the transient increase
in electrical conductivity of the skin. The increase in conductivity to a specific
stimulus, called a skin conductance response (SCR), typically occurs within
1
/1.5 seconds following appearance of the stimulus, and may last for 2
/6
seconds.
The phasic amplitude of the SCR is most sensitive to threatening stimuli,
but may also index relevance of a stimulus. Thus, even a photograph of
the face of an acquaintance, when embedded in a stream of unfamiliar faces,
will elicit heightened responsiveness (Channouf & Rouibah, 1997; Tranel
et al ., 1985). Experiments dating from the mid-20th century have found that
reading or hearing taboo-words elicits a larger SCR than reading or hearing
neutral words (Bingham, 1943; Gray et al ., 1982; Manning & Melchiori, 1974;
Mathews & MacLeod, 1985; Mathews et al ., 1989; McGinnies, 1949). Recent
studies have found that taboo words activate the amygdala and other brain
structures which mediate the arousal which accompanies detection of threat
(LaBar & Phelps, 1998). Among monolinguals, even emotion-laden words,
226 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

such as ‘cancer’ and ‘kill’, elicit higher responses than neutral words (Dinn &
Harris, 2000).
Language stimuli have been most frequently used to study fear sensitisa-
tion, conditioning and personality differences in orienting and general
autonomic reactivity (Barry, 1980; Grings & Zeiner, 1965; Mathews et al .,
1989; Stelmack et al ., 1983a, b). For example, researchers have found that the
phrases ‘strong shock’, ‘medium shock’, ‘weak shock’ and ‘no shock’ elicit skin
conductance amplitudes which differ according to the intensity suggested by
the words (Grings & Zeiner, 1965). Patients with anxiety disorders show larger
SCRs to anxiety-related words, particularly those related to their fears (e.g.
spider phobics react to the word ‘spider’, whether printed or spoken). When
hearing ambiguous words such as ‘bug’, anxiety-prone individuals appear to
operate with a bias to interpret words as having a threatening meaning
(Mathews et al ., 1989).
Lacking in the electrodermal literature are systematic manipulations of the
variables of interest to psycholinguists. Researchers haven’t designed experi-
ments to test whether SCRs are greater to single words than words in context,
to low frequency versus high frequency words, or to the first occurrence of a
word or a phrase compared to a latter occurrence. Indeed, current ‘state-of-the-
art’ reviews, such as the chapter by Dawson et al. (2000) and the book by
Boucsein (1992), do not have sections or index items on language.
In contrast with the dearth of work on autonomic reactivity to language,
electrical activity across the scalp, as measured via electroencephalogram, is a
common tool for language researchers. Event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited
by language stimuli constitute a major subfield of ERP research and the most
frequently used method of studying language within cognitive neuroscience.
Several studies have used ERPs to examine bilingual language processing but
only one known to this researcher has focused on emotional valence of the
words. Kim (1993) employed ERPs to index emotional responsiveness to
words heard by Korean
/English bilinguals speakers in their L1 and L2. The
P300 amplitude was selected as the dependent measure, following the
literature that this ERP component is sensitive to the incentive or emotional
value of a stimulus. Kim recorded ERPs to neutral, positive and negative
English words from monolingual English speakers and Korean speakers who
had varying degrees of English-language competency. However, no differ-
ences were found in P300 amplitude as a function of words’ emotional valence
or participants’ English proficiency. Kim concluded that her emotion words
(words with negative connotations such as ‘steal’ and positive connotations
such as ‘truth’) had probably been insufficiently arousing, since prior studies
documenting the sensitivity of P300 amplitude to emotional stimuli used
highly evocative stimuli such as pictures and slang expressions (Vanderploeg
et al ., 1987).
Kim’s (1993) study describes an arena in which electrodermal monitoring
may be a superior technology to ERPs. ERPs have excellent temporal
resolution (milliseconds versus seconds required to measure a phasic increase
using skin conductance) and are known to be exquisitely sensitive to myriad
lexical and grammatical factors (Kluender & Kutas, 1993; Kutas & King, 1996).
However, Kim (1993) found that ERPs were not sensitive to emotional valences
Psychophysiological Measures of Emotional Reactivity 227

of words. SCRs are well known to be sensitive to differences in the same types
of words Kim used in her ERP study (e.g. Dinn & Harris, 2000), suggesting
that words’ emotionality is a case where electrodermal recording may be
preferred to ERPs, despite the latter’s superior temporal resolution.

Bilingualism and Electrodermal Activity

Differential responsiveness to emotional terms in L1 and L2 was recently
studied in a sample of late learners of English (Harris et al ., 2003). Native
speakers of Turkish who had moved to the USA for schooling or work after
age 18, read or heard a variety of word types in Turkish and English.
Participants responded to items by rating them for pleasantness while skin
conductance activity was monitored via fingertip electrodes. Items included
taboo words (curse words, body parts and sexual terms), reprimands (‘Don’t
do that!’) and neutral words (‘column’, ‘table’). The reprimands were selected
to be the type that parents might use in an admonishing tone to children, and
included two that have strong childhood associations: ‘Shame on you!’ and
‘Go to your room!’.
Figure 1 shows mean phasic SCR for the taboo words, reprimands and
neutral words. SCRs were stronger to L1 Turkish emotional expressions than
to L2 English expressions, especially in the auditory modality. This corrobo-
rates the intuitions of L2 speakers that emotional expressions are more intense
when they occur in the native language.
Two additional results are noteworthy. The largest difference between L1
and L2 response patterns occurred not for taboo words, but for reprimands.
During debriefing, several participants said that they could hear, in their mind,
a family member saying a Turkish reprimand to them. This is consistent with
the work of Schrauf and Rubin (1998, 2000, 2003) who prompted adult
Spanish
/English speakers to retrieve autobiographical memories. For mem-
ories that had come to them in words rather than images, speakers were aware
of whether Spanish or English was used in the memory.
Second, modality effects differed across the languages, with Turkish, but
not English, showing larger amplitudes for auditory stimuli. English did not
show an advantage of the auditory modality. This sample of late learners of

Figure 1 Turkish
/English bilinguals’ SCRs are graphed according to modality of

presentation.
228 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

English mostly acquired English in a formal classroom setting (after age 12).
This means that the early context of learning English may have emphasised
the written form. Taboo words elicited larger SCRs when they appeared
printed on the screen than when they were played through the computer’s
loudspeakers. Words and short phrases presented in isolation can be difficult
to discern. Indeed, three taboo terms, ‘pee’, ‘whore’ and ‘raped’, were
sometimes not understood by several respondents, who rated these words
with a 0 to indicate lack of comprehension (items rated as 0 were excluded
from the electrodermal trials summarised in Figures 1 and 2). The relative
unfamiliarity of taboo words heard in isolation could have hindered lexical
identification, whereas the visual modality allowed easy access to the meaning
of these stigmatised words and consequently larger SCRs.
To rule out the possibility that the English words, phrases and taboo items
were less emotionally arousing because of their inherent meaning or the
manner in which they were spoken, the electrodermal activity of 28
monolingual English speakers (college students) was collected using the
same protocol, after removing the Turkish items (Harris & Ayçiçegi,
unpublished data). As shown in Figure 2, the monolingual speakers showed
a strong taboo word effect that was similar to that of Turkish speakers in their
native language. An unexpected finding was that the US college students did
not have heightened responsiveness to reprimands. This raises the question of
whether culturally specific patterns of childhood discipline influenced Turks’
elevated reactivity to reprimands.
This first study indicates the importance of modality and cultural factors in
modulating the heightened reactivity to emotional expressions in L1 compared
to L2. However, perhaps the most important question is determining if the L1
(acquired in the home from parents) invariably elicits stronger electrodermal
responses than later-learned languages. It would be helpful to recruit

Figure 2 The two lower lines show the Turkish
/English bilinguals’ SCRs to words and
phrases in their L1 and L2. The responses of English monolingual speakers to the
English stimuli are also included. Overall SCRs were higher for English monolinguals
because they only encountered half as many stimuli as the Turkish participants, and
thus their SCRs were not as reduced by habituation to the stimuli and testing situation.
Psychophysiological Measures of Emotional Reactivity 229

participants who are equally or more proficient in their L2. Young adults who
were born in the USA to immigrant parents are an ideal population. In the
present study, Spanish
/English bilinguals were chosen as the research
population. Prior interviews with Spanish-speaking students at Boston
University indicated that many viewed English as their most proficient
language, but Spanish as their L1, as it was the language acquired from
parents during early childhood. If proficiency is the most important variable
for heightened autonomic activity to emotion words, then English stimuli
should elicit the largest SCRs. If age of acquisition is the most important
variable, then Spanish stimuli will be most evocative.

Method
Participants
Participants were undergraduate or graduate students at Boston University
who volunteered their time or received course credit. Recruitment proceeded
via ads and emails in the psychology department requesting Spanish
/English
bilinguals who had learned Spanish as a first language. Students who
responded to these ads were only run through the experimental protocol if
they learned Spanish in the home from Spanish-speaking parents, and if
English was the second language acquired. This information was ascertained
during a preliminary phone call or when participants appeared at the
laboratory.

Language history interview

The experimental protocol included an extensive interview about partici-
pants’ language-learning history, which was administered during a break in
the electrodermal recording session. The interview was relaxed and informal,
with the goal of obtaining a detailed and nuanced understanding of factors
that could influence the participant’s bilingual proficiency and emotional
reactivity. Participants were asked their age, country of birth, residence in
different countries, age of arrival in the USA or English-speaking countries,
different languages encountered and spoken, language spoken in the home by
parents and siblings, and use of English and Spanish (or other languages if
relevant) at school. Experimenters also used their own intuitions to solve
‘mysteries’ about the participants’ language-learning history. For example, the
experimenter might inquire, ‘Your family didn’t immigrate to the US until you
were 16, yet you have nearly accentless English.’ The answer could be that
the family had vacationed in the USA for many summers and the student
had attended an English-language school in the home country and interacted
with friends or relatives who were native English speakers. Participants self-
rated themselves for English and Spanish proficiency on a seven-point scale
(7 /native speaking abilities, 6/near native, 5/very good, 4 /good, 3 /
fair, 2 /poor, 1 /minimal). Separate ratings were made for speaking, under-
standing, reading and writing, and then the average across four judgements
was taken as the proficiency score.
230 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

A group of early learners of English were identified based on the language

history interviews (n /15). Participants were born in the USA (n /6) or
immigrated between ages three and seven (n /9). All of these participants
considered Spanish to be their first language, as it was learned from parents
and spoken in the home during early childhood. However, all identified
English as their best language, as it was the language of past and present
schooling and peer culture. Two participants who immigrated at age seven
rated themselves as having native-speaker abilities in both languages,
although English was judged their best language because of their greater
facility in written English. Three participants who immigrated before age
seven judged themselves to have less than native-speaker abilities in both
languages. None of the participants who were born in the USA rated
themselves as having native-speaker abilities in Spanish (although they did
rate themselves as having near-native abilities). Mean values and ranges for
language-history variables appear in Table 1.
A group of late learners (n/21) was also highly proficient in English, but
grew up in South or Central America. These respondents generally began to
learn English in middle childhood via bilingual classes, and then moved to the
USA (or an English-speaking country) in their mid-teens when the family
immigrated, or at age 18 or in their early 20s to attend college or graduate
school in the USA. The late age-of-arrival for some participants does not
indicate poor English abilities. The ability to gain acceptance to a competitive
college requires English and generally good scholastic abilities. Many of these
respondents had parents who frequently spoke English and had worked or
studied in English-speaking countries. Two were born in the USA while
parents were working or studying in a US city, and then returned with the
family to South America by age two. Many individuals in this group had
visited the USA for summer vacations and had used English while travelling
abroad. The main difference between the two groups is thus being reared in
the USA (early learners) versus acquiring English in school and from family
members while growing up in South or Central America (late learners). While

Table 1 Learning history for Spanish
/English bilingual participants

Age Acquired English

Early
Childhood


Middle /late
Childhood
Statistical
significance
Age of arrival in the US* 3.1 (0
/7) 17.9 (13
/25) p B/0.001
Age of exposure to English 3.7 (0
/7) 7.9 (1
/16) p B/0.001
Length of stay in the US 16.2 (11
/19) 2.4 (0.17
/20) p B/0.001
$
Spanish proficiency 5.9 (4.25
/7) 6.8 (6
/7) p B/0.001
$
English proficiency 7.0 (6.25
/7) 5.6 (4
/7) p B/0.001
Age at testing 20.3 (19
/32) 20.7 (18
/36) Age n.s

Notes : Values are averages, with minimum and maximum in parentheses. *or other English
speaking country. $ 7 point scale, 7/native speaker abilities.
Psychophysiological Measures of Emotional Reactivity 231

all respondents in the latter group rated their Spanish as superior to their
English, four individuals who had attended bilingual or English-language
schools while growing up in a Spanish-speaking country rated either their
reading or their writing in Spanish as being less than native ability, rendering
their Spanish proficiency scores 6.25
/6.75, rather than 7 (7 indicated native-
speaker ability). Ratios of Spanish-to-English proficiency were 0.86 for the
early learners and 1.2 for the late learners.
As shown in Table 1, the two groups differed significantly on all
demographic and proficiency variables except for age at the time of testing.
Correlational statistics were run across the two groups as a whole. Not
surprisingly, the learning history variables were intercorrelated. Having an
early age of arrival in the USA meant an early age of first significant exposure
to English, r/0.48, p B/0.01, and of course longer total length of residence in
the USA, r / /0.96. The self-ratings of proficiency obtained in the current
study are consistent with findings of Birdsong and Molis (2001). Early age of
arrival was a better predictor of increased English proficiency and decreased
Spanish proficiency than either age of significant exposure or length of stay.
Age of arrival was strongly correlated with self-rated proficiency in English,
r/ /0.71, and with decreased proficiency in Spanish, r/0.62. Length of stay
was strongly correlated with English proficiency, r/0.73, and moderately
correlated with decreased Spanish proficiency, r/0.57. First age of significant
exposure to English was weakly correlated with English proficiency, r/
/0.38, p B/0.03, and with decreased Spanish proficiency, r/0.31, p B/0.08.
Because learning-history variables were intercorrelated, the current study
makes no claims about whether the causal factor for electrodermal reactivity is
age of arrival in the USA, significant exposure to English or number of years
residing in the USA. Other researchers have studied these factors and have
concluded that age of arrival is the most important for ultimate attainment of
native-like speaking abilities (Birdsong & Molis, 2001). Disentangling the
impact of these variables on autonomic reactivity could be pursued in future
research.

Materials
Four categories of emotional expressions were used: taboo words, repri-
mands, endearments and insults, with eight Spanish items and eight English
items in each category. Candidate English items in each category were drawn
from the previous study (Harris et al ., 2003) or were suggested by the
undergraduate laboratory assistants. To avoid offending undergraduates,1 the
strongest taboo words in either Spanish or English were not used. Items which
are not strictly taboo were also included, if they had strong sexual connota-
tions, such as ‘raped’ and ‘breast’ (a complete list of stimuli appear in the
Appendix). The category label ‘taboo words’ is thus a shorthand label for
‘taboo words and sexual terms’. It could be useful in future work to separately
compare taboo words, including the strongest, most socially stigmatised
words, and sexual terms.
A native Spanish-speaking research assistant identified possible Spanish
equivalents. For example, the English phrase ‘You are everything to me!’ was
232 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

matched with the Spanish phrase ‘/ Eres mi vida! ’ (‘You are my life’). Because
!
repetition of meaning could lead to habituation, not all pairs were direct
translation equivalents. Three Spanish-speaking students who were naive to
the goals of the study rated a larger pool of English and Spanish emotional
expressions for emotional intensity and frequency of use. The final set of items
was selected so that Spanish and English items were approximately similar on
these dimensions. As shown in the Appendix, when phrases appeared
visually, they were presented with initial capital letter and final exclamation
point, period or question mark, to convey emotional vividness. This differs
from the previous study, in which phrases (which were only reprimands)
appeared without punctuation.
Participants encountered a total of 64 emotional expressions, half in English,
half in Spanish, with half of the items in each language being presented
visually, and the other half auditorily. These 64 emotional expressions were
intermixed with 36 less emotional items. These were 36 single words selected
from the prior study (Harris et al ., 2003), and translated into Spanish by a
native Spanish speaker and verified by an additional Spanish speaker. These
36 single words included 12 items each in the categories of positive words,
negative words and neutral words. These words had been previously selected
using the Handbook of Semantic Word Norms (Toglia & Battig, 1978), which
contains pleasantness norms for a wide variety of English words. The reason
to include positive and negative words in a category which essentially serves
as a neutral baseline is to encourage participants to think about the emotional
meaning of all items while they are rating stimuli for unpleasantness. Also, the
prior study revealed that positive words (‘joy’, ‘bride’) and negative words
(‘cancer’, ‘kill’) differed only minimally from neutral words in electrodermal
responsiveness.
Single words may be experienced as less emotional than taboo words and
emotional expressions because of lack of context. While single words such as
‘cancer’ or ‘joy’ may be recognised as referring to emotion-laden events, they
may not readily elicit an emotional reaction unless one conjures up a specific
emotional event (e.g. ‘I learned I have cancer’). One might wonder if short
sentences (and the emotional phrases were actually all sentences) would elicit
larger electrodermal responsiveness than single words simply because of their
length. At present there is no study comparing electrodermal responsiveness
to single words and the same words in a neutral or emotional context.
However, in Harris et al . (2003) taboo words appeared as single words, and
elicited the strongest skin conductance amplitudes. One might also wonder if
the single words used were lower frequency than the words in the emotional
phrases, and whether frequency differences would explain differences in
electrodermal responsiveness. However, taboo words are generally the lowest
frequency items and also the ones that elicit the greatest skin conductance
amplitudes. Indeed, word frequency was not related to responsiveness in the
prior study (Harris et al ., 2003). The question of why the single-word stimuli
elicit lower SCRs than emotional expressions isn’t, however, central to the
current study. Instead, the goal is to measure responsiveness to emotional
stimuli across L1 and L2. Doing this requires a relatively nonemotional type of
stimulus to serve as a neutral baseline.
Psychophysiological Measures of Emotional Reactivity 233

For each participant, stimuli were presented in both languages and in both
the auditory and visual modality. For the single-word items, participants
encountered either the Spanish or English item (not both). For the English
/
Spanish pairs of emotional expressions, participants encountered both the
English member and the Spanish member of the pair (e.g. participant
encountered both ‘You are everything to me!’ and ‘/ Eres mi vida!’). Since
!
participants were told that their bilingualism was being studied, they may
have noticed the translation equivalents. They may have translated the item to
compare it to the earlier item, or they may have responded more strongly or
more weakly because of their memory for the earlier item. Unfortunately, it is
not helpful to compare size of skin conductance amplitudes to the first and
second occurrence of a pair, since electrodermal amplitudes decline substan-
tially over the course of a 30-minute experimental session. The second
occurrence will generally be much weaker than the first because items later
in the session will have dampened amplitudes. The most that can be done is to
arrange the order of items so that half the participants received the Spanish
item in the first half of their list, while the other half encountered the English
item first. Four materials sets were constructed so that items in the single-word
category could be assigned to appear either in English or Spanish, and so that
all items could be assigned to appear in either the auditory or visual modality.

Equipment and data preprocessing

All items were recorded in English and Spanish by a female native Spanish
speaker whose family moved to the USA when she was age seven. She had a
native-speaker accent in both languages; her Spanish accent was readily
identifiable as Central American.2 The emotional expressions were uttered
with an emotional tone appropriate to that item (speaking with flat or neutral
intonation renders the emotional expression anomalous and unrepresentative
of prior experience). Stimuli were recorded using SoundEdit Version 16 on a
Power Macintosh G3 computer.
Stimuli were presented using PsyScope experimental software, developed
by Cohen et al . (1993). Phasic electrodermal activity was recorded using the
Davicon C2A Custom Skin Conductance Monitor (NeuroDyne Medical
Corporation). Davicon Psychophysiological Assessment Software subtracts
the basepoint from the maximum score during each 10-second recording
interval, yielding a numeric value in micromhos, which is the amplitude of the
phasic SCR.
Enormous variability exists within and across individuals in both tonic and
phasic electrodermal levels (Lykken & Venables, 1971). For example, a
participant with baseline values which hover around 6.0
/7.0 may have phasic
amplitudes of 0.40 for a large response and 0.15 for a small response. For a
participant whose baseline values are 3.5
/4.0, 0.15 may be a large response. To
correct for these differences in range and to increase homogeneity of variance
in the data, participants’ scores were converted to z -scores, following the
recommendations of Ben-Shakhar (1985). This means that each individual’s set
of scores had a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1. Values more than 2.5
standard deviations from an individual participant’s mean score were
234 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

truncated to 2.5. Resulting scores were then multiplied by 100 to avoid

scrutinising mean scores in which significant digits are several places to the
right of the decimal point. While individual scores thus ranged from -250 to
250, averaging together a large set of scores with a mean of 0 results in a value
that converges towards 0. When viewing graphs of the z-scored data, scores of
0 do not indicate a null response, but instead indicate a response of average
amplitude. Scores above 0 indicate a response of greater than average
amplitude.
When collecting electrodermal data, the ideal trial yields an increase in
electrodermal activity which occurs 1
/1.5 seconds after stimulus onset and
appears as a spike or wave (Hugdahl, 1995). However, many trials are flat or
reveal a decline in skin conductance level. There is considerable debate about
how to interpret these non-ideal trials (Dawson et al ., 2000). Declines generally
occur because skin conductance levels were elevated on a previous trial. The
return to baseline may not be completed by the end of the 10-second recording
window, but continues into one or two subsequent trials. One method is
to record a negative amplitude for these trials. That is, if skin conductance
levels fall from 3.56 to 3.20, the trial could be assigned the value of -0.36. This
method effectively misattributes a negative value to a trial that was unlucky
enough to follow a high-response trial. That same stimulus might have
produced an ordinary SCR had it appeared in a different context. An
alternative is to delete these trials, although this has the disadvantage that
no information is gained from the trial. An intermediate position is to record
the value of 0 for these trials. This method was adopted because it corresponds
to the fact that a particular participant did not respond to the evoking
stimulus.

Procedure
Each participant was tested individually. Ethical guidelines of the American
Psychological Association were followed. Informed consent forms describing
the experiment were given prior to testing; participants had the option to end
their participation at any time or to request rest breaks. No participant found
the experiment unduly long or taxing. Electrodes were placed on the index
and middle fingers of the dominant hand to record changes in electrical
conductivity. Participants were instructed to rate each word or phrase for
unpleasantness on a 1
/7 scale (1 being most pleasant, 4 neutral and 7 being
most unpleasant) by typing the appropriate key on a standard computer
keyboard. The instructions stated that 0 was to be typed if they did not know
the meaning of the word or phrase. Items that were rated as 0 amounted to less
than 1% of trials and were discarded from analysis.
The unpleasantness scale was displayed on the computer screen for the
entire 10-second recording interval. Participants were told they had 10 seconds
to make their rating, and to respond whenever they felt ready during that
time. They were additionally urged to think about the meaning of the word or
phrase for the full 10 seconds, given that the physiological response can take
several seconds to manifest itself. For visual presentation, the word or phrase
was displayed on the screen until a response was made. For auditory
Psychophysiological Measures of Emotional Reactivity 235

presentation, a question mark remained on the screen until a response was

made. Participants were instructed to minimise movement or talking while
their skin conductance was being monitored. The experimenter (who was
either the author or a trained research assistant) sat next to participants in front
of a second computer displaying the electrodermal activity, and made notes on
possible artefacts. Artefacts were defined as either (1) an electrodermal
response which could not have been elicited by the stimulus, because it
occurred immediately with stimulus onset rather than the 1 second or more
which is required to measure a change in skin conductivity, or (2) a large or
unusual-looking SCR which coincided with movement made by participant
(e.g. cough, scratch or stretch).
A well known but sometimes frustrating aspect of measuring skin
conductance is that amplitudes decline and become flat as the experimental
setting and nature of the task become familiar to participants (Dawson et al .,
2000). This is similar to the reduction in arousal that accompanies a sedentary
activity such as listening to a lecture. That is, arousal is high following the
physical activity that brings one to the lecture hall, and then usually declines
as one habituates to the lecture hall and topic matter. Psychophysiologists
must thus grapple with what can amount to a disappearing dependent
variable. Indeed, some researchers use as their dependent variable number of
trials until participants’ SCRs asymptote at a level value (Dawson et al ., 2000).
A method used in the current study was to provide participants with a break
midway through the 98 trials. This break was used to conduct the language
history interview (described earlier). Most participants did dishabituate after
the break.

Results
Both common-sense intuitions and findings from the study of Turkish
/
English bilinguals (Harris et al ., 2003) suggest that higher electrodermal
responsiveness to auditory stimuli in a language (compared to visual stimuli)
indicates comfort and proficiency in that language. Would the early learners of
English show an auditory advantage for Spanish, English or both languages?
Modality effects were assessed by conducting 2 /2 repeated measures
analysis of variance (ANOVA) on the two levels of modality (auditory versus
visual) and the two languages. As shown in Figure 3, stimuli in the auditory
modality elicited higher SCRs than did visual stimuli, but only for the early
learners, F (1,14) /5.7, p B/0.03. The late learners had comparable reactivity to
visual and auditory stimuli, F B/1. No other modality effects or interactions
were significant.
To determine how reactivity to emotional expressions differed from the
single word condition, 2/5 repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted
separately for the two participant groups (two levels of language, five stimulus
types). ANOVA on the early learners revealed a main effect of stimulus type,
F (4,56) /4.2, p B/0.005. As shown in Figure 4, this effect was specific to taboo
words. English taboo words differed from the single word condition,
F (1,14) /7.7, p B/0.02, as did Spanish taboo words, F (1,14) /4.6, p B/0.05.
236 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

For the late learners, the main effect of stimulus type was significant at
F (4,80) /4.2, p B/0.004. Taboo words elicited elevated SCRs (compared to the
single word condition) in both English, F (1,20) /10.4, p B/0.005, and Spanish,
F (1,20) /4.3, p B/0.05. The reprimands also elicited SCRs that were greater
than the single word condition, but only in Spanish F (1,20) /4.4, p B/0.05 (see
Figure 5).
Speakers also rated items for unpleasantness. As shown in Figure 6,
participants’ ratings of unpleasantness were broadly similar across languages,
modalities and age-of-acquisition groups. As expected, endearments were
rated as highly pleasant and insults, reprimands and taboo words were rated
as unpleasant. The single word condition included equal numbers of positive,

Figure 3 Items in all stimulus categories were averaged and plotted according to
auditory or visual presentation. Early learners had larger SCRs to auditory stimuli than
to visual stimuli, consistent with naturalistic, conversation learning mode for both
languages.

Figure 4 SCRs plotted for the different stimulus categories for the early learners. Taboo
items were statistically greater than the single-word category.
Psychophysiological Measures of Emotional Reactivity 237

Figure 5 SCRs plotted for the different stimulus categories for late learners. Taboo
items were statistically greater than the single-word category, as were reprimands
presented in Spanish.

Figure 6 Unpleasantness ratings provided by the two groups of participants while they
heard and read words and phrases.

negative and neutral words and thus ended up with a mean score at the
midpoint of the seven-point unpleasantness scale.
ANOVA conducted on the ratings with independent variables, such
as modality, learning group and stimulus type, revealed a significant
language /stimulus type interaction. Pairwise comparisons localised this
difference to the case of endearments. Averaging over learning group, Spanish
endearments were rated as more pleasant (i.e. less unpleasant) than English
endearments, F (1,35) /7.6, p B/0.005.
Pairwise comparisons were conducted between the English and Spanish
ratings separately for the early and late learners. The only significant
difference occurred for the late learners’ ratings of reprimands. Reprimands
were rated as more unpleasant in Spanish than in English F (1,19) /4.7,
238 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

p B/0.05. Note that this is consistent with the findings for the electrodermal
data: the late learners, but not the early learners of English, had heightened
reactivity to reprimands.
Did individual participants’ ratings of unpleasantness correlate with their
skin conductance amplitudes within the categories of emotion words? Weak
but statistically significant correlations were obtained for taboo items, across
all participants and combining over languages, r/ /0.18, t(497) / /4.0,
p B/0.001. There was also a weak but significant correlation obtained for
endearments, r /0.10, t(531) /2.2, p B/0.03. Correlations for the other cate-
gories were smaller than these and not significant.

Discussion
Taboo words in both languages elicited the largest skin conductance
amplitudes. Surprisingly, insults elicited SCRs that were no higher than the
single-word category (which functioned as the relatively nonemotional base-
line). Endearments were also somewhat ineffective in eliciting a SCR.
Reprimands were the stimulus type which elicited a different pattern between
L1 and L2. It was with the reprimands also that a difference was found
between the early and later learners of English. Late learners showed
heightened reactivity to reprimands in Spanish, but not in English. The
heightened SCRs to reprimands in L1 will thus be termed the ‘reprimand
effect’. The bilinguals who acquired English early (who were born in the USA
or immigrated by age seven) did not show a reprimand effect. They responded
similarly to reprimands in both languages, and responses were not signifi-
cantly elevated about the single-word condition.
The current study confirms and extends prior findings about bilinguals’
responses to one category of emotional language, reprimands. The Spanish
/
English bilinguals who learned English later in life, resemble the Turkish
/
English bilinguals, who acquired English after age 18 (Harris et al ., 2003). Like
the late learners in the current study, the Turkish
/English bilinguals had
elevated skin conductance amplitudes for reprimands in L1 but not in L2.
Together, the results of the current and the previous study indicate that one
category of emotional expressions (reprimands) reliably elicits less autonomic
arousal when items are presented in L2 which was not acquired until middle
childhood or the teen years.
The linguistic specificity of the effect (i.e. only reprimands in L1 elicited
heightened SCRs) is consistent with findings that adult bilinguals readily
classify autobiographical memories as having been encoded in L1 or L2
(Schrauf & Rubin, 1998, 2000, 2003). However, reprimands do not invariably
evoke heightened skin conductance amplitudes in L1. As noted previously, an
English monolingual group did not respond to English reprimands, although
they did respond to taboo words. The early bilinguals of the current study also
did not respond to the reprimands, thus resembling their monolingual peers at
Boston University. Considering the English monolingual data together with
the data collected from the early learners of English raises the question of
whether factors specific to growing up in the USA render reprimands
innocuous, even when encountered in the native language. For example,
Psychophysiological Measures of Emotional Reactivity 239

reprimands may not be as salient in North American child-rearing as they are

in some other speech communities.
Both the early and late learners responded more strongly to taboo words
presented in English (see Figures 4 and 5). The early learners may have
responded more strongly to taboo words in English than in Spanish because
English is their dominant language. If taboo words generally elicit stronger
reactions in L1 than in L2, we would expect the late learners to have higher
SCRs to taboo words in Spanish, mirroring the effects found with Turkish
/
English bilinguals in the earlier study (Figure 1). One interpretation of the late
learners’ data is that cultural factors may have influenced their responses to
taboo words. During debriefing, participants frequently mentioned that taboo
words are commonly used in colloquial Spanish, and consequently these items
elicited little visceral charge. Several participants reported that taboo words
‘sound harsher’ in English. This could be the reason why both groups showed
higher emotional responses to taboo words in English. Furthermore, English
taboo words may be more relevant to the day-to-day life of all of the
participants, since all of them are college students living in an urban North
American city. The late learners (and possibly both groups) might demonstrate
a greater response to Spanish taboo words after months of immersion in a
Spanish-speaking peer group.
Aspects of the data, such as the modality effects, were novel and thus
interpretation is difficult. However, given the heuristic value of the current
work, some discussion would be useful. The previous study demonstrated
that the auditory modality had an advantage (i.e. elicited larger SCRs) in the
L1. In the current study, for early learners of English, auditory stimuli did elicit
larger SCRs than visual stimuli, in both Spanish and English, with a trend for a
greater advantage of auditory stimuli in English. This is consistent with the
proposal that early learning of both Spanish and English created an auditory
advantage in both languages. The slightly stronger auditory effect for English
is consistent with English dominance, which is expected for the children in
North America (Köpke, 2003).
This pattern of the early learners of English is thus readily interpretable.
Not so the pattern for the late learners. One might expect the late learners
would show an auditory advantage in their L1 Spanish, but not their L2
English, as this was the finding for the Turkish late learners. Instead, the late
learners had no auditory advantage in either language. I propose the following
interpretation, recognising that it is highly speculative. Identifying isolated
words and phrases auditorily is difficult when items appear in one’s L2 (Mayo
et al ., 1997). When auditory discrimination is difficult, the visual modality will
be relied on more, leading to heightened attention to visual stimuli. This may
have created a general visual-reliance strategy for the late learners which
influenced responses both to Spanish and English, thus negating what should
have been an auditory advantage for Spanish. Recent work on memory for
words presented either auditorily or visually indicates that modality can have
strategic effects, and that auditory presentation enhances the distinctiveness of
words (Smith & Hunt, 1998, 2000).
One can also ask why no language effects or age effects were found for the
endearments and the insults. The most that can be said at present is simply
240 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

that these stimuli were ineffective in eliciting large SCRs. Endearments may
not have elicited strong SCRs because electrodermal recording is mainly
sensitive to threat and punishment (Fowles, 1980). Comments during debrief-
ing suggested some reasons for the ineffectiveness of the insults. Participants
commented that the insults sounded silly or could be readily laughed off. For
example, the insults included ‘You are so fat’ and ‘You are so stupid’.
Although the goal had been to find statements that would be effective in
insulting college students, some participants reported that these items were
frequently used in light-hearted contexts and thus could have little noxious
impact.
Note however that the insults were rated as highly unpleasant (Figure 6). If
participants reported during debriefing that the insults felt innocuous, why
did the insults receive the highest unpleasantness ratings of any stimuli? The
participants presumably know that the insults literally refer to an unpleasant
situation (e.g. being told that one is fat, being told that one is stupid). The
insults are rated for unpleasantness by consulting knowledge of the meaning
of the phrases. However, the electrodermal responsiveness is sensitive to
whether the insults actually caused a visceral reaction. Here the postdebriefing
comments are relevant. Possibly because they have become habituated to such
phrases, college students find statements such as ‘You are so stupid’
unthreatening, and thus these stimuli did not elicit heightened SCRs.
This apparent dissociation between cognitive knowledge and autonomic
response is interesting. Such dissociations have been studied in work on
decision-making using a betting card game (Bechara et al ., 1997). Electro-
dermal activity was sensitive to the riskiness of choosing cards from a deck
stacked with bad outcomes (‘lose $50’) before players could consciously
articulate which was the risky deck. In the current study, electrodermal
activity was not sensitive to cognitive knowledge, but (apparently) only to
stimuli such as taboo words and reprimands which carried deep-felt negative
or socially stigmatised associations.
The proposal that cognitive knowledge can dissociate from autonomic
response suggests a methodological improvement. Bilinguals could be asked
to imagine a phrase spoken to them in an appropriate interpersonal situation.
For example: ‘Imagine the phrase ‘‘You are so fat’’ spoken in a context where it
would be wounding. Then rate the emotional intensity of your feeling.’ This
rating task could be used to identify stimuli (in different languages) which
would activate the autonomic nervous system. Substituting this task for the
current task (rating phrases for unpleasantness) would likely also increase
autonomic arousal.
It is well known that the same words and phrases carry different emotional
connotations for different language communities (Harré, 1986; Kovecses, 1994;
Wierzbicka, 1999). Some of our taboo words or reprimands could have
appeared relatively neutral to some participants. This variability will likely
create variability in electrodermal responsiveness, thus decreasing statistical
power. Restricting participants to a specific culture, and choosing stimuli
whose emotional resonances are known for that culture, would reduce
variability and thus increase statistical power, but would limit the ability to
generalise beyond the selected culture.
Psychophysiological Measures of Emotional Reactivity 241

Conclusions
Early L2 learners of English show heightened SCRs to both Spanish and
English taboo words, consistent with the proposal that when two languages
are learned early, emotion-laden terms activate the autonomic nervous system
equally. The data are inconsistent with a strong variant of the ‘L1 is more
emotional’ thesis. Because the early learners reported greater proficiency in
their L2, the data are consistent with the proposal that the L1 is more
emotional when it is the more proficient language. Supporting this are the data
from late learners, who demonstrated heightened SCRs to Spanish repri-
mands, but not English reprimands. This extends the prior finding of a
reprimand effect in Turkish to a different language and culture. The linguistic
specificity of the reprimand effect (that it is found only with the native
language, not a second language) contributes to prior documentation of
‘internal languages of retrieval’ (Schrauf & Rubin, 1998, 2000, 2003). Measuring
skin conductance appears a useful way to explore the extent to which
linguistic phrases are mentally represented with the emotional associations
that accompanied them during childhood learning.

Acknowledgements
Ayse Ayçiçegi collected the data on English monolinguals during our
collaboration on the study of Turkish
/English bilingual speakers, and
supervised initial data collection for the current study. I thank her for this
and for years of collaboration and support on myriad research projects.
Dialma Miranda assisted with translation, selection and recording of
both Spanish and English stimuli. Elena Isaacs, Karen Meersohn and Tabitha
Pancharatnam ran many of the participants through the protocol.
Bruce Mehler of Neurodyne Medical Corporation offered technical advice
on interpreting the skin conductance data. Wayne Dinn assisted with
electrodermal equipment and provided comments on an earlier version of
this paper.

Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Dr Catherine L. Harris,
Psychology Department, Boston University, 64 Cummington St., Boston, MA
02215, USA (charris@bu.edu).

Notes
1. During debriefing participants maintained that they would not have been offended
had the strongest taboo words been used. These have been recently used in
psycholinguistic research by MacKay et al . (2002).
2. No literature exists on whether emotional responses are stronger or weaker to
auditory stimuli which match or mismatch the accent of the listener.

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Appendix: English and Spanish Stimuli

Spanish and English items were direct translations except where noted.

Reprimands
Shut up! Cállate!
!
/

Now you’re in trouble! Sabes que me lo vas a pagar! (You’re going to

!
/

pay for that)

Shame on you! Avergüénzate!
!
/

Stop that! Deja eso! (Leave that)

!
/

Don’t do that! No hagas eso!

!
/

No hitting! Sabes que estas caliente conmigo! (You’re hot

!
/

with me, more intense in Spanish)

Go to your room! Vete a tu cuarto!
!
/
Psychophysiological Measures of Emotional Reactivity 245

That’s not nice! Estas castigado! (You are punished)

!
/

Insults
Are you crazy? ¿Eres loca?
I never want to see you Nunca más te hablaré! (I will never talk to you
!
/

again! again)
You are such a loser! Que bruta eres! (You’re so stupid)
!
/

You suck! Idiota! (You idiot)

!
/

What a moron! Canto de estupida! (Piece of stupid person)

!
/

You are so fat! Qué gorda eres!

!
/

You disgust me! No quiero verte la cara! (I don’t want to see

!
/

your face)
I hate you! Te odio!
!
/

Endearments
I love you more than any- Te amo!
!
/

thing!
You are everything to me! Eres mi vida! (You are my life)
!
/

I’ve missed you so much! Me haces falta!

!
/

When will I see you again? Siempre te recordaré! (I will always remem-
!
/

ber you!)
I would die for you! Sin ti no puedo vivir! (I can’t live without
!
/

you)
I can’t wait to see you! Me alegra verte! (It makes me happy to see
!
/

you)
Hey, sweetie! ¿Mi corazón, cómo estás? (My heart, how are
you)
You are so beautiful! Eres tan bella!
!
/

Taboo and sexual terms

asshole cabrón
pussy crica
246 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

dick maricón (slang term: gay)

pee mear
shit mierda
bitch puta
breast seno
raped violada

Single word category, sorted by neutral, aversive and positive words

Neutral (n/12)
box caja
street calle
column columna
finger dedo
table mesa
name nombre
number numero
part parte
door puerta
branch rama
chair silla
envelope sobre

Aversive (n /12)
murder asesinato
anger cólera
crime crimen
cruel crueldad
pain dolor
disease enfermedad
Psychophysiological Measures of Emotional Reactivity 247

war guerra
kill matar
death muerte
fight pelea
danger peligro
grave tumba

Positive (n /15)
joy alegrı´a
friend amigo
love amor
kiss beso
home casa
happy feliz
freedom libertad
mother mamá
honey miel
father papá
laugh risa
smile sonrisa
The Influence of Emotional Arousal on
Affective Priming in Monolingual and
Bilingual Speakers
Jeanette Altarriba and Tina M. Canary
University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA
The activation of arousal components for emotion-laden words in English (e.g. kiss,
death) was examined in two groups of participants: English monolinguals and


Spanish /English bilinguals. In Experiment 1, emotion-laden words were rated on


valence and perceived arousal. These norms were used to construct prime /target
word pairs that were used in Experiment 2. Monolingual and bilingual participants
performed lexical decisions to English word targets in either high arousal, moderate
or unrelated conditions. Results revealed positive priming effects in both arousal
conditions for both groups of participants. Interestingly, while the baseline
conditions were similar across groups, the arousal conditions produced longer
latencies for bilinguals than for monolinguals. These data represent the first


demonstration of word /word priming in the domain of perceived arousal in a
dominant language for monolingual and bilingual speakers. Results are discussed in
terms of the representation of emotion words and the structure of emotion in
bilingual memory.

Keywords: bilingualism, emotion, arousal, affective priming, word priming, emotion-

laden

Introduction
In recent times, the relationship between cognition and emotion has taken
on new interest across researchers who are concerned with the representation
of emotion words in memory. For example, it has been established that words
that label emotion (e.g. happy, sad) are distinguishable from abstract words as
evidenced by free recall, priming results, number of associates generated and
rating data (see e.g. Altarriba & Bauer, 2004; Altarriba et al ., 1999). In addition,
it has been demonstrated that emotion words differ from concrete and abstract
words in terms of their rated concreteness, imageability and context
availability (Altarriba et al ., 1999). In examining word representation in
different languages, Altarriba (2003) has also reported that emotion words in
Spanish differ from their counterparts in English, in terms of their rated
imageability and context availability. Clearly, a pattern is emerging indicating
that emotion words are represented as a distinct category of words in memory
and possess different characteristics on dimensions of interest
/ dimensions
that researchers typically use to categorise words in memory.
Now that a basic framework for the representation of these words is in
place, the next question to consider is the relative influence specific emotion
word characteristics have on language processing, access, storage and
retrieval. These characteristics are known as valence and arousal. An emotion

0143-4632/04/02 248-18 $20.00/0 – 2004 J. Altarriba & T.M. Canary

J. OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT Vol. 25, No. 2&3, 2004

248
Influence of Emotional Arousal on Affective Priming 249

word denotes an emotional state or feeling and contains some value on these
two dimensions. In a similar vein, emotion-laden words, when encountered,
conjure feelings or emotional states (e.g. kiss, death). Whissell (1989) describes
English words with affective connotations (i.e. emotion-laden words) in terms
of a score along the dimensions of Activation (arousal) and Evaluation
(pleasantness). Similarly, these words can also be distinguished among each
other in terms of their relative values on valence and arousal dimensions (see
e.g. Compton et al ., 2003). The arousal dimension has been defined as an
invigorating response to stimulation (Duffy, 1957, 1972). It has also been
defined as the negative probability of falling asleep (Corcoran, 1965, 1981).
Valence simply denotes whether the word is considered to be positive or
negative (Ferré, 2003). Both positive and negative stimuli with regards to
valence are better remembered than neutral stimuli.
The use of perceived arousal and valence to define emotion-related words is
not new. For example, the Affect Grid was designed to record judgments about
current mood states and feelings expressed by a single facial gesture or by a
single word (we are using single words in the current study) (Russell et al .,
1989). The Affect Grid emphasises the following two dimensions: (1) pleasure/
displeasure and (2) arousal/sleep. Pleasure/displeasure is an older, more
widely accepted concept in emotion lexicon research, while arousal is a more
modern concept. The two dimensions are conceptually separate, but often
correlated in certain circumstances. A great deal of information contained in
self-reports of affect is accounted for by these two dimensions.
Russell (1978), for example, indicated that pleasure/displeasure and
arousal can account for the scaling of emotion terms: ‘Beyond these two
dimensions, the structure of emotion terms became more difficult to interpret
clearly, to validate empirically, or replicate convincingly. . .’ (p. 1166). Russell
(1983) further demonstrated that emotion-related words across many lan-
guages (e.g. English, Chinese, Croatian) fall in a circular order in space defined
by pleasure/displeasure and arousal/sleep.
How are valence and perceived arousal represented in memory and how
are they represented within and between languages? The current study has
two main aims: (1) to discover the ways in which arousal and valence
influence the processing of emotions within language, and (2) to gather
evidence regarding the interconnectedness between emotion-related words
within languages by means of a priming paradigm. To date, only one other
study has examined emotion word representation using a word priming
approach in this domain (i.e. Altarriba & Bauer, 2004) but it did so without
controlling arousal components. The current study extends that previous
study; moreover, it does so by examining these representations across
monolingual and bilingual participants. To the extent that arousal components
found in words serve to prime responses to related or associated words, it
might be concluded that the mental lexicon is organised on the basis of
emotion-related components as well as basic semantic or meaning-based
components
/ a finding that would call for the possible re-examination of
models that proposed to explain basic word representation in memory. In the
sections that follow, the priming paradigm will be presented and discussed in
250 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

detail, followed by a discussion of extant literature on affective or emotion

priming.

The Word Priming Paradigm

In word priming research, both within and across languages, a typical
finding has been facilitation in response times to word targets (e.g. dog) that
were immediately preceded by related word primes (e.g. cat; see Altarriba,
1992 for a review of the bilingual literature, and Neely, 1991 for a review of the
monolingual literature). This effect, termed semantic priming, is predicted by
models of semantic memory that propose the existence of associative networks
in memory. Semantic memory has been defined as one’s mental storehouse of
knowledge about the world and forms the foundation of one’s ability to both
understand and produce language (McNamara & Holbrook, 2003).
The spreading activation theory of semantic priming was first introduced
by Collins and Loftus (1975). According to this theory, concepts are
represented as nodes in a semantic network, which is organised according
to semantic similarity. Concepts are linked together if they share common
properties. The more properties the two concepts (or nodes) share, the more
links exist between them. Spreading activation is the fundamental retrieval
mechanism in this theory (McNamara & Holbrook, 2003). When a concept is
activated, the activation spreads from the activated concept to its related
concepts via the links in the network, and decays with distance. This theory
predicts that the processing of a prime word causes activation to spread from
the prime throughout the conceptual network. Furthermore, more activation is
present at the concepts closer to the prime than those further away. Hence, two
words that are close in meaning would also be stored in close proximity in the
mental lexicon. Accessing one of those words (e.g. ‘cat’) leads to the immediate
activation of the other (e.g. ‘dog’). Responses to ‘dog’ are therefore speeded or
‘primed’ within a given task (see e.g. McNamara & Holbrook, 2003, for a
relevant review of the literature).
Many researchers concerned with bilingualism have studied to what extent
the two languages are connected in memory (see e.g. Altarriba, 1992; Frenck &
Pynte, 1987; Grainger & Beauvillain, 1988). Particularly, researchers have
studied the organisation of the bilingual lexicon. Some researchers have
argued that bilinguals have one unified processing system in which language
specificity is an attribute, while others have argued that bilinguals have two
independent processing systems with appropriate connections. If the two
languages are indeed separate systems then one language system should
operate separately from the other. In other words, lexical memory, compre-
hension and speech production of one language system should not activate or
receive interference from the other language system (Schwanenflugel & Rey,
1986).
The priming paradigm has been used to study the organisation of the
bilingual lexicon. Specifically, researchers have implemented lexical decision
tasks, and sometimes pronunciation tasks, to measure the degree to which the
two lexicons overlap. For the purposes of this paper the results of the priming
studies are of main concern. Though some results are mixed, evidence has
Influence of Emotional Arousal on Affective Priming 251

been found to indicate that related words across languages do share some
conceptual components that are sufficient for priming to take place between
languages (see e.g. Altarriba, 1992, for a review).
The current study will employ a lexical decision task within a priming
paradigm to study how emotion words are represented in memory for
monolingual and bilingual speakers. It is also important to note that if
differences are obtained in how English monolinguals and Spanish
/English
bilinguals process emotion-related words in English, then one might argue
that emotional arousal or valence operates differently for monolingual and
bilingual speakers. This current study represents the first empirical investiga-
tion into emotion priming in bilinguals. Before proceeding to the mechanics of
the current study, it is necessary to introduce the topic of affective priming and
some of the literature published thus far, in the monolingual domain.

Affective Priming
It has been demonstrated that participants need less time to evaluate a
target stimulus if that target is preceded by a prime stimulus with the same
valence (positive or negative) as compared to when the prime stimulus has a
different valence (Spruyt et al ., 2002). Fazio and associates (1986) were the first
authors to demonstrate what has now been coined affective priming. (Note
that the term ‘semantic priming’ is typically used in cases where the primes
and targets share meaning, but are not necessarily emotion terms, as in the
case of ‘cat
/dog’ and ‘table
/chair’.) The researchers focused on the activation
of attitudes from memory. Specifically, they were interested in whether or not
attitudes are capable of being activated automatically after encountering the
attitude object. Participants were asked to indicate as quickly as possible
whether a target adjective had a positive or negative connotation. The
researchers were interested in the participants’ reaction time to the target
based on the valence of the attitude object as the prime.
Fazio and associates (1986) hypothesised that the presentation of an attitude
object would automatically activate any strong association to that object. As
with semantic priming, activation is assumed to spread along the paths of the
memory network, including any evaluative associations. Therefore, they
suggest that the activation levels of associated evaluations are temporarily
increased, resulting in the facilitation of target words that share the same
valence as the prime. The first experiment consisted of two phases: (1) prime
selection and (2) a priming task.
In the first phase participants were asked to evaluate adjectives by pressing
one of two keys labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The four words to which participants
responded ‘good’ most quickly and the four words to which the participants
responded ‘bad’ most quickly served as the strong primes and the four words
to which participants responded ‘good’ and ‘bad’ least quickly served as the
weak primes. In the second phase of the experiment, participants were asked
to remember the prime word while making an evaluative judgment on the
target word.
Results revealed a significant three-way interaction among strength of
association, prime valence and target valence. More specifically, facilitation
252 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

occurred when the prime and target had the same valence (congruent) and
inhibition occurred when the prime and target were incongruent. However,
this affective priming effect was only significant for those objects that had a
strong evaluative association. Fazio et al. (1986) suggested that this finding
indicates that some attitudes may be activated automatically upon the mere
presentation of an attitude object. There was some concern that the 300-ms
(milliseconds) delay between the presentation of the prime and the presenta-
tion of the target (e.g. SOA or stimulus onset asynchrony) may have given the
participants enough time to employ controlled processes instead of simply
relying on automatic processes.
Hermans et al . (1994) argued that one should not be so quick as to simply
accept that affect can be activated automatically on the mere observation of an
affective stimulus. Hermans et al . were concerned with the necessary features
that moderate the affective priming effect. They stated that automatic
processes can be characterised by a set of defining features, such as
controllable versus uncontrollable and intentional versus unintentional, that
do not have to co-occur perfectly in an all-or-none fashion. In their first
experiment, the researchers wanted to test whether the affective priming effect
is confined to the processing of words or whether it can be generalised to other
stimuli, specifically real-life colour pictures.
The experiment consisted of two phases: (1) affective rating/stimulus
selection and (2) priming phase. Two SOAs were used
/ 300 ms and 1000 ms.
Participants were asked to evaluate pairs of slides as quickly as possible by
verbally stating ‘pleasant’ or ‘unpleasant’. Participants were directed to ignore
the prime and focus only on the target. The results indicated that affective
priming does generalise to pictorial stimuli. Significant facilitation was
observed when the prime and target were affectively congruent as compared
to incongruent. Hermans et al . stressed that because the memory word
instructions that Fazio et al . (1986) included were omitted, the affective
priming effect was observed under conditions that more closely approximated
the mere observation of the prime.
Hermans et al . (1994) observed that in all of the studies of the affective
priming effect participants are always asked to evaluate the target. This
constant evaluation does not accurately reflect a person’s state of conscious-
ness in everyday life. In their second experiment, they asked the participants
to pronounce the second word that was presented in each pair. If affective
priming is observed under these conditions, then one could claim that
affective priming is not dependent on intentional, conscious evaluative
processes. Once again, affective priming was observed. Pronunciation laten-
cies were faster for affectively congruent trials than for affectively incongruent
trials. Therefore, it appears that affective priming is a genuine feature of
associative networks and not an artefact of controlled mental processes.

The Current Study

In the current study we were interested in investigating the representation
of emotion within the English language
/ the dominant language for the
current set of participants. Although there is evidence, as noted above, of
Influence of Emotional Arousal on Affective Priming 253

significant affective priming within languages, many of the reported studies

have confounded valence and arousal. In other words, the perceived arousal of
emotion-laden word primes and targets have varied freely. We attempted to
control arousal in order to separate its effects from valence. In addition,
valence was often confounded with association strength. Typically items were
matched for valence, but left free to vary with regards to association strength
(i.e. the probability that a given word is produced as a response to a specific
target word
/ a variable that should be equated across conditions). Also, word
length and word frequency for primes and targets were not typically well
controlled. Finally, in some studies, arousal components were also not closely
matched within the various conditions of each study.
The current study assesses emotion word representation in English for
English speaking monolinguals and Spanish
/English bilinguals. Conse-
quently, the study will examine the relative influence of perceived arousal
on processing emotion-laden words in these two participant groups, and
address the relationship between emotion word representation and language
dominance. Experiment 1 consists of a norming study for emotion-laden
words from which prime
/target pairs were selected for the priming study that
occurred in Experiment 2.

Experiment 1
The purpose of this first experiment was to collect normative data regarding
levels of perceived arousal and valence characteristics for a set of words to be
used in Experiment 2.

Method
Participants
Thirty undergraduates at the University at Albany, State University of New
York participated in this experiment. The number of participants was evenly
split between male and female and most were monolingual English speakers.
Students’ average age was approximately 19 years. Each participant received
extra credit in his or her psychology course for completing the experiment.

Materials
Forty-five emotion-laden words were selected from the University of South
Florida Word Norms database (Nelson et al., 1998). These emotion-laden
words were then randomly mixed with 45 concrete and 45 abstract words
taken from Altarriba et al . (1999). Two copies of this set of words were
combined to form one packet. Instructions for rating the valence (positive/
negative) and arousal (low, moderate and high) of the words were constructed,
and one set of instructions preceded each of the two word lists, within the
packet. Concrete and abstract words were included so that participants would
not be biased to respond in any specific manner based solely on the
characteristics of the emotion-laden words.
254 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Procedure
The ratings were collected in two group sessions. Half of the participants
completed the valence ratings first, followed by the arousal ratings and the
remaining participants completed the arousal ratings first and the valence
ratings second. Participants were asked to rate valence and arousal using a
seven-point Likert scale (1 /low arousal or positive; 7/high arousal or
negative). They were provided with examples of how to use the scale (see
Appendix A).

Results
The average score for each emotion-laden word was computed for valence
and arousal. It was determined that any word with a score of 4.66 or above on
the valence scale was a positive emotion word, any word with a score of 3.64
or below was a negative emotion word, and those words with an average
falling between 3.65 and 4.65 were considered neutral words. Any word with a
score of 4.66 or above on the arousal scale was considered a high-arousal
emotion word, any word with a score of 3.64 or below was a low arousal
emotion word, and those words with an average falling between 3.65 and 4.65
were considered moderate in arousal. These cut-off points were similar to
those used by Whissell (1989). She used a seven-point scale to assess the
pleasure and activation of emotion terms. In her work, 4.68 and above was
considered high in activation, and 3.32 and below was considered low in
arousal. These values compare favourably to the 4.66 and 3.64 used in the
current study. It was found that almost all of the emotion-laden words were
high in perceived arousal. In fact, only 15 of the words that had been rated
were moderate in arousal and none of the emotion-laden words were rated as
low in arousal (see Appendix B for a complete listing of the 45 emotion-laden
words and their reported mean ratings). Standard deviations for valence
ratings ranged from 0.50 to 1.27 and those for arousal ranged from 1.46 to 2.10.

Experiment 2
The purpose of this experiment was to examine priming for emotion-laden
words in English as a function of their differing levels of arousal. Prime
/target
pairs were selected from the normative study in Experiment 1 and were
matched on frequency, length, valence and association strength. A key feature
of these stimuli is the fact that while these variables were held constant,
arousal was manipulated such that prime
/target pairs were either high,
moderate or unrelated in terms of perceived arousal. Further, these prime
/
target pairs in English were presented to both English monolingual and
Spanish
/English bilingual speakers for lexical decision. The question here is
whether or not the same results would occur using the same stimuli for the
dominant language in these two populations (i.e. English). Conversely, any
differences across groups would indicate that the influence of emotional
arousal is moderated by the knowledge or lack of knowledge of emotion-
related information in a second language.
Influence of Emotional Arousal on Affective Priming 255

Method
Participants
Forty-five English monolinguals from the University at Albany, State
University of New York participated in this experiment. Participants in
this experiment had normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity and had
no known reading disorders. They received course credit for their participa-
tion. A language history questionnaire was administered to determine that
they were clearly English monolinguals and not proficient in Spanish (see
Altarriba & Mathis, 1997, for a discussion of the use of this questionnaire for
the purpose of screening purported monolingual English speakers). However,
no potential participants were excluded on this basis. Appendix C includes a
summary of the data gathered from the questionnaires for this group of
participants. English was the first language for all of these monolingual
participants. Twenty-four of the 45 participants had some experience with a
second language. Thirteen had some Spanish classes, five French, two
American Sign Language, one German, two Greek and one Korean. The 13
participants who studied Spanish in high school or college had studied the
language for an average of 3.58 years. They rated themselves a 2.35 out of 10
on a scale regarding their speaking skills in Spanish and a 2.85 out of 10 on a
scale regarding their written skills in Spanish. In summary, they were not at all
proficient in the Spanish language.
A second group of participants included 45 Spanish
/English bilinguals.
These participants also had normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity and
had no known reading disorders. They received monetary compensation for
their participation. A language history questionnaire was administered to
determine the language of dominance for all participants. Results of the
questionnaire for the bilingual participants can be found in Appendix C. The
participants provided similar ratings on their abilities to speak in both
languages. However, these participants rated themselves more highly on their
ability to read English as compared to Spanish, t(44) /2.23, p/0.03. The
bilingual participants spent a greater amount of time per day speaking English
(84%) versus Spanish (16%), t(44) /17.67, p B/0.001. Therefore, it was assumed
that English was the dominant language (L1). However, Spanish was the first
language learned by all participants.

Materials and apparatus

Emotion-laden prime
/target word pairs were created from the normative
database formed in Experiment 1. The association strength of the word pairs
ranged from 0.055 to 0.520, as assessed by the University of South Florida
Word Norms database (Nelson et al ., 1998). All of the prime
/target word pairs
were assessed for both their valence (positive or negative) and their arousal
(high, moderate or low) using norming data collected from Experiment 1 of
the current study. Word length, word frequency (as assessed via Kučera &
Francis, 1967), and association strength of the high arousal and moderate
arousal primes were not significantly different from each other. In the case of
association strength, the probability with which a given target word is
produced to a given prime word was equal across the different conditions.
256 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

However, the two types of primes (i.e. high arousal and moderate arousal)
were significantly different in arousal values, p B/0.001.
Fifteen critical sets of word pairs were created. Each set of word pairs
contained one high arousal target paired with a high arousal prime, a
moderate arousal prime and an unrelated-word prime (i.e. prisoner
/jail,
criminal
/jail, guitar
/jail). Note that primes that are moderate in arousal still
carry valence and arousal components but the values for arousal are
significantly lower than those for the high arousal condition. In addition, the
moderate condition contains pairs of items that are associated to each other
unlike the pairs of items within the unrelated condition. Three versions of the
experiment were constructed and counterbalanced for the three types of
primes. In each version of the experiment, five of the prime words were high
in arousal, five were moderate in arousal and five were unrelated. Each
version of the experiment contained primes for the same target words.
Therefore, all prime
/target word pairs were unique within a given experi-
mental list version. Thus, taking the previous example, one third of the
participants saw ‘prisoner
/jail’, one third saw ‘criminal
/jail’, and the
remaining third saw ‘guitar
/jail’. The valence was always the same for both
the prime word and the target word (both positive or both negative) and all of
the target words were high in arousal, therefore the critical manipulation was
arousal.
Primes were always real English words. Half of the targets were English
words and half were non-words. Non-words were formed by changing one or
two letters in unrelated English words that did not appear anywhere within
the experiment (e.g. ‘blit’). Given that we are using a lexical decision task, it is
necessary to have targets that are non-words as well, as the task for the
participants is to decide whether a given letter string is a word or a non-word.
Therefore, word and non-word targets are intermixed within stimulus lists
with the constraint that no more than three trials in a row be of a particular
kind (i.e. word or non-word). In this way, a participant cannot ‘predict’ which
type of target may appear on the next trial given the status of the current trial.
A set of nine practice trials was constructed using items not found in the
experimental trials. The same practice list was used for all participants.
The programs for this experiment were created using Micro Experimental
Laboratory (MEL) software (Schneider, 1988, 1990). All experiments were
presented on a computer screen interfaced with an IBM-PC computer. Words
were displayed in white lowercase letters on a black background.

Procedure
All participants were tested individually. English monolingual and
Spanish
/English bilingual participants were randomly assigned to one of
the three English versions of the experiment. Instructions appeared in English
on the computer screen and were reinforced verbally by the experimenter. The
experimenter remained in the room during the duration of the experiment. A
given experimental trial proceeded as follows: A pre-trial warning, ‘/’,
appeared for 500 ms in the centre of the screen at the beginning of each trial. A
prime word appeared for 200 ms and was then replaced by a target letter
string. Participants were instructed to press the ‘m’ key on the keyboard with
Influence of Emotional Arousal on Affective Priming 257

their right index finger if the target letter string was a real word. If it was not a
real word, they were instructed to press the ‘z’ key with their left index finger.
The target remained on the screen for 1500 ms or until the participant
responded. Participants were told to respond as quickly and as accurately as
possible. If participants did not press the appropriate key, the word ‘error’
appeared on the screen for 750 ms. The intertrial interval (ITI) was 2000 ms.
Nine practice trials preceded the 30 experimental trials. All participants were
then given a language history questionnaire. For the monolingual participants,
as noted before, this was merely a screening device designed to discover those
participants who had knowledge of the Spanish language but who for some
reason did not divulge that knowledge earlier in the session. For the bilingual
participants, these data were used to determine the dominant language used
by these participants (English) as well as their relative proficiency in the
Spanish language.

Results
Mean reaction times were computed for each participant in each condition.
Response latencies that were under 300 ms or over 1000 ms were considered
outliers and trimmed from the remaining data. Only data for correct responses
were analysed. Further, reaction times that exceeded two standard deviations
above or below the mean were replaced with the value of the mean, plus or
minus the value corresponding to the appropriate standard deviation. Errors
constituted less than 2% of the data in each cell and were not subjected to any
further analyses.
Overall mean reaction times across the three conditions (high arousal,
moderate arousal and unrelated) for both monolingual and bilingual partici-
pants can be seen in Table 1. For monolingual participants, an overall ANOVA
(analysis of variance) revealed a difference among the three priming
conditions, F (2, 132) /7.99, p B/0.01. Planned comparisons revealed that there
was a significant difference between the high arousal condition and the
unrelated condition, t (44) /3.89, p B/0.01. Clearly, facilitation occurred in the
high arousal condition as compared to the unrelated condition yielding a 63-
ms positive priming effect. Similarly, a significant effect emerged for items in
the moderate condition as compared to the unrelated condition, t(44) /3.40,
p B/0.01. Again, a positive 62-ms priming effect emerged for this group of
participants. Both high arousal and moderate arousal primes produced
roughly equivalent levels of priming as compared to the unrelated condition.

Table 1 Mean reaction times (ms) for word targets in the high arousal, moderate
arousal and unrelated conditions for monolingual and bilingual participants

Priming condition
High arousal Moderate arousal Unrelated
Monolinguals 585 586 648
Bilinguals 633 629 658
258 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

For bilingual participants, although an overall analysis across the three

priming conditions did not reveal a significant effect, priming effects did
emerge in the conditions of interest. Planned comparisons revealed that the
differences between the moderate priming condition and the unrelated
priming condition were significant, t (44) /2.44, p B/0.05. Therefore, a sig-
nificant positive priming effect of 29 ms emerged for the condition that was
moderate in arousal. A similar effect occurred for prime
/target pairs in the
high arousal condition as compared to the unrelated condition, t(44) /2.12,
p B/0.05. Thus, the size of this priming effect, 26 ms, was similar to that
observed for items in the neutral condition.

General Discussion
The main purpose of this study was to investigate the ways in which
perceived arousal moderates the affective priming effect for a participant’s
dominant language. Clearly, there has been a debate in the literature as to
whether or not priming exists across languages and whether or not priming
effects are similar or different in monolingual versus bilingual speakers. This
paradigm is meant to explore the ways in which individuals encode, store and
retrieve words within their lexicons, and priming effects are taken as an
indication of the connectedness between items within memory. The results of
Experiment 2 indicated that priming occurs for English stimuli that are highly
arousing and moderate in arousal. Note that in both cases the degree of
association for the items as well as frequency, length and valence were all well
controlled. The only factor that was manipulated across items was arousal.
These effects also occurred for Spanish
/English bilinguals for whom English
was their most-used or dominant language. However, the effects were less
pronounced than for the English monolinguals. Clearly, arousal is exuding a
different effect for these two groups of participants even though they were
both performing lexical decisions in English.
This latter observation is important to the implications of the current work.
By examining Table 1, note that mean reaction times for both groups of
participants in the unrelated condition were roughly the same (i.e. 648 ms for
monolinguals and 658 for bilinguals). This finding indicates that the baselines
for the two groups were highly comparable. In contrast, note that reaction
times in the remaining two conditions were much longer for bilingual
participants than for monolingual participants.1 This observation indicates
that arousal components are exerting different effects for bilinguals as
compared to monolinguals. These findings are similar to those reported by
Altarriba (2003) regarding differing ratings of emotion words in English and in
Spanish for Spanish
/English bilinguals. Although this latter work compared
processing in two languages within participants, what emerged was the idea
that the emotion lexicon is represented differently in a bilingual’s two
languages. Similarly, the current results indicate that bilingual participants
respond differently than monolinguals to affective primes. These same
differences do not appear to occur with prime target pairs in which the
primes are nonemotional, as reported here in the unrelated condition.
Influence of Emotional Arousal on Affective Priming 259

Other factors might have also influenced the relative priming effects noted
here. For example, both highly arousing and moderate items produced equal
levels of priming for both participant groups. Even though arousal was the
main manipulation used here, valence was also operating across prime
/target
pairs. Perhaps the current data did not produce differing effects across these
two arousal conditions because the influence of valence served to override the
arousal manipulation. Recall that previously published work indicated that
congruency in valence typically led to positive priming effects for emotion-
related words (see e.g. Fazio et al ., 1986). However, because different effects
emerged across participant groups in the current study, it is clear that arousal
was still playing a significant role in moderating the relative size of priming
across the various conditions.
Another possibility for the similarity in performance across the two arousal
conditions (i.e. high and moderate) might have been the fact that semantic
association played a key role in producing significant effects. Even though this
is possible
/ that is, that the results reported here are merely semantic priming
effects
/ note that the degree of association for items in the high arousal
and moderate arousal conditions was low to moderate at best. Overall, these
association strengths ranged from 0.055 to 0.520 with a mean value of
0.23. These values are typically seen to be closer to the lower end of the
continuum with regards to overall association strength (see e.g. McCarthy,
1973; Palermo & Ullrich, 1968). Therefore, it is unlikely that the strength of
association between primes and targets in and of itself prompted the
significant priming effects reported here for the high arousal and neutral
conditions.
Finally, it is important to note that while mathematically both arousal
conditions differed (see Experiment 1), the ‘moderate’ stimuli were still
emotionally charged as compared to the unrelated condition. Therefore, it is
possible that the degree of arousal present, even though these items were
evaluated as moderate, was sufficient to produce effects that are comparable to
those observed in corresponding high arousal conditions within participant
groups. Perhaps a more important point to mention is the overall finding that
heavily ‘loaded’ words such as those that represent the high arousal condition
tend to prime other similarly loaded words, and that these words are closely
stored within mental networks. The implications are that once one of these
words is activated, one might continue to process other similarly arousing
words, thoughts and feelings. These data may have other implications for the
work conducted in the general area of mood and its influence on memory
encoding and memory retrieval.
What remains clear from the present data is that knowing a second
language, for bilinguals, seems to play a role in processing emotion
information in their alternate language. One of the main differences between
the participants in both groups was the fact that one was knowledgeable in
both English and in Spanish while the other was not. Perhaps bilinguals here,
who likely learned emotion words in Spanish first, produced longer reaction
times when processing English emotion words because those words activated
features of their Spanish counterparts, in memory. This did not appear to occur
with nonemotional stimuli in the unrelated conditions. However, the other
260 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

two conditions seemed to produce differing effects based on the overall

language background of the participants. These effects are reminiscent of the
interference effects reported by Altarriba and Mathis (1997) for Spanish
/
English bilinguals processing Stroop-like items in Spanish. Interference
occurred when naming ink colours in English for Spanish words indicating
the relative influence of the Spanish knowledge on processing items in
English. In the current study, perhaps the access of emotion-laden items in one
language also served to activate related or associated items in the other
language: Spanish. This activation might have lengthened response times for
bilinguals, but a comparable effect would not have materialised for mono-
linguals who only have knowledge of a single language.
These latter comments relate well to the broader context of priming in
bilinguals and its implications for the interconnectedness across different
language lexicons. Recall that the bilingual priming literature was mentioned
earlier in order to demonstrate that cross-language effects, namely the finding
that processing in one language can influence processing in an alternate
language, was taken as evidence of connectivity across a bilingual’s two
languages (e.g. Altarriba, 1992). Similarly, in the current Experiment 2, it was
demonstrated that for bilingual participants, knowledge of a subordinate
language seems to moderate emotion priming, specifically arousal, when
processing words in a dominant language. The current work, therefore,
suggests that the lexicons may share some semantic or associative pathways
within memory.

Conclusions
The current findings might be summarised by the following points:
(1) The arousal dimension appears to moderate automatic semantic priming
effects as evidenced by the use of a lexical decision task.
(2) Arousal components are activated differentially by monolingual and
bilingual speakers. Namely, the existence of arousal components might act
to lengthen responses to those components for bilingual speakers, as
compared to processing nonemotional stimuli.
(3) It is clear that a bilingual’s semantic networks for emotion-related words
in two languages do not operate as separate and distinct entities but
rather influence the processing of items in a bidirectional fashion.

Research is currently being conducted to extend this work to the processing of

emotion-laden prime
/target pairs in Spanish within Spanish
/English bilin-
guals. Should differences emerge again as compared to Spanish monolingual
populations processing these items in Spanish, a similar argument can be
made indicating that a bilingual’s two languages are indeed interdependent in
memory. Future research should address the dimensions of valence and
arousal in more naturalistic contexts as well, as it has been shown that the
complexity of emotional experiences and their descriptions are often best
captured through the examination of natural speech within its original context
(see e.g. Greasley et al ., 2000).
Influence of Emotional Arousal on Affective Priming 261
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Dr Jeanette Altarriba, Depart-
ment of Psychology, Social Science 369, University at Albany, State University
of New York, Albany, NY 12222, USA (Ja087@albany.edu).

Note
1. An ANOVA was conducted with arousal (high, moderate, unrelated) as a within-
subjects factor and language group (monolingual, bilingual) as a between-subjects
factor. Across groups, the difference in the high arousal condition was significant,
F (1, 88)/5.876, p /0.05. Likewise, the difference across language groups in the
moderate condition was also significant, F (1, 88)/5.094, p /0.05. In essence, there
were longer reaction times for bilingual participants versus monolingual partici-
pants within these two arousal conditions. In contrast, the same comparison across
groups for the unrelated condition did not yield any significant differences,
F (1, 88) /0.284, p /0.60.

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Appendix A: Valence and Arousal Scales Used in

Experiment 1
Below you will see a list of words. Your task is to enter a number between
‘1’ and ‘7’ (you can use ‘1’ and ‘7’ as well) next to each word. Please use the
following scale to rate the words:

This is a valence scale. You rate the words on how positive or negative you
believe the words are. For example, you might rate the word ‘aggressive’ as a 6
or 7, while the word ‘glad’ might be rated as a 1 or a 2.
Influence of Emotional Arousal on Affective Priming 263

Below you will see a list of words. Your task is to enter a number between ‘1’
and ‘7’ (you can use ‘1’ and ‘7’ as well) next to each word. Please use the
following scale to rate the words:

This is an arousal scale. You rate the words on how arousing you believe the
words are. For example, you might rate the word ‘distressed’ as a 6 or 7, while
the word ‘lazy’ might be rated as a 1 or a 2.

Appendix B: Mean Normative Ratings for 45 Emotion-laden Words on

Valence and Arousal

Arousal Valence
abuse 5.568 6.727
ache 4.523 5.523
angel 4.25 1.636
argue 5.205 5.523
careless 3.636 5.318
casket 4.705 6.045
cemetery 4.591 4.545
coffin 5 5.205
companion 4.591 2.045
confident 3.318 1.636
corpse 4.523 5.455
criminal 4.591 5.977
cry 5.659 4.795
cuddle 4.318 2.273
dangerous 6.023 6
dead 5.182 6.5
death 6.023 6.591
debate 5.091 4.568
264 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

disagree 4.205 4.545

enemy 5.5 5.977
foe 4.636 5.205
god 4.705 1.636
grief 4 4.568
heaven 6 1.636
hospital 6 5.977
hug 4.591 2.273
hurt 5.545 5.864
jail 5.295 6.159
kiss 6.545 1.5
mate 4.682 2.273
mistreat 4.818 5.841
neglect 4.591 5.205
operation 4.75 5.455
opponent 5.182 4.568
pain 5.455 6.341
pity 5.273 5.205
prisoner 4.773 5.568
reckless 4.614 5.614
regret 4.614 5.545
safe 5 2
secure 4.614 1.636
sick 4 5.5
sorrow 4.705 5.455
sorry 5.023 4.795
spouse 5.023 1.752
Influence of Emotional Arousal on Affective Priming 265

Appendix C: Mean Values Reported on Language History Questionnaire

for Spanish /English Bilinguals (n/45) and English Monolinguals (n /45)

Bilinguals Monolinguals
Mean age in years 21.2 20.6
Number of males 11.0 18.0
Number of females 34.0 27.0
Mean years in USA 14.4 19.9
Mean years in US schools 12.7 14.9
Mean self-ratings (10-point scale) on comprehension of
Written English 9.2 9.5
Written Spanish 8.7 2.8
Spoken English 9.5 9.7
Spoken Spanish 9.2 2.3
The Preponderance of Negative
Emotion Words in the Emotion Lexicon: A
Cross-generational and Cross-linguistic
Study
Robert W. Schrauf and Julia Sanchez
Buehler Center on Aging, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA
The ‘working emotion vocabulary’ typically shows a preponderance of words for
negative emotions (50%) over positive (30%) and neutral (20%) emotions. The theory
of affect-as-information suggests that negative emotions signal problems or threat in
the environment and are accompanied by detailed and systematic cognitive
processing, while positive emotions signal a safe or benign environment and are
accompanied by heuristic, schema-based cognitive processing. Further, the develop-
mental theory of affect-complexity suggests that the ability to coordinate and manage
complex emotions develops over the lifespan. More complex interpretation and
reasoning about negative experience versus positive experience predicts that
negative emotion labels will predominate in the emotion lexicon. The growth of
affect-complexity over time predicts that the greater proportion of negative labels
will remain constant for both young and older individuals. By asking monolingual
Spanish-speakers in Mexico and monolingual English-speakers in the USA to make
free-lists of as many emotions as they could in two minutes, we confirmed each of
these predictions about the working emotion lexicon. Moreover, data from both
languages showed the same proportional distribution, suggesting that the cognitive
constraints on emotion processing and lexification may be cross-culturally invariant.

Keywords: affect, emotion lexicon, aging, Spanish, English

This study adopts two current, related, psychological theories of emotional

functioning and makes a series of predictions about the working emotion
vocabularies of two language groups: Mexican speakers of Spanish and US
speakers of English. The first theory, affect-as-information , argues that negative
emotional experience triggers a distinct, more elaborated and detailed style of
cognitive interpretation of experience, whereas positive experience triggers
more general, schema and script-based cognitive processing (Bless et al ., 1999;
Schwarz, 1990; Schwarz & Bless, 1991; Schwarz & Clore, 1983). The second
theory, affect-complexity, is a developmental version of the first theory and
argues that as individuals grow from youth into adulthood, they acquire
greater facility in this detailed style of cognitive interpretation and coordina-
tion of both positive and negative emotional experience (Labouvie-Vief &
Medler, 2002). In addition to these two theories, we make the assumption that
detailed cognitive processing results in the generation of distinct labels for
mental and emotional phenomena. That is, the more individuals think about
something, the more distinctions they will make, and the more words they will
use to hold these distinctions in mind.

0143-4632/04/02 266-19 $20.00/0 – 2004 R.W. Schrauf & J. Sanchez

J. OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT Vol. 25, No. 2&3, 2004

266
The Preponderance of Negative Emotion Words in the Emotion Lexicon 267

Based on the two psychological theories and the assumption above, we

predict that (1) people have more negative emotion labels available to them at
any one time than positive emotion labels. Put simply, people know more
words for negative emotions than positive emotions. Note that this is a fact
about the ‘working emotion vocabulary’ and not about entire languages.
Furthermore, as a result of the accumulation of emotion experience and the
cognitive processes of attending to it, interpreting it and managing it, we
predict that (2) older people will have more diverse emotion vocabularies than
young people. However, since we have no principled reason to assume that
older people have proportionally more negative experiences than younger
people, we predict that (3) the greater proportion of negative labels (due to
more elaborated cognitive processing) versus positive emotion labels remains
the same for older and younger people. Finally, we test these predictions about
the emotion lexicon among monolingual Spanish speakers and monolingual
English speakers. Because we assume that the cognitive mechanisms de-
scribed above do not differ from culture to culture, we predict (4) no
differences between the languages in the distributions of negative and positive
terms.
The study is therefore focused on the emotion vocabulary and not on
emotion itself. Nevertheless, some specification is necessary as to what counts
as an emotion. Thus, we took an empirical approach to deriving participants’
working emotion lexicons by asking them to free-list as many emotions as they
could in a two-minute period. Some of the labels they produced seemed
intuitively emotion-like (e.g. love, happiness), other terms seemed less so (e.g.
doubt). We adopted some consensus positions from the literature (Izard, 1993)
to make decisions in this regard. That is, emotion labels had to refer to some
neurophysiological (‘bodily’) state, accompanied by an experiential compo-
nent (‘a feeling’), and be distinct from purely cognitive states.

The Affect-as-information Theory

In one sense, emotions are complex physiological-affective-cognitive
responses to the physical and sociocultural environment. Recent research
suggests that positive and negative emotions constitute two separate channels
of evaluative processing. One channel is sensitive to what is safe and/or
desirable, while the other is attuned to threat-related negative information
(Cacioppo et al ., 1998; Cacioppo & Gardner, 1999; Watson & Clark, 1992;
Zautra et al ., 1997). Although at the level of response, positive and negative
emotions may appear to represent opposite poles on one continuum, the
behavioural and neurophysiological evidence suggests that they are in fact
separately processed. By extension, the theory of affect-as-information holds
that positive emotions act as signals that the environment is basically benign;
negative emotions signal that some problem or threat is at hand (Schwarz,
1990; Schwarz & Bless, 1991; Schwarz & Clore, 1983).
The cognitive responses to these two types of signals differ accordingly.
Positive emotions trigger top-down, heuristic processing in which an
individual relies on general knowledge structures (e.g. scripts) to interpret
experience. Negative emotions trigger bottom-up, systematic processing in
268 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

which an individual engages in more fine-grained, detailed analysis of

experience. In a series of experiments with college students in both the USA
and Germany, Bless and associates (1999) used mood induction techniques to
stimulate happy versus sad moods in participants, played audio- and
videotaped stories to them, and then engaged them in a recognition task to
test for memory of details from the stories. Recognition was tested for script-
consistent (typical) details, script-inconsistent (atypical) details, and unrelated
details, half of which were actually presented in the stories and half of which
were made-up (foils). ‘Happy’ participants were more likely than ‘sad’
participants to mistakenly ‘recognise’ made-up details that were script-
consistent (typical) but that were not presented in the original stories,
suggesting that when making recognition decisions they were relying more
on their scripts rather than actual memories. Contrariwise, both happy and
sad groups accurately remembered actually presented script-inconsistent
(atypical) details and rejected made-up, non-presented atypical details,
suggesting that mood had not affected the original encoding of details nor
the ability to retrieve details from memory. In sum, positive emotions triggered
more script-based, heuristic processing, whereas negative emotions triggered
more detail-oriented, systematic processing.

The Affect-complexity Theory

The management of emotion and cognitive response is a developmental
task involving particular mechanisms of emotion regulation. Labouvie-Vief
and Medler (2002) have recently examined two such mechanisms with
different age-related effects. On the one hand, affect optimisation describes
the ‘ability to dampen negative and maximize positive affect’ (p. 571), a
mechanism which may account for much of the resiliency of older adults. That
is, older adults often maintain a sense of positive outlook despite the physical,
psychological and social losses often associated with aging (Carstensen, 1995;
Diener et al ., 1991; Staudinger et al ., 1995). (This is the ‘paradox of well-being’.)
On the other hand, affect complexity describes ‘the ability to coordinate positive
and negative affect into flexible and differentiated structures’ (p. 571). This
ability develops over time: ‘. . .as complex executive cognitive structures
mature, individuals are better able to coordinate positive and negative feelings
through processes of inhibition
/disinhibition, evaluation, analysis, and so on’
(p. 571). Affect-complexity entrains a tendency toward an analytic and more
systematic processing of experience, a process that may emphasise negative
affect more than positive.
The balance and growth of these two mechanisms of emotion regulation
differ over the lifespan. In a cross-sectional study of young (15
/29), middle-
aged (30
/59) and older (60
/86) individuals from low, middle and high
socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds from Midwestern communities in the
USA, Labouvie-Vief and Medler (2002) found that young adults showed low
affect complexity and low positive affect, middle-aged adults showed both
high affect complexity as well as high positivity, while older adults scored
higher on positive affect than middle-aged adults but lower on affect
complexity. The authors comment, however, that ‘. . .the differences between
The Preponderance of Negative Emotion Words in the Emotion Lexicon 269

the middle-aged and older age groups were relatively minor’ while ‘. . .the
younger adults were clearly set off from the oldest age group, which was
qualitatively similar to the middle-aged group’ (p. 583). In sum, young people
show lower levels of integration of negative and positive emotion and lower
levels of positive affect in general, while older individuals show the opposite
pattern: higher levels of valence integration and higher levels of positive affect
in general.

The Imbalance of Negative Versus Positive Terms in the

Emotion Lexicon
These differences in the cognition of positive versus negative emotion
predict differences in lexification in general and age-effects in particular. That
is, in general, if negative emotions occasion more detailed cognitive proces-
sing, it would not be surprising if more ‘names’ were available for negative
versus positive emotions, on the supposition that over time meaningful
distinctions acquire labels. It is important to note here that this does not imply
that people have more negative emotional experience than positive emotional
experience. In fact, the mechanism of affect-optimisation describes the
preference for the opposite. Rather, the issue concerns the styles of cognitive
processing attendant on these differently valenced experiences. Hypotheti-
cally, a person with equal amounts of positive and negative experience would
do more detailed and systematic thinking about negative experience than
positive experience and ultimately require more labels to think through and
interpret negative experience. Therefore a first hypothesis in this study is that
the active working emotion vocabulary will have more negative than positive
emotion terms.

The Working Emotion Vocabulary

It is important to note here that we are not making an argument about
languages themselves. That is, we do not assess the absolute number of
negative versus positive emotion labels possessed by any one language (by
counting them in a dictionary, for example), rather we are interested in the
working emotion vocabulary. The working emotion vocabulary comprises those
emotion labels immediately available to individuals as they think through
their experience.
In an absolute sense, languages differ in the size and range of their emotion
vocabularies. In a review of the cross-cultural literature on emotion lexicons,
Russell (1991) cited work that reported 2000 emotion words in English
(Wallace & Carson, 1973), 1501 in Dutch (Hoekstra, 1986), and 750 emotion
words in Taiwanese Chinese (Boucher, 1979). Recently, Church and associates
(1998) reported 256 emotion labels in Tagalog (Filipino) by assembling a long
list of 2991 potential trait and state adjectives (Church et al ., 1996) and then
having trained and lay judges categorise the words as personality descriptors,
emotion words or neither. Such work requires careful specification of what
constitutes an emotion word (Clore et al ., 1987), and such definitions may
differ from study to study. Storm and Storm (1987), for instance, found only
270 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

577 English emotion words versus the 2000 suggested by Wallace and Carson
(1973).
More importantly, it is not clear to what extent any individual speaker of a
language may be expected to know the entire lexicon. Thus, while Wallace and
Carson reported 2000 English emotion words, they suggested that only 10% of
these could reasonably be found in the working vocabulary of the average
English speaker. This suggests that there is a useful distinction to be made
between the ‘linguistic’ characterisation of the size and range of a culture’s
emotion lexicon in an absolute sense and the ‘psychological’ characterisation
of the lexicon in the sense of ‘working vocabulary.’ The former is an absolute
fact about the language independent of its actual speakers at any one moment.
It is a statement about a language’s historical accumulation of distinct words
and range of nuance. The latter is an empirical finding culled from specific
speakers of the language in some particular time and place. It is a statement
about the psychological salience of the emotion vocabulary-in-common-use.
These considerations concerning the cross-cultural variability of emotion
lexicons lead to the following strategies in this study. The working vocabulary
of emotion labels is operationalised here as the set of psychologically salient
emotion words to which an individual has immediate access when asked to
make a list of emotion words outside of any particular emotionally charged
situation. Such lists are not a random sample of an individual’s entire emotion
lexicon as differing emotional contexts could conceivably trigger words that
remain unavailable during the listing exercise. Rather, these lists reflect the
constraints imposed by the cognitive processes of searching long-term
memory for words belonging to a particular category. (Interestingly, in fact
there is research suggesting that emotion words are represented in memory in
different ways from other word types, such as abstract or concrete words;
Altarriba & Bauer, 2004). Presumably words that are most frequently used or
that have most recently been used will enjoy higher activation and are more
likely to be retrieved. In this sense, asking many individuals to make short lists
of emotion words should generate words that are particularly culturally
salient at the level of the group. Furthermore, at the level of the individual,
words mentioned first on participants’ lists should also enjoy higher levels of
activation than words mentioned last, and thus also be more psychologically
salient.
The exercise of free-listing thus provides a window onto the working
emotion lexicon by focusing on labels that are immediately accessible to
participants. Free-listing also gives a method for gauging the psychocultural
salience of items by assessing the frequency of items across participants and
the ranking (ordering) of items within participants.

The Emotion Lexicon of Younger Versus Older Adults

Presumably it is also the case that, as individuals accumulate emotional
experience over the lifespan, their active emotion vocabularies may be
expected to change as well. The theories we have reviewed suggest two
age-related effects on the emotion lexicon. Again, Labouvie-Vief and Medler
(2002) found that young adults showed low affect-optimisation and low
The Preponderance of Negative Emotion Words in the Emotion Lexicon 271

affect-complexity while older adults were higher on both. Thus, as a result of

increased affect-complexity (the coordination of positive and negative feelings
through processes of inhibition
/disinhibition, evaluation, analysis and so on)
among the older group, we would expect older adults to have a more diverse
emotion vocabulary than young adults. Nevertheless, given that negative
experience would trigger more detailed cognitive processing, we would still
expect that both young and older adults would possess more negative than
positive emotion labels. Further, since we have no principled reason to assume
that older adults have more numerous negative versus positive experiences
than do young adults, we predict that the relative proportions of positive
versus negative labels would not change over the lifespan. Negative emotion
labels will predominate in both young and old adults’ lexicons.

Cross-linguistic Similarities in Proportions of Negative Versus

Positive Emotion Labels
Finally, the affect-as-information and affect-complexity theories that drive
our predictions about young people’s versus older people’s emotion lexicons
have been developed in English samples, drawing on a variety of ages and
socioeconomic backgrounds (e.g. Labouvie-Vief & Medler, 2002), and in
German samples, drawing on student populations (e.g. Bless et al., 1999). If
the structure of emotion as signal and the differential cognitive processing
triggered by these signals (depending on whether the emotions are negative or
positive) are either biologically universal or pancultural, we might expect that
cultural differences will not affect our predictions about the preponderance of
negative emotion labels over positive ones. Alternatively, were we to find that
the working emotion vocabularies of individuals from a particular culture did
in fact have more positive labels than negative labels, we would be obliged to
reconsider either the emotion theories or the linguistic assumption concerning
lexification. In this study, we test our predictions and make comparisons about
the working emotion vocabularies of young and older Spanish speakers in
Mexico City and young and older English speakers in the USA. At the level of
the individual participants, taking into account each individual’s working
emotion vocabulary, we again expect a preponderance of negative labels over
positive labels and no differences between the groups. That is, we make the
conservative assumption that there are no cultural differences in the funda-
mental functioning of emotions as signals about the environment and the
differential cognitive processing attendant on negative versus positive signals.

The Present Study

The following predictions are made. The theory of affect-as-information
argues that negative emotions signal a problematic or threatening environ-
ment and trigger more detailed, systematic cognitive processing, whereas
positive emotions signal a safe environment and trigger heuristic processing.
The more detailed processing attendant on negative emotion suggests that
more distinctions will be made among negative emotions and therefore
predicts higher numbers of negative emotion labels relative to positive labels
272 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

(Hypothesis 1). The theory of affect-complexity argues that as individuals

grow from youth into adulthood, their ability to differentiate, inhibit, analyse
and evaluate their emotional experience grows apace with their cognitive
development. This increasing, systematic processing of both positive and
negative emotions should drive greater lexification and predicts that older
individuals will have richer emotion vocabularies than young people
(Hypothesis 2). However, since we assume young people and older people
have roughly equivalent numbers of positive and negative experiences,
and since our theoretical commitment suggests more detailed processing
of negative emotion, we predict that young and older people will not differ
in having proportionally more negative than positive emotion terms in
their vocabularies (Hypothesis 3). Finally, we test these predictions cross-
linguistically among young and old monolingual Spanish speakers in Mexico
City and monolingual English speakers in the USA, and we predict no
differences between the languages on the preponderance of negative versus
positive emotion labels (Hypothesis 4).

Research design
The study design involves systematic within- and between-language
comparisons made between young versus old monolingual speakers of
Spanish and English. For this purpose, groups of 20 year olds and groups of
60/year olds were recruited from the urban areas of Mexico City and
Chicago. Because the focus is on the psychologically salient working
vocabulary of emotion labels, participants were asked to complete an
unconstrained free-listing task that would tap highly or recently activated
emotion labels in long-term memory.

Participants
Table 1 displays the sample characteristics for the total sample (n /121)
divided into four groups of approximately 30 members each, stratified by
culture and age. Participants in the monolingual English-speaking groups
were recruited from urban Chicago: younger individuals in their 20s from
college campuses, older individuals over 60 years of age from area senior
centres and newspaper advertisements. Participants in the monolingual

Table 1 Sample characteristics

Cultural group Age group Gender Age Years of education

M sd M sd
Anglos Young (n/30) 12M, 18F 21.20 (2.22) 14.25 (1.33)
Old (n/30) 16M, 14F 74.80 (4.39) 14.27 (3.09)
Mexicans Young (n/31) 18M, 13F 22.55 (2.08) 14.16 (1.84)
Old (n/30) 20M, 10F 64.83 (6.19) 15.06 (3.88)
The Preponderance of Negative Emotion Words in the Emotion Lexicon 273

Spanish-speaking group were recruited from Mexico City: younger indivi-

duals in their 20s from local colleges and universities, older individuals over
60 years of age, initially from a local school system where they were employed
as teachers and then from their relatives and friends.
Young Anglos were not significantly different in age from young Mexicans
but older Anglos were significantly older than older Mexicans by approxi-
mately 10 years (t(58) /7.19, p B/0.001). Participants were highly educated
with 14
15
/ years of formal schooling, with no significant differences between
the groups on this variable. All participants gave informed consent and were
recruited in accord with the policies for the protection of Human Subjects of
Northwestern University.
Task
Participants engaged in a paper-and-pencil free-listing task in which they
were asked to list as many emotion words as they could think of in a two-
minute period. After making the list, participants were asked to evaluate the
valence of each emotion that they listed by indicating whether the emotion
was unpleasant (1), neutral (2) or pleasant (3). Instructions in English and
Spanish are included in the appendix. This task was part of a larger free-listing
project in which individuals made lists for six domains (animals, illnesses,
emotions, men’s work, women’s work and ways to lose money). Only results
of the emotion data are reported in this paper.
Coding
Across lists, lexical forms, which were morphological derivatives of the
same word, were reduced to one form (i.e. ‘anger’ and ‘angry’ were both
coded as ‘angry’). Within lists, where participants repeated the same word
twice in the same list, the second mention was eliminated. Also within lists,
words that seemed to be synonymous (e.g. ‘jealous’ and ‘envious’) were
retained since, presumably, the participant listing the words saw some
difference in them. Finally, as indicated in the introduction, we coded as
emotion labels those words that referred to bodily instantiated states with
some experiential component (‘feeling state’) that were not primarily cognitive
in nature. Thus, we eliminated words such as: ‘questioning’, ‘curious’,
‘suspense’, ‘doubtful’ and ‘pensive’ (in English), and indeciso , incertidumbre,
reflexión and contemplación (in Spanish). In Spanish, religiosidad was also
eliminated from one list because it seemed to name a series of beliefs and
related behaviours instead of an emotion.

Results
List length
To facilitate group comparisons, it is important to establish that across all
four groups there is general equivalence in knowledge of the semantic domain
of emotions. List length is often used as an indicator of a participant’s
knowledge of a domain (Brewer, 1995; Gatewood, 1984), so that individuals
who produce many words in a particular domain are presumably more
knowledgeable about that domain than individuals who produce very few.
274 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

There were no significant differences in list-length across groups (young

Anglos: M /10.03, sd/3.38; older Anglos: M /9.83, sd/4.10; young Mex-
icans: M /9.65, sd/3.80; older Mexicans: 8.53, sd /3.56). Therefore, any
differences in the analyses that follow are not due to differences in word
production. Equivalent length of lists across these four groups suggests similar
knowledge levels of the domain of emotions.

Consensus
A related issue concerns the degree of agreement among individuals about
what belongs in the emotion domain and what does not. Consensus analysis,
which is a minimum residuals factor analysis of a data matrix (Borgatti, 1996;
Romney et al ., 1986), is used to measure this agreement. A respondent-by-
emotion matrix was created for each group by entering a 1 into every cell
where a participant mentioned an emotion and a 0 into cells for emotions that
he or she did not mention, and then factor-analysing the matrix. By
convention, where the first eigenvalue is three times as large as subsequent
eigenvalues, cultural consensus is understood to exist in the group. This was
the case for each of the four groups. For young Anglos, the first eigenvalue
(17.36) accounted for 88.4% of the variance (second value: 1.37, 7%; third: 0.91,
4.5%). For old Anglos, the first eigenvalue (19.92) accounted for 92.9% of the
total variance (second value: 0.927, 4.3%; third value: 0.587, 2.7%). For young
Mexicans, the first eigenvalue (19.21) accounted for 91.0% of the total variance
(second value: 1.12, 5.3%, third value: 0.77, 3.7%). For older Mexicans, the first
eigenvalue (20.87) accounted for 95.2% of the total variance (second value:
0.573, 2.6%; third value: 0.477, 2.2%). These analyses point to high within-
group agreement that the words recalled constitute a coherent and bounded
semantic domain.

Measures of psychocultural salience

Testing the hypotheses of the study requires the computation of the
psychocultural salience of emotion labels. Salience refers to the importance,
representativeness or prominence of items to individuals or to the group, and
is measured in three ways: word frequency across lists, word rank within lists
and a combination of these two, called Smith’s S (Smith, 1993). In terms of
frequency, words mentioned by many people are taken to be more salient than
words mentioned by one or two individuals (Bousefield & Barclay, 1950;
Romney & D’Andrade, 1964). Rank or position on lists is a second measure
because words mentioned first on lists would seem more salient than words
mentioned at the end (Bousefield & Barclay, 1950; Hammel, 1984; Hammel &
Yarbrough, 1974). The third measure, Smith’s S, takes into account both
frequency and rank and is computed by dividing the sum of a word’s
percentile ranks by the total number of lists (Smith, 1993). Table 2 displays the
first 12 entries for both Anglo English and Mexican Spanish for young and
older groups ordered by Smith’s S. Generally words with the highest
frequency also have the highest rank, but not always. The trade-off can be
seen in the young Mexicans’ list where amor (love) is less frequent (appearing
 The Preponderance of Negative Emotion Words in the Emotion Lexicon
Table 2 12 emotion words with highest psychocultural salience: young and old, Anglo and Mexican groups

Young Anglos Freq Rank Smith Val Young Mexicans Freq Rank Smith Val
Happy 29 1.86 0.87 3.00 Amor 25 3.36 0.64 3.00
Sad 29 3.07 0.78 1.00 Alegria 26 3.96 0.60 3.00
Angry 24 5.25 0.47 1.00 Tristeza 22 3.59 0.53 1.00
Excited 17 4.41 0.36 3.00 Odio 19 3.84 0.43 1.00
Afraid 15 6.00 0.29 1.00 Coraje 18 5.89 0.31 1.00
Love 13 4.92 0.27 3.00 Cariño 14 6.79 0.21 3.00
Depressed 13 5.54 0.22 1.00 Depresion 11 5.82 0.19 1.00
Anxious 13 6.31 0.19 2.00 Rencor 9 5.33 0.18 1.00
Confused 13 7.77 0.18 2.00 Miedo 10 5.60 0.16 1.00
Frustrated 8 5.88 0.14 1.00 Pasion 9 7.44 0.15 3.00
Ecstatic 7 6.29 0.13 3.00 Dolor 5 4.80 0.12 1.00
Exhausted 11 8.73 0.13 1.00 Nostalgia 7 6.00 0.12 2.00

Older Anglos Freq Rank Smith Val Older Mexicans Freq Rank Smith Val
Sad 22 4.00 0.53 1.00 Alegrı́a 27 2.93 0.73 3.00
Happy 22 4.27 0.52 3.00 Tristeza 20 3.30 0.51 1.00
Angry 18 4.11 0.42 1.00 Coraje 19 4.74 0.33 1.00

275
Love 15 3.07 0.39 3.00 Amor 12 3.00 0.31 3.00
 276
Table 2 (Continued )
Young Anglos Freq Rank Smith Val Young Mexicans
Older Mexicans Freq Rank Smith Val
Hate 11 3.91 0.25 1.00 Nostalgia 8 3.00 0.18 2.00

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Hurt 12 5.75 0.24 1.00 Dolor 7 4.43 0.14 1.00
Funny 11 5.64 0.22 3.00 Miedo 5 3.40 0.14 1.00
Afraid 14 7.79 0.19 1.00 Depresion 8 5.88 0.13 1.00
Depressed 8 3.88 0.19 1.00 Odio 7 5.43 0.12 1.00
Exhausted 9 7.22 0.15 1.00 Cariño 7 4.86 0.12 3.00
Excited 8 7.25 0.13 3.00 Angustia 5 4.20 0.11 1.00
Anxious 5 3.40 0.12 1.00 Rencor 5 5.00 0.10 1.00
The Preponderance of Negative Emotion Words in the Emotion Lexicon 277

on 25 lists) than alegrı´a (happiness; appearing on 26 lists) but has a higher

Smith’s S score and hence is more salient.

Valence
Hypothesis 1 predicts higher numbers of negative emotion labels relative to
positive labels in general. Hypothesis 3 predicts that young and older people
will not differ in having proportionally more negative than positive emotion
terms in their vocabularies. Both of these predictions are tested via a 2 /3
repeated measures ANOVA with age group (young versus old */collapsing
across cultures) as the between-groups variable and valence as the within-
subjects variable (positive, neutral and negative). The dependent measure in
this case is numbers of positive, neutral and negative terms. Results show no
main effect of young versus old age groups (Ms /3.28 versus 3.06), F (1,119)
/0.96, but a main effect of valence, F (2,238)/90.04, p B/0.001, and no
interaction. Post-hoc tests indicate that the number of negative emotion labels
(M /4.77) was significantly higher than numbers of either neutral (M /1.63,
F /137.66, p B/0.001) or positive (M /3.12; F /57.82, p B/0.001) emotion
labels. In sum, negatively valenced terms outnumbered neutral and positive
terms, and younger people did not differ from older people in this regard. A
similar 2 (age group)/2 (valence) ANOVA using proportions of negative,
positive and neutral emotions labels as the dependent variable showed no
differences between age groups. Figure 1 shows that about 50% of all terms are
negative, 30% are positive and 20% are neutral, and that there is little
difference between groups.

The composition of emotion lexicons

Hypothesis 2 predicts that older individuals will have more diverse
emotion lexicons than younger individuals. Testing this hypothesis requires
determining how many unique emotion labels were produced by each group
and then measuring their frequency across individuals to devise some

Figure 1 Pie charts showing the proportions of emotion labels in younger and older
groups.
278 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

measure of idiosyncrasy that will serve to characterise the diversity of each

person’s lexicon. These analyses will be done for the four groups: Young
Anglos, Older Anglos, Young Mexicans and Older Mexicans.
While groups produced about 300 words each, they differed in the number
of distinct emotion labels per group, with older groups producing more
numerous distinct labels than younger groups. Young Anglos recalled 301
words but, with repeats, only 52 distinct emotion labels. Older Anglos recalled
295 words as a group, but, with repeats, 81 distinct emotion labels. This same
age difference is apparent for the Mexicans, where young Mexicans recalled
300 words but 63 distinct labels, and where older Mexicans recalled 298 words
and 79 distinct labels. Thus, the younger groups call on a smaller network, and
older individuals call on a larger network of emotion labels in their free recalls.
This difference was further probed by counting the number of labels shared
across age groups. Among Anglos, young and old groups mention in common
31 distinct emotion labels. Since the young group produced 52 labels in total,
this means that they mentioned an additional 21 (idiosyncratic) emotions not
mentioned by the older Anglo group. The older group mentioned 50
idiosyncratic terms not mentioned by the young group. Figure 2 displays
these differences in pie charts by plotting the proportions of shared terms
between young and old in black and the proportions of terms unique to each
age group (and hence unshared with the other group) in grey. The increase in
numbers of unshared or idiosyncratic terms in the older groups can be seen by
comparing grey areas across age groups. Thus, discounting the pool of
emotion labels shared by young and old groups, and counting the idiosyn-
cratic labels, we can see that older groups do not simply start with the same
labels as young people and add terms. Rather both groups mention labels not
mentioned by the other group, but older groups mention more such terms.
To test for the statistical significance of these differences, an ‘idiosyncrasy
score’ was computed for each individual by assigning to each word in each list
the group-level frequency score for that word and then computing an average
of these frequencies for each list. Thus, for example, if an individual in the
young Anglo group listed the words ‘happy’, ‘angry’, ‘love’ and ‘frustrated’,
we would assign group frequencies (according to Table 2) as follows: ‘happy’
(29), ‘angry’ (24), ‘love’ (13) and ‘frustrated’ (8). The average of these
comprises the idiosyncrasy score (18.5). Since the less frequent a word, the
lower its (group) frequency score, the participant who has many infrequent
words will have a lower score than the participant who mentions only
very high frequency words. A lower score therefore indicates that a
participant’s list contains more numerous infrequent words. Results showed
that older members in both cultural groups shared fewer words among
themselves than young people shared among themselves. Older Anglos had
lower scores (M /9.93, sd /2.55) than young Anglos (M /14.33, sd/2.72).
Older Mexicans had lower scores (M /9.96, sd /3.57) than did young
Mexicans (M /12.66, sd /2.43). A 2 (Anglos versus Mexicans)/2 (young
versus older) ANOVA resulted in no significant effect of cultural group
(F(1,117) /2.51, MSE /20.34), a main effect of age group (F (1,117) /47.10,
MSE /382.11, p B/0.001) and no interaction (F (1,117) /2.67, MSE /21.72).
In conclusion, among themselves older individuals show a greater variability
The Preponderance of Negative Emotion Words in the Emotion Lexicon 279
Young Anglos Older Anglos

Terms shared with Older Anglos: 0.60 Terms shared with Young Anglos: 0.40
Terms unique to Young Anglos: 0.40 Terms unique to Older Anglos: 0.60

Young Mexicans Older Mexicans

Terms shared with Older Anglos: 0.67 Terms shared with Older Anglos: 0.53
Terms unique to Young Anglos: 0.33 Terms unique to Young Anglos: 0.46

Figure 2 Pie charts showing the proportions of emotion labels shared by young and old
groups (in black) and proportion of labels unique to each group (grey). Larger grey
areas in older versus young charts show larger proportions of unique or idiosyncratic
terms unshared with the younger participants.

in their recalls than do younger participants. That is, older individuals

mention fewer shared words among themselves than do young people.

Valence and language

Hypothesis 4 predicts that the relative proportions of negative, neutral
and positive labels (approximately 50%, 20% and 30% respectively) will not
differ between language groups. A 2 /3 repeated measures ANOVA
with culture (Anglo versus Mexican) as the between-subjects variable and
valence (positive, neutral, negative) as the within-subjects variable showed no
main effect of culture (F (1,119) /1.45, n.s.), a main effect of valence
(F(2,238) /90.32, p B/0.001) and no interaction. The main effect of valence
repeated the results found above. Negative emotion labels were significantly
more numerous than neutral emotion labels (F /136.89) and significantly
more numerous than positive labels (F /59.77). Conducting the ANOVA
on proportions of negative, neutral and positive terms produced the same
280 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

results: no main effect of culture group, a main effect of valence (Anglos: 51%,
19%, 30%; Mexicans: 48%, 16%, 36%) and no interaction.
Overall, the hypotheses of this paper were supported. Hypothesis 1
predicted that more negative versus positive emotion labels would be found
in the working emotion vocabulary. Negative emotion labels made up
approximately 50% of free-listed emotions, while positive labels accounted
for approximately 30% and neutral labels for 20%. Hypothesis 2 predicted that
older adults would have more diverse emotion lexicons than younger adults.
By assigning to each emotion term mentioned by each individual the
frequency score for that term in the group as a whole, we computed an
idiosyncrasy score for each person. Persons with lower average idiosyncrasy
scores shared fewer terms with others of his or her group. Older individuals
scored significantly lower than younger persons, indicating more diverse
vocabularies. As Hypothesis 3 predicted, however, older participants’ more
diverse lexicons preserved the proportional balance of negative, neutral and
positive labels seen before. Finally, we looked for cross-linguistic variation in
the preponderance of negative emotion labels (Hypothesis 4) but found no
differences between monolingual Spanish speakers and monolingual English
speakers. Again, negative labels significantly outnumbered neutral and
positive labels.

Discussion
Negative emotion labels predominate over positive and neutral terms in the
working emotion vocabulary of the average individual. We suggest that this is
not a statement about emotional experience. That is, it does not imply that
humans have more negative than positive emotional experience. Rather it
seems to be a statement about human cognition. The theories we have
reviewed about the cognitive processing of emotional experience argue that
negative and positive emotions are subjected to different kinds of processing.
These theories assert that we tend to take positive emotions as signals that the
environment is benign and safe, and we interpret our experience of that
environment by fitting it into the mental schemata we have already acquired
about the world and ourselves. Such schema-driven processing is efficient and
easy and perhaps ‘comfortable’. Negative emotions, on the other hand, signal
that the environment is problematic or threatening in some way, and we tend
to interpret that environment by analysing it in a more detailed fashion. Such
systematic processing is more effortful and perhaps ‘careful’. One of the many
functions of words is referential, and as phenomena become more complex,
more names will be employed to interpret and analyse them. In this sense, the
more detailed cognitive processing triggered by negative emotions also results
in more negative than positive emotion labels.
These proportions of negative to positive emotion labels are roughly the
same in younger and older samples. On the one hand, research on
mechanisms of emotion regulation shows that young people have less of a
tendency to emphasise the positive and to dampen negative affect than do
older people (affect-optimisation). A lower emphasis on positive emotion
compounded by heuristic processing predicts low lexification of positive
The Preponderance of Negative Emotion Words in the Emotion Lexicon 281

emotion. Young people also have less facility in coordinating and managing
complex emotional experience than do older people (affect-complexity), but as
they engage in the developmental task of affect-complexity their detailed
processing of negative experience versus heuristic processing of positive
experience generates greater lexification of negative emotion terms. For young
people, then, negative emotion labels predominate over positive emotion
labels. On the other hand, for older people, although there is an increase in
affect-optimisation, the tendency to emphasise positive emotion is again
accompanied by continued schematic processing and predicts fewer positive
than negative emotion terms. Contrariwise, growth in affect-complexity is
accompanied by continued systematic processing and predicts more negative
emotion terms. Again, this is what we see. In the end, the proportions of
negative and positive terms remain the same.
Although our data concern only two cultures and languages, it is possible
that these observations would hold cross-culturally. In this study we found no
differences in the relative proportions of negative, neutral and positive terms
between the urban Mexican and urban US groups that we examined. These
results converge with the literature on basic emotions. That research suggests
that there is a limited set of underlying emotional experiences that are pan-
cultural but that these may not have exact translation equivalents across
languages. For example, using questionnaires in 37 countries on five
continents, Scherer and Wallbott (1994) found highly similar patterning of
feeling, physiological symptoms and expression across cultures for seven
emotion experiences, glossed in English as ‘joy’, ‘anger’, ‘fear’, ‘sadness’,
‘disgust’, ‘shame’ and ‘guilt’. Similarly, but in an explicitly lexical study, Frijda
and associates (1995) reviewed data from 11 cultural groups and pointed out
that the following emotions were mentioned by at least 20% of the respondents
in the groups reviewed (again glossed in English): ‘joy’ or ‘happiness’ (10 of
11), ‘sadness’ (all 11), ‘anger’ (all 11) and ‘fear’ (10 of 11). Equivalents of the
English ‘hate’ were mentioned in 6 of 11 groups.
Whether and to what extent basic emotions are present and lexified in any
culture should probably remain an empirical issue as the danger always exists
of imposing the categories of one’s own culture. Nevertheless, it is instructive
to note that in both these lists, negative terms predominate. In Scherer and
Wallbott’s list of seven labels, only one is positive (joy), and in the Frijda et al .’s
list of five emotions, again only one label is positive (joy or happiness). While
further empirical work would be necessary to confirm that negative labels
predominate in the working vocabularies of individuals cross-culturally, these
results suggest that it is a likely hypothesis.
The influence of culture on the cognition of emotion goes well beyond
the theories and predictions made in this study, and it is important to point out
some of these as a way of framing our contributions and indicating
its limitations. According to the cognitive model of emotion (for review,
see Mesquita & Frijda, 1992), of which the theories of this paper serve as a
subset, the emotional response to environmental stimuli involves several
crucial cognitive components, each intimately shaped by culture. A first
observation is that the environmental stimuli, or the antecedent events, that
activate emotional response are themselves different in different cultural
282 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

surroundings. Thus, for example, rural versus urban environments, hierarch-

ical versus egalitarian social structure, situations of civil war or peace, all
present different types of regularly occurring events that activate affective
responses. Secondly, in response, individuals code or categorise such events as
particular kinds of events with expectable implications and outcomes, and this
coding is also pervasively shaped by the culture to which one belongs. Finally,
individuals make appraisals of these events. That is, individuals evaluate how
their lives and well-being will be affected by the events. Each of these key
moments in the cognitive appraisal of emotion situations opens a window
onto the cross-cultural variation in emotion processing (Scherer, 1997, 1999). In
terms of the interests that motivate the research that we have reported here,
each of these moments offers a potential site for understanding the lexification
of emotion. As an initial approach, we have focused on the working emotion
vocabulary in isolation from explicitly emotional experience, but the frame-
work within which we work offers additional and promising avenues of
research on the complex interplay of emotion, cognition and language.

Conclusion
In one sense the empirical finding of this paper is fairly simple: negative
emotion labels predominate over positive labels in the working emotion
vocabulary, both cross-generationally and cross-culturally (in the Mexican
Spanish and US English samples that we examined). Nevertheless, because
these results are consistent with the theories that predict them, they make an
important point about how cognition constrains the lexification of emotion.
Negative emotion labels predominate because the cognitive processing
triggered by negative emotions is more detailed and systematic than the
cognitive processing triggered by positive emotions, and this more detailed
processing results in more emotion labels. This implies a common cognitive
constraint on each of the languages that multilingual and multicultural
individuals speak. Although in this study we sampled only English and
Spanish speakers, we predict that future studies of other languages will find
the same effect.

Acknowledgement
This research was supported by the National Institute on Aging grant
AG16340.

Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Dr Robert W. Schrauf, Buehler
Center on Aging, Northwestern University, 750 North Lake Shore Drive, Suite
601, Chicago, IL 60611-2611, USA (r-schrauf@northwestern.edu).

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Appendix

Free-listing instructions given in English

The next category is emotions. This time, I’m asking you to list as many
different emotions as you can (both good and bad). Once you are finished with
the list, go back and check each item to see if it makes you think of anything
else.
Please indicate whether you consider each emotion as: unpleasant, neutral,
or pleasant.

Free-listing instructions in Spanish

La siguiente categoria es tipo de emociones/sentimientos. Ahora quiero
que haga una lista de emociones, (ya sean buenas o malas; positivas
o negativas). Cuando termine, revise la lista a ver si le recordan otras
emociones.
Indique, si considera que esta emoción es: desagradable, neutral, o
agradable.