Dissertation: Study sheds light on how bilingual people process emotional words in two languages
Dong Tang’s doctoral thesis aimed to find out if bilingual people understand and react to emotion-related vocabulary in their second language the same way they do in their first language.
Previous studies on bilingualism and emotion word processing have shown mixed results. Some suggest a reduced emotional response in speakers’ second language, while others indicate similar or even stronger effects compared to their first language.
“Most previous research has overlooked the distinction between types of emotion word, often conflating emotion-label words and emotion-laden words when constructing experimental stimuli. This oversight may have contributed to the conflicting results,” Tang says.
In his thesis, emotion-related words were divided into two different categories: Words directly name an emotion, such as “happy” or “angry”, and words that evoke an emotion through their affectivecontent, like “worthy” or “poor”.
Tang found out that bilinguals showed greater emotional engagement with emotion words in their first language, supporting the theory that language learned in emotionally rich contexts evokes stronger emotional responses.
More importantly, according to Tang, words from different categories are processed differently across speakers’ first and second languages at both behavioral and electrophysiological levels. For example, bilinguals responded faster to emotion-label words than to emotion-laden words when asked to judge whether a word was positive or negative.
“This highlights the need to distinguish between these two types of emotion words in future studies,” Tang says and continues.
“The effect of emotion word type may vary based on task demands, suggesting that researchers should carefully consider task selection when studying emotion word processing in bilingual contexts.”
Tang points out that the findings can improve understanding and interpretation of emotional cues in multilingual settings, enhancing cross-cultural communication.
“By recognizing how emotion words are processed differently in speakers’ first and second languages, educators and psychologists can develop better strategies to foster empathy and emotional intelligence in bilingual individuals,” Tang says.
According to Tang, these insights can be useful in language teaching methods, as they emphasize the importance of the emotional context in language learning.
More information
Dong Tang will defend his PhD thesis “Processing of emotion-label words and emotion-laden words in L1 and L2: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence" on 29.11.2024 at 12:00 at Mattilanniemi MaA 103. The opponent is Professor Riikka Möttönen (University of Helsinki) and custos is Professor Tommi Kärkkäinen (Ģֱ).
The dissertation “Processing of emotion-label words and emotion-laden words in L1 and L2 : behavioral and electrophysiological evidence” can be read on the JYX publication archive:
Dong Tang
dong.d.tang@jyu.fi