The role of language proficiency in the perception of L2 taboo words by late bilingual speakers
Cognitive research has established that there exists a significant difference between L1 and L2 with regard to emotional speech processing. Harris, Ayçiçeĝi and Gleason (2003) and Dewaele (2004) have shown that L1 taboo words evoke greater emotional arousal than their L2 counterparts. According to Harris (2004), an L2 acquired early and in a naturalistic setting gains the features of L1 in terms of emotional interference. However, the data from one of the areas of emotional speech processing in bilinguals, i.e. the experimental data about late bilinguals, is still scarce. The present study aims to trace the effects of proficiency and language exposure on the perceived emotional charge of L2 taboo and curse words by late bilinguals. 106 highly proficient Polish-English bilinguals, who were students on an English Studies program at the time of testing, took part in the Emotional Stroop task (Williams, Mathews & MacLeod 1996) and their reaction times were measured. The results discussed with reference to previous findings in the literature suggest that the emotional input provided during second language acquisition is too weak to effectively form affective connotations to L2 utterances.
References
Abutalebi, J. and Della Rosa, P.A
2012 “
How the brain acquires, processes, and controls a second language”. In
The Handbook of the Neuropsychology of Language 21,
Faust, M. (ed), 516–561. Chicester: John Wiley & Sons.
Adolphs, R
2003 “
Cognitive neuroscience of human social behaviour”.
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 41: 165–178.
Altarriba, J
2003 “
Does cariño equal ‘liking’? A theoretical approach to conceptual nonequivalence between languages”.
International Journal of Bilingualism 71: 305–322.
Altarriba, J., Bauer, L.M. and Benvenuto, C
1999 “
Concreteness, context availability and imageability ratings and word associations for abstract, concrete, and emotion words”.
Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers 31 (4): 578–602.
Altarriba, J. and Canary, T.M
2004 “
The influence of emotional arousal on affective priming in monolingual and bilingual speakers”.
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 25 (2–3): 248–265.
Altarriba, J. and Basnight-Brown, D.M
2012 “
The acquisition of concrete, abstract, and emotion words in a second language”.
International Journal of Bilingualism 161: 446–452.
Anooshian, L.J. and Hertel, P.T
1994 “
Emotionality in free recall: Language specificity in bilingual memory”.
Cognition and Emotion 81: 503–514.
Ayçiçeği-Dinn, A. and Caldwell-Harris, C.L
2009 “
Emotion memory effects in bilingual speakers: A levels-of-processing approach”.
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 121: 291–303.
Bar-Haim, Y., Lamy, D., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J. and van IJzendoorn, M.H
2007 “
Threat-related attentional bias in anxious and nonanxious individuals: A meta-analytic study”.
Psychological Bulletin 133 (1): 1–24.
Beck, A.T., Steer, R.A. and Brown, G.K
1996 BDI-II: Beck depression inventory manual (2nd ed.). Boston: Harcourt, Brace. (
[URL]). Date of access: 12.10.2013
Bond, M.H. and Lai, T.M
1986 “
Embarrassment and code-switching into a second language”.
Journal of Social Psychology 1261: 179–186.
Bradley, M.M. and Lang, P.J
1999 Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW): Stimuli, Instruction Manual and Affective Ratings (Tech. Rep. C-1). Gainesville: University of Florida, Center for Research in Psychophysiology.
Cannon, W.B
1927 “
The James-Lange theory of emotion: A critical examination and an alternative theory”.
American Journal of Psychology 391: 10–124.
Cervantes, Christi A
2002 “
Explanatory emotion talk in Mexican immigrant and Mexican American families”,
Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 24, 2: 138–163.
Clachar, A
1999 “
It’s not just cognition: The effect of emotion on multiple-level discourse processing in second-language writing”.
Language Sciences 211: 31–60.
Cook, V
2002 Portraits of the L2 User. Clevdon: Multilingual Matters.
Cook, V
2003 “
Introduction: The changing L1 in the L2 user’s mind”. In
Effects of Second Language on the First,
V. Cook (ed), 1–18. Clevdon: Multilingual Matters.
Costa, A., Camarazza, A. and Sebatian-Galles, N
2000 “
The cognate facilitation effect: Implications for model of lexical access”.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 26 (5): 1283–1296.
Crossley, S.A., Salsbury, T., McNamara, D.S. and Jarvis, S
2011 “
What is lexical proficiency? Some answers from computational models of speech data”.
TESOL Quarterly 45, 1: 182–193.
Damasio, A.R
1994 Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam.
Dewaele, J.-M
2004 “
The emotional force of swearwords and taboo words in the speech of multilinguals”.
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 25 (2): 204–222.
Dewaele, J.-M
2008 “The emotional weight of ‘I love you’ in multilinguals’ languages.
Journal of Pragmatics 40 (10): 1753–1780.
Dewaele, J.-M
2010a “
Christ fucking shit merde! Language preferences for swearing among maximally proficient multilinguals”.
Sociolinguistic Studies 4 (3): 595–614.
Dewaele, J.-M
2010b Emotions in Multiple Languages. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dewaele, J.-M
2011 “
The differences in self-reported use and perception of the L1 and L2 of maximally proficient bi- and multilinguals: A quantitative and qualitative investigation”.
Special Issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2081: 25–51.
Dewaele, J.-M
2013 Emotions in Multiple Languages. 2nd edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dewaele, J.-M. and Pavlenko, A
2001–2003 Web questionnaire bilingualism and emotions. University of London.
Dewaele, J.-M. and Costa, B
2013 “
Multilingual clients’ experience of psychotherapy”.
Language and Psychoanalysis, 2 (2): 31–50.
Dresler T., Ehlis, A.C., Hindi Attar, C., Ernst, L.H., Tupak, S.V., Hahn, T., Warrings, B., Markulin, F., Spitzer, C., Löwe, B., Deckert, J. and Fallgatter, A.J
2012 “
Reliability of the emotional Stroop task: An investigation of patients with panic disorder”.
Journal of Psychiatric Research 461: 1243–1248.
Eilola, T.M., Havelka, J. and Sharma, D
2007 “
Emotional activation in the first and second language”,
Cognition and Emotion 211: 1064–1076.
Eilola, T.M. and Havelka, J
2010 “
Affective norms for 210 British English and Finnish nouns”.
Behavior Research Methods 42 (1): 134–140.
Eilola, T.M. and Havelka, J
2011 “
Behavioural and physiological responses to the emotional and taboo Stroop tasks in native and non-native speakers of English”.
International Journal of Bilingualism 15 (3): 353–369.
Eisenberg, A.R
1999 “
Emotion talk among Mexican American and Anglo American mothers and children from two social classes”.
Merrill–Palmer Quarterly 45 (2): 267–284.
Ellis, N.C
2005 “
Introduction to part 1: Acquisition”. In
Handbook of Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Approaches,
J.F. Kroll and
A.M.B. DeGroot (eds), 3–7, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ervin-Tripp, S
1964 “
Language and TAT content in bilinguals”.
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 681: 500–507.
Harris, C.L
2004 “
Bilingual speakers in the lab: Psychophysiological measures of emotional reactivity”.
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 21: 223–247.
Harris, C.L., Ayçiçeĝi, A. and Gleason, J.B
2003 “
Taboo words and reprimands elicit greater autonomic reactivity in a first language than in a second language”.
Applied Psycholinguistics 24 (4): 561–579.
Ishihara, S
1939 Tests for Colour-blindness. Tokyo: Kanehara.
Jay, T. and Janschewitz, K
2008 “
The pragmatics of swearing”.
Journal of Politeness Research 41: 267–288.
Jay, Timothy
2009 “
The utility and ubiquity of taboo words”.
Perspectives on Psychological Science 4 (2): 153–161.
Javier, R.A. and Marcos, R.L
1989 “
The role of stress on the language independence and code-switching phenomena”.
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 18 (6): 449–472.
Jung-Beeman, M
2005 “
Bilateral brain processes for comprehending natural language”.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences 91: 512–518.
Justin, T., Campbell, C., Altareb, B. and Yousif, A
2010 “
Emotional Stroop interference for depression-related stimuli in a United Arab Emirates student population”.
Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal 38 (5): 597–603.
Kosinski, R.J
2012 A literature review on reaction time. (
[URL]). Date of access: 07.04.2014
Koven, M
2001 “
Comparing bilinguals’ quoted performances of self and others in tellings of the same experience in two languages”.
Language in Society 301: 513–58.
Koven, M
2004 “
Getting ‘emotional’ in two languages: Bilinguals’ verbal performance of affect in narratives of personal experience”.
Text 24 (4): 471–515.
Kroll, J.F. and Stewart, E
1994 “
Category interference in translation and picture naming: Evidence for asymmetric connections between bilingual memory representations”.
Journal of Memory and Language 331: 149–174.
Kučera, M. and Francis, W
1967 Computational Analysis of Present-day American English. Providence: Brown University Press.
LaBar, K. and Phelps, E
1998 “
Arousal-mediated memory consolidation: Role of the medial temporal lobe in humans”.
Psychological Science 91: 490–493.
LeDoux, J.E
1996 The Emotional Brain. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Lund, K. and Burgess, C
1996 “
Producing high-dimensional semantic spaces from lexical co-occurrence”.
Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers 281: 203–208.
Mägiste, E
1986 “
Learning a third language: Selected issues in second and third language learning”. In
Language processing in bilinguals: Psycholinguistic and neuropsychological perspectives,
J. Vais (ed), 97–122. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
Marian, V., Blumenfeld, H.K. and Kaushanskaya, M
2007 “
The language experience and proficiency questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals”.
Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research 501: 940–967.
Mowrer, O.H
1960 Learning Theory and the Symbolic Process. New York: Wiley.
Osgood, C.E
1963 “
On understanding and creating sentences”.
American Psychologist 181: 735–751.
Ożańska-Ponikwia, K. and Dewaele, J.-M
Panksepp, Jaak
1998 Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. New York: Oxford University Press.
Paradis, M
1998 “
Neurolinguistics of bilingualism and the teaching of languages”.
[URL]Date of access: 16:05.2016
Paradis, M
2007 “
The neurofunctional components of the bilingual cognitive system”. In
Cognitive aspects of bilingualism,
I. Kecskes and
L. Albertazzi (eds), 3–28. Dordrecht: Springer.
Pavlenko, A
1998 “
Second language learning by adults: Testimonies of bilingual writers”.
Issues in Applied Linguistics 9 (1): 3–19.
Pavlenko, A
2002 “
Bilingualism and emotions”.
Multilingua 21 (1): 45–78.
Pavlenko, A
2005 Emotions and Multilingualism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pavlenko, A
2008 “
Emotion and emotion-laden words in the bilingual lexicon”.
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 11 (2): 147–164.
Pavlenko, A
2012 “
Affective processing in bilingual speakers: Disembodied cognition?”
International Journal of Psychology 471: 405–428.
Pinker, S
2007 The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. New York: Viking Adult.
Potts, C
2007 “
The expressive dimension”.
Theoretical Linguistics 331: 165–198.
Pratto, F. and John, O.P
1991 “
Automatic vigilance: The attention-grabbing power of negative social information”.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 61 (3): 380–391.
Read, J
1998 “
Validating a test to measure depth of vocabulary knowledge”. In
Validation in Language Assessment,
A.J. Kunnan (ed.), 41–60. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Rintell, E
1984 “
But how did you feel about that? The learner’s perception of emotion in speech”.
Applied Linguistics 5 (3): 255–264.
Rintell, E
1990 That’s incredible: Stories of emotion told by second language learners and native speakers. In
Developing communicative competence in a second language,
R. –Scarcella,
E.Â. Andersen, and
S. Krashen (eds), 75–94. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
Rubin, D.C. and Friendly, M
1986 “
Predicting which words get recalled: Measures of free recall, availability, goodness, emotionality, and pronounciability for 925 nouns”.
Memory and Cognition 141: 79–94.
Schrauf, R
2000 “
Bilingual autobiographical memory: Experimental studies and clinical cases”.
Culture and Psychology 6 (4): 387–417.
Schrauf, R.W., Durazo-Arvizu, R
2006 „Bilingual autobiographical memory and emotion: theory and methods”. In
Bilingual minds: Emotional Experience, Expression, and Representation,
A. Pavlenko (ed), 284–311. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Sharma, D. and McKenna, F.P
2001 “
The role of time pressure on the emotional Stroop task”.
British Journal of Psychology 921: 471–481.
Sherkina-Lieber, M
2004 “
The cognate facilitation effect in bilingual speech processing: The case of Russian-English bilingualism”. Proceedings of the
Special Session on Slavic Psycholinguistics at the 12th Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics
, Cahiers Linguistiques d’Ottawa 321: 108–121.
Schumann, J.H. and Wood, L.A
2004 “
The neurobiology of motivation”, In
The Neuropsychology of Learning: Perspectives from Second Language Acquisition,
J.H. Schumann,
S.E. Crowell,
N.E. Jones,
N. Lee,
S.A. Schuchert and
L.A. Wood (eds), 23–42. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Staats, A.M
1971 “
Linguistic-mentalistic theory versus an explanatory S-R learning theory of language development”, In
The Ontogenesis of Grammar,
D.I. Slobin (ed), 103–150. New York: Academic Press.
Stroop, J.R
1935 “
Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions”.
Journal of Experimental Psychology 181: 643–662.
Sutton, T.M., Altarriba, J., Gianico, J.L. and Basnight-Brow, D.M
2007 “
The automatic access of emotion: Emotional Stroop effects in Spanish English bilingual speakers”.
Cognition and Emotion 21 (5): 1077–1090.
Toya, M. and Kodis, M
1996 “
But I don’t want to be rude: On learning how to express anger in the L2”.
JALT Journal 18 (2): 279–295.
Van Lancker, D
1997 “
Rags to riches: Our increasing appreciation of cognitive and communicative abilities of the human right cerebral hemisphere”.
Brain and Language 571: 1–11.
Williams, J.M.G., Mathews, A. and MacLeod, C.M
1996 “
The emotional Stroop task and psychopathology”.
Psychological Bulletin 120 (1): 3–24.
Winskel, H
2013 “
The emotional Stroop task and emotionality rating of negative and neutral words in late Thai–English bilinguals”,
International Journal of Psychology 48 (6): 1090–1098.
Zimbardo, Philip George
1980 Essentials of Psychology and Life. Glenview: Scott Foresman and Company.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Wang, Xian, Congjun Mu, Huixian Li, Alison Noble & Qingyi Wang
2022.
Product-Centered Language Style in Chinese Women Online Reviews.
Frontiers in Psychology 13
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.