The Emotional Value of the Phrase ‘I love you’ for Iranian Bilinguals
الموضوعات : نشریه تخصصی زبان، فرهنگ، و ترجمه (دوفصلنامه)
1 - مرکز زبان و زبان شناسی، دانشگاه صنعتی شریف، تهران، ایران
2 - مرکز زبان و زبان شناسی، دانشگاه صنعتی شریف، تهران، ایران
الکلمات المفتاحية: Bilingualism, Emotion words, Emotional word weight, Communication of emotion, EFL learning material,
ملخص المقالة :
Misunderstanding the emotionality of a word or an emotion-laden word used inaccurately or inappropriately might lead to pragmatically unwanted and embarrassing effects. The present study’s objective was to analyze the perception and use of the phrase ‘I love you’ in Iranian bi/multilingual’s different languages. The aim was to identify if variables of sociobiographical, learning history, and social and linguistic context of L2 use affect the perceivedweight and use of this phrase. The research was conducted using both quantitative (statistical correlation) analysis and qualitative (open-ended questions) to investigate the research question. Twenty Iranian bi/multilingual participants answered an emotional language valuation questionnaire derived from a subsection of the Bilingualism and Emotion Questionnaire (BEQ) database. Our research found that there was no statistical association with the variables except language dominance. Furthermore, seventy percent of the participants reported feeling that ‘I love you’ had the greatest weight in their L1regardless of their age, gender, education level, whether they learned the L2 in a natural, instructed or mixed environment, the onset age of learning, even if they had a high degree of socialization and an extensive network of interlocutors in their L2.
References
Averill, J. R. (1982). Anger and aggression: An essay on emotion. New York:
Springer.
Altarriba, J. (2003). Does caring equal ‘liking’? A theoretical approach to
conceptual nonequivalence between languages. International Journal of
Bilingualism 7, 305– 322.
Altarriba, J., & 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., & Santiago-Rivera, A. (1994). Current perspectives on using
linguistic and cultural factors in counseling the Hispanic client. Professional
Psychology: Research and Practice 25, 388–397.
Barron, A. (2003). Acquisition in interlanguage pragmatics. Amsterdam/
Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Besemeres, M, (2004). Different languages, different emotions? Perspectives
from autobiographical literature. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural
Development, 25, 140– 158.
Bloom, L., & Beckwith, R. (1989). Talking with feeling: Integrating affective
and linguistic expression in early language development. Cognition and
Emotion, 3, 315-342.
Jahangard, A. & Holderread, Sh. /Journal of Language, Culture, and Translation 2(1) (2013), 39–63
58
Caldwell-Harris, C. (2008). Language research needs an “emotional
revolution” and distributed models of the lexicon. Bilingualism: Language
and Cognition, 11 (2), 169–17.
Caldwell-Harris, C., Tong, J., Lung, W., & Poo, S. (2011). Physiological
reactivity to emotional phrases in Mandarin-English bilinguals.
International Journal of Bilingualism, 15 (3), 329-352.
Damasio, A.R. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human
Brain. Grosset/Putnam, New York.
Derné, S. (1994). Structural realities, persistent dilemmas, and the construction
of emotional paradigms: love in three cultures. Social Perspectives on
Emotion 2, 281–308.
Dewaele, J. (2004a). Blistering barnacles! What language do multilinguals
swear in?! Estudios de Sociolinguïstica 5(1), 83–106. Dewaele, J. (2004b).
The emotional force of swearwords and taboo words in the speech of
multilinguals. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development
25(2/3), 204 – 222.
Dewaele, J. (2005). The effect of type of acquisition context on perception and
self-reported use of swearwords in the L2, L3, L4 and L5. In Alex Housen
& Michel Pierrard (Eds.), Investigations in instructed second language
acquisition (pp. 531–559). Berlin & New York: Mouton De Gruyter.
Dewaele, J. (2008a). Dynamic emotion concepts of L2 learners and L2 users: A
Second Language Acquisition perspective. Bilingualism: Language and
Cognition, 11, 173-175.
Dewaele, J. (2008b). The emotional weight of ’I love you’ in multilinguals’
languages. Journal of Pragmatics, 40 (10), 1753-1780.
Dewaele, J. (2010). Emotions in multiple languages. Basingstoke, UK:
Palgrave-Macmillan.
Dewaele, J., & Pavlenko, A. (2001–2003). Bilingualism and emotion webbased questionnaire (BEQ). UK: University of London.
Dewaele, J., & Pavlenko, A. (2002). Emotion vocabulary in interlanguage.
Language Learning, 52, 265–324.
Grabois, H. (1999). The convergence of sociocultural theory and cognitive
linguistics:Lexical semantics and the L2 acquisition of love, fear, and
happiness. In Palmer, G., Occhi, D. (Eds.), Languages of sentiment:
Cultural constructions of emotional substrates (pp. 201–233). Benjamins,
Amsterdam/Philadelphia.
Grosjean, F. (2008). Manipulating language mode. In François Grosjean (Ed.),
Studying bilinguals (pp. 67–84). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jahangard, A. & Holderread, Sh. /Journal of Language, Culture, and Translation 2(1) (2013), 39–63
59
Harris, C. (2004). Bilingual speakers in the lab: psychophysiological measures
of emotional reactivity. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural
Development, 25, 223–247.
Harris, C. L., Aycicegi, A., & Berko Gleason, J. (2003). Taboo words and
reprimands elicit greater autonomic reactivity in a first than in a second
language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 561–578.
Harris, C. L., Gleason, J.B., & Aycicegi, A. (2006). When is a first language
more emotional?Psychophysiological evidence from bilingual speakers. In
A. Pavlenko (Ed.), Bilingual minds: Emotional experience, expression, and
representation. Clevedon, United Kingdom: Multilingual Matters.
Kasper, G. Rose, K. R. (2001). Pragmatics in language teaching. In: Rose,
K.R., Kasper, G. (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 1–9).
Cambridge Univers Press: Cambridge.
Markus, H., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and self: implications for
cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253.
Markus, H., & Kitayama, S. (1994). The cultural construction of self and
emotion: implications for social behavior. In: Kitayama, S., Markus, H.
(Eds.), Emotion and culture: Empirical studies of mutual influence (pp. 89–
130). American Psychological Association, Washington, DC.
Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and
animal emotions. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pavlenko, A. (2004). Stop doing that, ia komu skazala!: Language choice and
emotions in parent-child communication. Journal of Multilingual and
Multicultural Development, 25(2/3), 179–203.
Pavlenko, A. (2005). Emotions and multilingualism. Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge University Press.
Pavlenko, A. (2008). Emotion and emotion-laden words in the bilingual
lexicon. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11(2), 147–164.
Posner, M., Petersen, S., Fox, P., & Raichle, M. (1988). Localization of
cognitive operations in the human brain. Science, 240, 1627–1631.
Rintell, E. (1984). But how did you feel about that? The learner’s perception of
emotion in speech. Applied Linguistics, 5, 255-64.
Schumann, J. H. (1997). The neurobiology of affect in language. Malden, MA.:
Blackwell Publishers.
Ye, V. (2004). La Double Vie de Veronica: Reflections on my life as a Chinese
migrant in Australia. Life Writing, 1, 133–146.
