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Love me in L1, but hate me in L2: How native speakers and bilinguals rate the affectivity of words when feeling or thinking about them

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2022

Pilar Ferré Open the ORCID record for Pilar Ferré [Opens in a new window] ,
Marc Guasch ,
Hans Stadthagen-Gonzalez  and
Montserrat Comesaña Open the ORCID record for Montserrat Comesaña [Opens in a new window]
Pilar Ferré*
Affiliation:
Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Psychology and CRAMC, Tarragona, Spain
Marc Guasch
Affiliation:
Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Psychology and CRAMC, Tarragona, Spain
Hans Stadthagen-Gonzalez
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, The University of Southern Mississippi, Long Beach, MS, USA
Montserrat Comesaña
Affiliation:
Research Unit in Human Cognition, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal Centro de Investigación Nebrija en Cognición (CINC), Nebrija University, Madrid, Spain
*
Address for correspondence: Pilar Ferré, Departament de Psicologia, URV. Ctra. de Valls, s/n, 43007 – Tarragona (Spain) Email: mariadelpilar.ferre@urv.cat
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Abstract

This study examines the distinction between knowing the meaning of a word and experiencing the feelings associated with it. We collected affective ratings for a set of emotional and neutral English words from a group of English native speakers and a group of European Portuguese–English bilinguals. Half of the emotional words named emotions (emotion words) and the other half did not name emotions but could provoke them (emotion-laden words). Some participants were asked to focus on the meaning of words while others were asked to focus on the feeling produced by the words. Native speakers of English produced more intense affective ratings that Portuguese–English bilinguals. Such difference was larger when participants focused on their feelings than when they focused on the words’ meaning. Accordingly, such distinction should be considered in the study of bilingual affective language processing. Finally, the type of emotional word (emotion vs. emotion-laden) had only modest effects.

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Research Article
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Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 25 , Issue 5 , November 2022 , pp. 786 - 800
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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