Date: 14-Aug-2006
From: Julie Bruch <jbruchmesastate.edu>
Subject: Emotions and Multilingualism
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-1010.html
AUTHOR: Pavlenko, AnetaTITLE: Emotions and MultilingualismSERIES: Studies in Emotion and Social InteractionPUBLISHER: Cambridge University PressYEAR: 2006
Reviewer: Julie Bruch, Department of Languages, Literature, andCommunication, Mesa State College
Emotions and Multilingualism provides a comprehensive overview of researchdone in the field of emotions and language, which is analyzed and added towith the author's own work and thinking. Three main uses of this book areobvious. It is appropriate for use in graduate courses inpsycholinguistics, anthropological linguistics, or second languageacquisition (SLA) theory and bilingualism. It will also be of use as amodel and reference for anyone interested in doing research on eitheremotions or multilingualism. And third, bilingual or multilingualindividuals who are interested in interpreting their own experiences, willfind this book to be of great significance. (From here, the word''bilingual'' will be used generically to refer to both bilinguals andmultilinguals.) The book includes two perspectives on the topic: one fromthe field of emotion studies and one from the field of multilingualism. Inthis way, specialists in one field who may not be deeply studied in theother are given sufficient grounding to understand the research and ideaspresented. The author states in the preface that the traditional approachto both linguistic inquiry and inquiry about the human mind has been basedon a monolingual ideal speaker, and since a real minority of the world'slanguage users are not monolingual, the resulting theories cannot be trulyrepresentative of what is a ''messy, heteroglossic, and multilingual''reality (p. xii).
The first chapters of the book introduce how emotions studies are necessaryfor studies of multilingualism and vice versa, and later chapters goin-depth through the levels of language sounds, semantics and concepts, anddiscourse as they correlate with and express emotions, and finally, theneurophysiology of emotions and the social influences on emotions arerelated to language and multilingualism. In the eighth and last chapter ofthe book, suggestions are presented for integrating the two fields ofemotions studies and multilingualism studies.
SUMMARY
In the first chapter, the Pavlenko raises questions about Chomsky's usingan idealized monolingual native speaker to make generalizations aboutlanguage and human cognition. She suggests that the Chomskian traditionhas been the source of a deep-seated inherent bias in research methodologyand analyses, much in the same way that gender bias in the past affectedresearch models in many different fields. She suggests that languagecompetence (even in L1) is not the homogeneous and relatively unchangeableproperty that many researchers seem to presuppose (e.g., MacWhinney 1997). She emphasizes that many factors point to an opposing reality; that is,bilingual speakers have a uniquely formed linguistic and emotional systemthat rather than being composed of two monolingual systems, is in fact acompound and dynamic system of multicompetence (as theorized by others aswell, namely, Cook (1991) and Grosjean (1998)). The author's argument isthat the study of bilingualism is a necessary component in the study ofemotions in the fields of linguistics, psychology, and anthropology, andshe advocates an overall reassessment of research methodology and reportingprocedures.
Chapter two argues that the fields of SLA and bilingualism can be greatlyenriched by the study of emotions, and Pavlenko surveys extant work in thisarea. She points out that extant research demonstrates that in monolingualsocieties, bilinguals have been avoided or treated as problematic, and inmultilingual societies, bilingualism has been ignored since it is the norm. Other work from the field of psychology shows a long history of looking atcorrelations between pathological identity formation and discriminating useof first language (L1) and second languages (L2) by subjects. It is thesemetaphors of a split identity that have somewhat incorrectly informedwriting on SLA and bilingualism. The author suggests that while Krashen'swell-known Monitor Model (most recently in 1994) and others have developedtheories relating affect and the acquisition of second languages, they arereductionist in nature. She notes that affective constructs such asanxiety, motivation, self-esteem, risk-taking, and tolerance of ambiguitythat are frequently cited in the literature on language learning andacquisition may be relevant to classroom learners in a monolingual society,but they are not representative of the diverse emotional factors that playa role in bilingualism in the greater contexts of language learning anduse. Pavlenko then outlines the few studies that do indeed consider morecontextualized aspects of bilingualism point toward the existence ofdistinct emotional repertories connected to distinct languages, andsummarizes the methodology used in her own large-scale study (a two-yearweb questionnaire involving 1,039 bilingual participants). Her mainpremise in suggesting the need for revised research models is that ''thereis no single coherent story to be told about the relationship betweenemotions and multilingualism,'' and she strongly asserts that future workshould avoid the traditional unitary and narrow views of affect andlanguage that were common in the past.
Chapter three is the first of three chapters that break language into itscomponents for analysis of their interaction with emotions. This chapterexplains ways in which vocal cues signal emotions in different languagesand explores the ways in which both monolinguals and bilinguals interpretthe emotions behind vocal cues in different languages. Pavlenko providesnumerous examples of pitch, intonation, stress and loudness, and rhythmthat signal different emotional states across different languages. Shestresses that vocal cues are inherently ambiguous and dependent onindividual speaker and context, but she summarizes work that demonstratesthat interpreting emotions based on vocal cues is accurate to a degreegreater than chance even for non-native speakers of a language. She alsogives examples of how the misinterpretation of vocal cues across languagescan be problematic, including the context of psychological evaluations.She points out that many more studies comparing the prosody ofconventionalized emotional signals are needed, both intralanguage andcross-linguistically. Very importantly, in this chapter, Pavlenkosummarizes and comments on numerous research models, concluding that futurework on affective cues in language needs to delineate more carefully amultitude of factors such as linguistic and cultural background ofparticipants, level of anxiety, gender, length of speech samples, etc. Ata practical level, she mentions the fact that although vocal cues are oftenthe most important aspect of expressing and interpreting affect and areoften part of language transfer from L1 to L2, vocal cues to emotions arenot usually taught in language classrooms.
Chapter four moves into the area of mental lexicon and semantic concepts asthey relate to emotions. Pavlenko offers several subjective accounts oflanguage users who have learned to feel different emotions throughdifferent languages, and she makes the point that since emotion terms donot correspond neatly across languages, these subjective accounts makesense. She goes on to present three competing paradigms currently used forconceptualizing the relationship between emotion terms in language, themental representations of those terms, and the experiences of languageusers. The author argues in detail for her stance of defining and framingher approach based on ''a process view of emotions'' (p. 80), in whichemotion concepts are formed through experience (relativist paradigm) andthrough physiological or biological states that accompany them(universalist paradigm). She goes on to summarize findings to date oncross-linguistic comparisons of emotion terms, which leads her to ask howbilinguals represent emotions. Ten studies based on a variety of researchmethodologies are outlined and critiqued. Some of the most interestingresults of these studies point toward the fact that bilinguals appear toreconceptualize their emotions as they become socialized into their otherlanguage(s). Several studies indicate that emotion categories themselvesare borrowed across languages together with the borrowing of words or withcode switching. At the practical level, the author highlights theimportance of this type of knowledge for legal, clinical, and academiccontexts. She ends the chapter by suggesting ways to refine and improvefuture research and adds some questions that still need to be addressed inthe research.
In chapter five, the author covers the discourse level of language andemotions. Discourse has only recently become the subject of study foremotions because it was long perceived as too difficult to objectify. Twocurrently developing paradigms for research are introduced, and Pavlenkoadopts the view that instead of communicating emotions, we ''perform affect''(p. 115) in various ways. She indicates that we use discourse strategiessuch as: terms of address, hedges, intensifiers, pronoun choice,diminutives, tag questions, tense, mood, voice, word order, narrativestructures, register, and turn-taking to assume different affectivepersonae in different contexts. This leads to several questions in thecase of bilinguals. Do they use distinct affective styles in theirdistinct languages, and if so, how are those choices made? Is therecross-linguistic influence? Results of studies of discourse show thatbilinguals often feel that one of their languages is better suited forcapturing or experiencing certain emotions, that language attrition may beaccompanied by attrition of certain types of emotion frames, and that thereis bidirectional influence of languages on emotion conceptualization.Again the author closes the chapter by suggesting that foreign languageclasses need to teach learners how to perform affect, and she presents waysin which to improve future research.
Chapter six moves away from the components of language into the area ofneurophysical responses related to emotions when different languages areused by bilingual speakers. There is evidence here that L1 is more closelyattached to the limbic system of the brain (which processes emotions), andother evidence points to the idea that emotional memories are more stronglyassociated with L1. Pavlenko explains the ''L2 detachment effect'' (p. 158),which both allows bilinguals to undergo psychotherapy for trauma in thesecond language and allows bilinguals to use taboo words more easily in thesecond language. Other interesting findings are the ''language congruityeffect'' and the ''language specificity effect'' (p. 177) which both relatememories elicited by L1 to higher emotional intensity. There is adiscussion of translingual writers and their choices of which language theyuse in their writing. The author ends the chapter with a criticism of moststudies as still holding the view that a bilingual is two isolatedmonolinguals in one body, and says that many other dynamics need to befactored into future research.
Chapter seven explores how language choices are based on social identitiesand power relations, which by nature are tied to emotions. Pavlenkodetails the ways in which emotional investments are made in particularlanguages by bilinguals because of the social or cultural character typeslinked to those languages. She presents case studies of L1 rejection andattrition linked to emotional attitudes (specifically German speakersduring the Nazi occupation). Also presented are studies of deep love fornew language tied to romantic allegiances. Since language use is always atsome level an act of identity, and our identities are constantly in flux,the author suggests that as our emotions change over time, so our languageinvestments will be complex and even contradictory at times.
In chapter eight, Pavlenko sketches some general directions for integratingmultilingual approaches into the study of language and emotions and somedirections for integrating the study of emotions into the study ofmultilingualism. She emphasizes the importance of triangulation in futurework. She calls for increased naturalistic studies and more collaborativeanalyses that involve communication between participants, informants,native speakers, and researchers as part of research. She also explainsthe overall need for much more careful reporting that will make analyticchoices, criteria, results, and contexts more explicit. She ends with aplea for theorists to stop believing that sufficient data can be garneredfrom monolinguals, saying that it is irresponsible not to use bilingualsfor linguistic and psychological theory building.
EVALUATION
Each chapter of this book resonates with ideas, questions, experiences, andemotions that will be intimately familiar to many bi/multi-lingual languageusers. The author's strategy of viewing emotions through different lenses,varying through the viewpoints of emotions as states, as mental concepts,as processes, or as relationships is very effective in achieving her statedpurpose of changing the unitary way we think about affect in language.While running the risk of sounding self-contradictory, she successfullyenables the reader to approach the subject from multi-faceted viewpoints,which contributes to understanding rather than causing confusion.
The author organizes the book systematically and effectively. She openseach chapter with subjective accounts and personal experiences ofindividuals in order to lead into key questions to be explored in thechapter. She explicitly states the goals of each chapter, presents theextant theoretical paradigms, summarizes key pieces of evidence, lists anddiscusses noteworthy factors found in the research, and finally summarizesthe findings of studies and their implications and suggests directions forfuture research. (The last section in each chapter is entitled''Conclusions and Implications for Future Research.'' I found these sectionsto be reiterative enough that I felt part of the section title should be''Summary'' rather than ''Conclusions.'') Studies ranging from several decadesago up to the most recent work are listed in tables in each chapter. Thetables include both research procedures and findings.
In chapter three (the first of the language component chapters), there area great number of studies, examples, and narratives, which are allinteresting, but this reviewer found them to be too extensive in that theyreiterate over and over the point that vocal cues are problematic tointerpret within and across languages – a point on which many readers donot need much convincing. However, her outlining of many studies isvaluable in that it offers a number of research designs which can be takenas models for further research.
In chapter four, Pavlenko defends her rather revolutionary view ofconceptualizing emotions very successfully. She carefully formulates fourvalid arguments to support her view of emotions as processes. Especiallyconvincing is her argument that emotion concepts are by nature embedded inother systems, such as moral or power systems, which are context-dependentand negotiable. Again, in this chapter, she lists ample examples ofvarious types of research already done, and she makes insightful andpractical suggestions for how better to approach research on emotionconceptualization and language.
In chapter five, the author continues her pattern of summarizing importantstudies in the field, critiquing them, and suggesting ways to improve. Shestated at the beginning of the book that her stance is nontraditional, witha multifaceted approach. I found this approach through the three chapterson components of language to be refreshing and well-suited to thecomplexities of the topic. There are just a couple of spots where detailsof Spanish were incorrect (p. 84 states that the verb ''ser'' is used toexpress location) or oversimplified (p. 118 states that ''mamita'' meansdaughter), but other language examples from Japanese appear to be accurate.
Overall, the book is user-friendly, comprehensive, insightful, andthough-provoking. Its perspective being interdisciplinary, many types ofreaders will find it useful. I recommend it most highly.
REFERENCES
Cook, V. (1991) The poverty of the stimulus argument and multicompetence.Second Language Research, 7, 2, 103-117.
Grosjean, F. (1998) Studying bilinguals: Methodological and conceptualissues. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1, 2, 131-149.
Krashen, S. (1994) The input hypothesis and its rivals. In N. Ellis (ed.)Implicit and explicit learning of languages. New York: Academic Press, pp.45-77.
MacWhinney, B. (1997) Second language acquisition and the competitionmodel. In DeGroot, A. and J. Kroll (eds.) Tutorials in bilingualism:Psycholinguistic perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 113-142.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Julie Bruch is Associate Professor of English and Linguistics at Mesa StateCollege in Colorado, U.S.A. Her research interests are second languageacquisition and cross-cultural comparisons of aspects of discourse.
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