Cross-cultural Cognition and Bilingualism (4)

4. Discussion

The results of the project show that L1 for most of the participants are a more emotional language. For negative emotions, which are represented by S-T words, the emotionality is stronger in L1 than L2, which support the first hypothesis. The possible reason could be that L1 is the dominant language for most of the participants. Participants’ language choice proved the theory that L1 is a more emotional language of bilinguals and multilinguals (Pavlenko, 2008; Harris, 2004). When people learn their first language in the childhood, their cognitive system, especially their emotion systems, are formed at the same period.

On the aspect of endearment expression of ‘I love you’, as an example of positive emotion, more people felt that endearment is preferred to perceived and expressed in L1 than L2. Some people preferred to express and perceive it in L2, while only 1 participant preferred to express and perceive endearment in L2. There are more early bilinguals than late bilinguals among those who prefer L1. The only L2 chooser’s L1 and L2 are Japanese and Chinese. He chose L2 to express his endearment because he has a Chinese wife. English is not his first language or dominant language. For all the rest of the participants, English is either their L2 or dominant language when the project WAS conducted. So language choice of endearment expression could be influenced by interlocutors. This is consistent with Pavlenko’s found that endearment may be perceived as emotionality in both languages and may appear more emotional in the L2. But our found is that language acquisition age may not influence people’s language preference of endearment. In general, love is preferred to be expressed by L1 than L2. Interlocutors’ dominant language could affect language preference of speakers, while language acquisition age of L2 is not a definitely influential factor. More experiments should be set to explore the factors influencing language preference of endearment in the field in the future.

Similar language preference happened on bad/difficulty memory recall. L1 is preferred by 60% participant on this topic, while L2 is preferred only by 20% of the participants. There are 15% participants see their L1 and L2 have the same emotionality on this topic. 1 participant’ answer could be seen as ‘not applicable’. The reason people choose L1 varies from ‘easier to be understood’, ‘easier to remember’, ‘better at control the language’, to ‘more vocabulary’. The main reasons that people chose L2 to recall bad/difficult memory are ‘to be understood’ and ‘control my feeling properly’. The ‘not applicable’ answer is that ‘Using L2 in L1 country, and using L1 in L2 country’. The participant explained that it is too private that he chooses a language that majority do not understand. Hence, in the context of bad/difficulty memory recall, people seems consider both the speaker’s feeling to be understood and the interlocutor’s feeling that to understood and to give comment. Age of language acquisition was supposed to be an important factor to influence people’s language choice. However the results showed that it is as important as expect, due to the fact that in every group (L1>L2, L1=L2, L1<L2) there are more early bilinguals than late ones. The acquisition contexts of L2 of most participants are instructed. Hence, the influence of acquisition contexts of L2 is not measureable in this case. The result partially support hypothesis 3 that L1 is more efficient to be used to discuss bad/difficult memories. But age of acquisition of L2 is not an influential factor.