Cross-cultural Cognition and Bilingualism

1. Introduction

1.1 Relation of Cognition and Languages

Languages are linked to the culture and maybe the thought of the speakers. The connection between cognition and second language acquisition has emerged into scholar’s view for years. Cognition deals with topics such as perception, memories, attention, language and thinking/decision making (Brown 2006, p6). The connotation of cognition includes two dimensions. The macro one is information processes that people formulate knowledge by forming concepts, perception and imagination. The micro one is linguistic-related cognition, which specifically indicates the patterns of thought arising as a result of specific lexical and grammatical patterns.

‘Monolingual’ is a term denoted people who speak only one language; ‘bilingual’ is a term specific for people who speak two languages (Athanasopoulos, 2011, p29); and ‘multilingual’ is for people who speak more than two languages. Different features of languages may differ cognition of people who speak different languages. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (Whorf, 1956, p221) suggests that the language we speak may influence the way we perceive the world, the way we feel about ‘reality’, the way that we choose to interact with others. Language may be not only influence the way we perceive the out-world, but also the inner world, the way we see ourselves, i.e. identities, self-presentation, and so on (Marian and Kaushanska 2004, p199; Bowerman and Levinson, 2001; Athanasopoulos, 2011; p29). A bilingual is not a mixture of two monolingual in one body, but a unique language user with a complete language system (Athanasopoulos, 2011, p29). People who speak more than one language may have different cognitive processes than those who only speak one language. For instance, grammatical gender of objects in language could influence the perception of the arbitrary and natural gender of the objects (Sera et al. 2002; Cook, 2011). The way people perceive countable or uncountable nouns goes with the way people perceive objects (Cook, 2011, p8).

Meanwhile, another point should be mentioned, which is that the relationship between language and cognition is correlated, but not caused. There are some evidences that are proved for the correlation of language and cognition. Research shows that leaning another language increases the density of gray matters in the left inferior parietal cortex (Bialystok, 2008; Mechelli et al., 2004). Some scholars suggest that bilinguals feel like different persons when they speak different languages (inner speech week 1).

1.2 Emotion and Bilingualism

There are four approaches to define emotion (Dewaele, 2010), 1. neurobiological perspective; 2. cognitive linguistic approach; 3. Cultural psychological approach, which defines emotions either reveal inner feeling or action related inner feeling, according to the culture (Markus and Kitayama, 1991); 4. Social constructivist approach, which defines emotion as an individual appraisal/passion of the situation and context (Averill, 1984).

Some scholar takes a combining approach of neurobiological perspective and cognitive linguistic perspective. For instance, when studying the inner calculation language of bilinguals, Harris took skin conductance response as a helping tool to measure the response time of bilinguals (2007). Others take a clear cognitive linguistic approach. Pavlenko (2008a) discusses relationship of emotions, emotion words, emotion-related words and emotional-laden words in cognitive linguistic approach. Emotion is an assortment of socially and culturally shared scripts, which allow members of different cultures to differentially interpret similar physiological, subjective and behavioral process. Emotion words refer to words that directly link to certain affective states or processes, and function to express them. Emotion-related words are words that describe the action related to certain emotion without naming the emotions. Emotion-laden words are indirectly express or reveal emotions from the interlocutors without naming emotions. For instance, swear-taboo words (S-T words) are belonged to emotion-laden words, which are expressions in a language that refers to taboo and/or stigmatized in the culture, for expressing strong emotions and attitudes (Andersson and Trudgill, 2007, p195).

Common attitude of emotional language choice is that first language (L1) is a more emotional language of bilinguals and multilinguals (Pavlenko, 2008; Harris, 2004). There are several factors that influence emotional language choices, including: age of language acquisition; language proficiency; sociocultural immersion; instructed/naturalistic learning context; and so forth (Athanasopoulos, 2011; Jarvis and Pavlenko, 2008; Dewaele, 2007). Empirical studies are conducted to explore the influence of these factors to emotional language choices: age matters--early bilingual preforms better than late bilingual on interrelatedness and interconnections of the two languages (Baker and Athanasopoulos, 2011); language proficiency matters— L1 is more emotional if it is the more proficient one (Harris, 2004); L1 is the first choice for most multilinguals of inner speech, yet a latter learnt language could emerge as a choice as the proficiency goes up (Dewaele, 2006, cited in Pavlenko, 2011); learning context matters—people who learnt their second language in an instructed context give lower ratting on emotional force on S-T words than those who learnt in naturalistic context (Dewaele, 2010); sociocultural immersion matters—frequent language user of a second language scores higher in perception of emotional force of S-T words.

Emotional language choices not only include inner speech language choice, anger expression language choice, S-T words, but also endearment language choice. Language choice of S-T words of bilinguals is one topic that has been deeply researched. S-T words systematically appear as most emotional in the two languages of bilinguals, with more emotionality attributed to L1 S-T words. (Dewaele, 2002; Pavelenko, 2008; Harris, 2004). Gender, age and social class could influence the use of S-T words (Dewaele, 2004). However, as for endearments, it may be perceived as emotionality in both languages and may, in fact, appear more emotional in the L2 (depends on the L2 learning history, recent language use of the L2, and the self perceived competence in the L2) (Dewaele, 2002 ). Sometimes language choice may be influenced by language emotionality, even if the interlocutor who doesn’t have competence in the chosen language (Pavlenco, 2008). In this paper, we aim to find out the different emotional language choice of bilinguals/multilinguals on S-T words, endearment expression (specifically on love expression) and bad/difficult memories recalls. According to previous research and theories, three hypotheses are proposed: firstly, S-T words in L1 are normally stronger than any other languages; secondly, Love is preferred to be expressed both in L1 and L2; sometimes could be expressed stronger in L2, while acquisition age and context of other languages could influence the emotional choice; thirdly, L1 is more efficient to be used to discuss bad/difficult memories. Acquisition age and method of other languages could influence the emotional choice.