Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-03T13:04:17.311Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dynamic emotion concepts of L2 learners and L2 users: A Second Language Acquisition perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2008

JEAN-MARC DEWAELE
JEAN-MARC DEWAELE*
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Linguistics, Birkbeck, University of London, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Pavlenko's keynote paper calls for a rethinking of models of the mental lexicon in the light of recent research into emotion and bilingualism. The author makes a convincing case for the inclusion of affective aspects in the study of the mental lexicon. Indeed, the knowledge of the degree of emotionality of a word and of its affective valence is just as important as the knowledge of that word's grammatical class, or its gender. From a pragmatic point of view, one could argue that an L2 user's inaccurate or incomplete understanding of the emotionality and valence of an emotion word, or an emotion-laden word, in the L2 might lead to unwanted illocutionary effects, which might be far more embarrassing than phonological, morphological or syntactical errors.

Type
Peer Commentaries
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , July 2008 , pp. 173 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ameel, E., Storms, G., Malt, B. & Sloman, S. (2005). How bilinguals solve the naming problem. Journal of Memory and Language, 52, 309–329.Google Scholar
Besemeres, M. (2004). Different languages, different emotions? Perspectives from autobiographical literature. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 25 (2/3), 140–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewaele, J.-M. (2007a). The effect of context of acquisition on L2 users' pragmatic development. In Hua, Z., Seedhouse, P., Wei, L. & Cook, V. (eds.), Language learning and teaching as social inter-action, pp. 162–183. Basingstoke: Palgrave–Macmillan.Google Scholar
Dewaele, J.-M. (2007b). Diachronic and/or synchronic variation? The acquisition of sociolinguistic competence in L2 French. In Ayoun, D. (ed.), Handbook of French applied linguistics, pp. 208–236. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewaele, J.-M. & Pavlenko, A. (2002). Emotion vocabulary in interlanguage. Language Learning, 52, 265–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malt, B. & Sloman, S. (2003). Linguistic diversity and object naming by non-native speakers of English. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6, 47–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parks, T. (2000). An Italian education. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (2003). Eyewitness memory in late bilinguals: Evidence for discursive relativity. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 7 (3), 257–281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pavlenko, A. & Driagina, V. (2007). Russian emotion vocabulary in American learners' narratives. The Modern Language Journal, 91 (2), 213–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stepanova Sachs, O. & Coley, J. 2006). Envy and jealousy in Russian and English: Labeling and conceptualization of emotions by monolinguals and bilinguals. In Pavlenko, A. (ed.), Bilingual minds: Emotional experience, expression and representation, pp. 209–231. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar