Cover not available
Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 8:3 (2018) ► pp.320–342

Glimpses of semantic restructuring of English emotion-laden words of American English L1 users residing outside the USA

 | Birkbeck, University of London
The present exploratory study focuses on the effect of living outside the USA on the understanding of the meaning, the perceived offensiveness and the self-reported frequency of use of four English emotion-laden words of British origin and four English emotion-laden words of American origin among 556 first (L1) users of American English. Statistical analyses revealed that the scores of the Americans living in the UK or in non-English-speaking countries differed significantly from those of compatriots living in the USA. Positive relationships emerged between multilingualism and scores on the dependent variables for the four British words, but no link emerged between languages known and the dependent variables for the American words. This is interpreted as an indication that semantic representations of emotion-laden words originating from another variety of the L1 are relatively weaker and are more likely to shift as a result of exposure to their use in other varieties, and the knowledge of other languages.
Keywords: emotion-laden words, semantic representations, multicompetence, bi-varietal native English speakers.
Article outline
  • Multi-competence and conceptual restructuring
  • Methodology
    • Instruments
    • Independent variables
    • Dependent variables
    • Participants
  • Research questions
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 6 February 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.15046.dew
References (32)
References
Altarriba, J. (2006). Cognitive approaches to the study of emotion-laden and emotion words in monolingual and bilingual memory. In A. Pavlenko (Ed.). Bilingual minds: Emotional experience, expression, and representation (pp. 232–256). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Altarriba, J., & Basnight-Brown, D. M. (2011). The representation of emotion vs. emotion-laden words in English and in Spanish in the Affective Simon Task. International Journal of Bilingualism, 151, 310–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Altarriba, J. & Bauer, L. M. (2004). The distinctiveness of emotion concepts: A comparison between emotion, abstract, and concrete words. American Journal of Psychology, 1171, 389–410. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benor, S. B. (2010). Ethnolinguistic repertoire: Shifting the analytic focus in language and ethnicity. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 141, 159–183. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boring, V. (2005). Questions of language and identity for American university students in London. Unpublished MA dissertation, Birkbeck, University of London.Google Scholar
Cook, V. J. (ed.) (2003). The Effects of the Second Language on the First. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013). Multi-competence. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, C. A. Chapelle (Ed.). Blackwell Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cook, V. J. & Bassetti, B. (Eds.) (2011). Language and Bilingual Cognition. New York: Psychology Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Denissen, J. J. A., Neumann, L. & van Zalk, M. (2010). How the internet is changing the implementation of traditional research methods, people’s daily lives, and the way in which developmental scientists conduct research. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 341, 564–575. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dewaele, J.-M. (2013). Emotions in Multiple Languages. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2nd edition.Google Scholar
(2015). British ‘Bollocks’ versus American ‘Jerk’: Do native British English speakers swear more – or differently-compared to American English speakers? Applied Linguistic Review, 6 (3), 309–339. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016a). Thirty shades of offensiveness: L1 and LX English users’ understanding, perception and self-reported use of negative emotion-laden words. Journal of Pragmatics, 941, 112–127. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016b). Multi-competence and emotion. In Li Wei & V. Cook. The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Multi-competence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 461–477. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dewaele, J.-M. & Pavlenko, A. (2003). Productivity and lexical diversity in native and non-native speech: a study of cross-cultural effects. In V. Cook (Ed.), The Effects of the Second Language on the First (pp. 120–141). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Edwards, J. (2000). The ‘Other Eden’: Thoughts on American Study Abroad in Britain. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 61, 83–98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Greasley, P., Sherrard, C. & Waterman, M. (2000). Emotion in language and speech: Methodological issues in naturalistic approaches. Language and Speech, 431, 355–375. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kasper, G. & Rose, K.R. (2001). Pragmatics in Language Teaching. In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Language Teaching (pp. 1–9). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kazanas, S. A. & Altarriba, J. (2015). The automatic activation of emotion and emotion-laden words: Evidence from a masked and unmasked priming paradigm. The American Journal of Psychology, 1281, 323–336. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kazanas, S. A., & Altarriba, J. (2016). Emotion word processing: Effects of word type and valence in Spanish-English bilinguals. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 451, 395–406. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leech, G., Rayson, P., & Wilson, A. (2014). Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: Based on the British National Corpus. London – New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Loewen, S. & Plonsky, L. (2016). An A–Z of Applied Linguistics Research Methods. London – New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lorette, P. & Dewaele, J.-M. (2015). Emotion recognition ability in English among L1 and LX users of English. International Journal of Language and Culture, 2 (1), 62–86. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (2002). Bilingualism and emotions. Multilingua, 211, 45–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2005). Emotions and Multilingualism. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2008). Emotion and emotion-laden words in the bilingual lexicon. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 111, 147–164. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2009). Conceptual representation in the bilingual lexicon and second language vocabulary learning. In A. Pavlenko (Eds.). The Bilingual Mental Lexicon: Interdisciplinary Approaches (pp. 125–160). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014). The bilingual mind and what it tells us about language and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pavlenko, A. & Malt, B. (2011). Kitchen Russian: Cross-linguistic differences and first-language object naming by Russian-English bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14 (1), 19–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmid, M. S., & Jarvis, S. (2014). Lexical first language attrition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17 (4), 729–748. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sia, J. & Dewaele, J.-M. (2006). Are you bilingual? Birkbeck Studies in Applied Linguistics, 11, 1–19.Google Scholar
Warriner, A.B., Kuperman, V., & Brysbaert, M. (2013). Norms of valence, arousal, and dominance for 13,915 English lemmas. Behavior Research Methods, 451, 1191–1207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, R. & Dewaele, J.-M. (2010). The use of web questionnaires in second language acquisition and bilingualism research. Second Language Research, 261, 103–123. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Shakiba, Nooshin & Karyn Stapleton
2024. Persian immigrants’ language choice for swearing: the effects of socio-biographical variables and personality traits. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 45:7 ► pp. 2734 ff. DOI logo
Chen, Xuemei & Jean-Marc Dewaele
2021. “We are not amused”. The appreciation of British humour by British and American English L1 users. Language & Communication 79 ► pp. 147 ff. DOI logo
Cheng, Lauretta S. P., Danielle Burgess, Natasha Vernooij, Cecilia Solís-Barroso, Ashley McDermott & Savithry Namboodiripad
2021. The Problematic Concept of Native Speaker in Psycholinguistics: Replacing Vague and Harmful Terminology With Inclusive and Accurate Measures. Frontiers in Psychology 12 DOI logo
Cho, Christine MoonKyoung & Jean-Marc Dewaele
2021. A CROSSLINGUISTIC STUDY OF THE PERCEPTION OF EMOTIONAL INTONATION. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 43:4 ► pp. 870 ff. DOI logo
Bednarek, Monika
2019. Chapter 2. The multifunctionality of swear/taboo words in television series. In Emotion in Discourse [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 302], ► pp. 29 ff. DOI logo
Dewaele, Jean-Marc
2017. Chapter 11. Epilogue. In Advances in Swearing Research [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 282], ► pp. 257 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.