Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-fqc5m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T03:25:42.551Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Bilingual effects are not unique, only more salient

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2008

MICHEL PARADIS*
Affiliation:
Linguistics, McGill University and Cognitive Neuroscience Centre, UQAM, 1085 Dr. Penfield Avenue, Montreal H3A 1A7, Canadamichel.paradis@mcgill.ca

Extract

I am in full agreement with Aneta Pavlenko's analysis of the data and her line of reasoning about emotion words and emotion concepts, but not with her claim that the findings are unique to the study of bilingualism, and that differential language emotionality is uniquely visible in bi- and multilingual speakers. I will argue that (i) emotion words and concepts behave like other aspects of bilingualism, exhibit the same kinds of phenomena, and are susceptible to the same types of interference; (ii) the phenomena observed about emotion words and emotion concepts are not unique to bilinguals but merely more salient; and (iii) what applies in any conceptual domain applies within the emotion domain as well, in both unilinguals' and bilinguals' conceptual systems.

Type
Peer Commentaries
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

Balint, M. (1979). The basic fault: Therapeutic aspects of regression. New York: Brunner Mazel.Google Scholar
Birditt, K. S. & Fingerman, K. L. (2003). Age and gender differences in adults' descriptions of emotional reactions to interpersonal problems. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 58, 237245.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carstensen, L. L., Pasupathi, M., Mayr, U. & Nesselroade, J. R. (2000). Emotional experience in everyday life across the adult lifespan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gross, J., Carstensen, L. L., Pasupathi, M., Tsai, J., Götestsam Skorpen, C. & Hsu, A. Y. C. (1997). Emotion and aging: Experience, expression, and control. Psychology and Aging, 12, 590599.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hsia, Y. F. & Tsai, N. (1981). Transcultural investigation of recent symptomatology of schizophrenia in China. American Journal of Psychiatry, 138, 14841486.Google ScholarPubMed
Paradis, M. (2004). A neurolinguistic theory of bilingualism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, M. (2007). The neurofunctional components of the bilingual cognitive system. In Keczkes, I. & Albertazzi, L. (eds.), Cognitive aspects of bilingualism, pp. 328. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramirez-Esparza, N., Gosling, S. D., Benet-Martinez, V., Potter, J. P. & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). Do bilinguals have two personalities? A special case of cultural frame switching. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 99120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vainik, E. (2006). Intracultural variation of semantic and episodic emotion knowledge in Estonian. Trames, 2, 169189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinreich, U. (1953). Languages in contact. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar