Discuss the role of emotional language in your L1 and L2. Which language is emotionally richer. As your learners acquire (participate?) in their new speech communities do you see a change in their emotional language behavior.
I believe that there are certain things (not only emotional) that are better expressed in a language rather than in another, but based on my own limited, personal experience, I don’t think that any given language is emotionally richer than another. A language may have more “colorful” expressions than other, or may “sound” softer, but I believe that all languages can be emotionally rich. They may express emotions differently, but humans are emotional creatures and language(s) is the vehicle we use to express ourselves, including our emotions.
However, I’ve noticed that some people express their emotions better in a certain language sometimes because they feel less inhibited in that language. For example, I’ve met Japanese women that would speak more freely in English, but it was because when speaking Japanese, they would feel the “restrictions” their culture would impose upon them. Also, they were speaking to non-Japanese people, and that added to their feeling less inhibited than when they spoke to other Japanese people.
Another factor that may determine favoring one language instead of another would be the level of fluency of that language, the level to which that language has been “internalized”. When a language is still in a “mediated” stage (we have to think about what we are saying, translate, etc), it’s very hard to access it fluently when we are in an “emotional” state. I heard long time ago that one can be considered really fluent in a language when one can get very angry in that language. Also, the extent to which a person can access words and expressions and use them properly determines whether they’ll feel they are being effective in expressing their emotions. For example, it’s not easy to master the use of the “F” word as a noun, adjective and adverb, so that it can be manipulated to express one’s emotions.
2 comments:
Ana,
Another factor that may determine favoring one language instead of another would be the level of fluency of that language, the level to which that language has been “internalized”.
I think I said the same thing, but your words are fancier...hehe!
I do believe that it depends on how much language a person has acquired.
Polo
I agree that the level of fluency has a lot to do with how you express yourself emotionally. There may be more words you know in one language and not the other. And it is true one language may have more colorful or may sound better when you say it in a certain language. I believe romance languages have a lot of emotional factors related to them, just the word romance alone has to do with emotions.
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