The Impact Of Embodied Experience On Emotional Words Processing

In second language learning area,there are two fundamental issues.First,second language(L2)is always less emotional than first language(L1)(Harris,Aycicegi,&Gleason,2003;Harris,Gleason,&Aycicegi,2006).Second,dur:ing L2 learning process,the L2 system can never reach the same quality as the L1 system(Selinker&Lakshmanan,1992;赵萱,2006).About the first hot issue,there are three different perspectives.Traditional age and proficiency theories claim that the main factor that influences the L2emotionality is the age of learners when they start learning L2 or the proficiency of L2.Unlike the former two theories,the newest theory is the theory of language embodiment.This theory believes that it’s the amount of embodied information and the integration of embodied and linguistic information that hold the key to L2 emotionality.Usually,we learn our tough language through experience and related environment.However,when we learn L2,we didn’t get much situational information and embodied information.The theory of language embodiment claims that the lack of embodied experience is the key difference between first language acquisition and second language acquisition.But there is little empirical research that supports this view.On the basis of language embodiment theory,this study explored,during learning L2 emotional words,whether different degree of embodied experience would affect L2 emotional words’processing and representation.Two experiments were designed to investigate the impacts of emotional experience on the processing and representation of L2 emotional words.In Experiment 1,Chinese-English bilinguals were presented with 5 different types of emotional words both in English and Chinese.They were assigned emotional stroop task under both languages.Results showed that participants showed different performance under two different language conditions.Under L1 condition,participants showed emotional stroop effect which means emotionality had influenced the stoop task.But there is no effect was found under L2 condition.Experiment 1 showed that L2 is less emotional than L1 among Chinese-English late bilinguals.In Experiment 2,two experimental groups of participants were assigned emotional words learning task,during learning they either accepted embedded experiences or not.Results showed that with embedded experience,participants showed emotional stroop effect after later test.However,participants who learned those emotional words without additional embedded experience showed no influence effect in the emotional stroop test.This result means that during second language acquisition,embedded information and it’s integration with linguistic information can facilitate the processing of L2,and make L2 processing more automatic like L1 processing.This results provided supportive evidence for the theory of language embodiment.In summary,our study showed that L2 low emotionality phenomenon also existed in Chinese-English bilingual population.Meanwhile,current findings suggested that embedded information and the integration between embedded and linguistic information is the key factor that influence the emotionality of L2,which supported the theory of language embodiment.