Semantic And Affective Processing Of Emotional Words In L1 And L2 In Unbalanced Bilinguals

Numerous studies have been conducted into bilinguals" mental lexicons since more than half a century ago, and many theories have been proposed. However, most studies were conducted on concrete words, and the existing theories might not be able to predict the relationships between bilinguals" representations in L1 and L2 for emotional words. An investigation into bilinguals’recognition of emotional words is promising to provide indications on further development of the existing theories.There are two sessions of information processing in the recognition of an emotional word:semantic processing and affective processing. It was predicted that unbalanced bilinguals were weaker in L2 than in L1 at both semantic and affective processing in recognizing emotional words.In a priming task of lexical decision, three experiments were conducted in the present study on a cohort of college students of engineering specialties from Zhejiang University. Three variables were manipulated:language (words were presented in Chinese or English), valence (words were positive or negative in meaning), and the semantic relation (the prime and the target were semantically related or unrelated in a trial). The design and the task were the same across the three experiments, but the SOA was 287,450, and 1050 ms in Experiment 1,2, and 3, respectively.Two main results were obtained in reaction times:the semantic priming effect was consistently modulated by valence across the three experiments in L2; the positive words were processed faster than the negative words in L1 whereas the negative words were processed faster than the positive words in L2.In recognizing the emotional words, the participants seemed to have exhibited the following characteristics:(1) in L1, semantic representations get activated earlier and dissipate fast, but semantic relations among emotional words in L2 are comparatively weaker; (2) negative words in L2 may be preferentially processed for automatic vigilance and less disengagement of negativity, and positive words might be processed with initial absence of affective processing advantage in L2 due to lack of emotional grounding during acquisition and usage.The findings indicate that the affective properties of emotional words should be taken into consideration in future theoretical research into bilinguals" mental lexicon. Apart from language proficiency, context of acquisition and usage also contribute to how affective properties are accessed in L2. Implications are provided for foreign language teaching and learning. School teachers of English should encourage students to make full use of word association and emotional context when learning English words.