On the classic TV show I Love Lucy, Ricky Ricardo was known for
switching over to rapid-fire Spanish whenever he was upset, despite the fact
Lucy had no idea what her Cuban husband was saying. These scenes were comedy
gold, but they also provided a relatable portrayal of the linguistic phenomenon
of code-switching.
This kind of code-switching, or switching back and
forth between different languages, happens all the time in multilingual
environments, and often in emotional situations. In a new article in the July
issue of Perspectives
on Psychological Science, a journal
of the Association for Psychological Science,
psychological scientists Stephen Chen and Qing Zhou of the University of
California, Berkeley and Morgan Kennedy of Bard College delve deeper into this
linguistic phenomenon.
Drawing on research from psychology and linguistics,
the researchers seek to better understand how using different languages to
discuss and express emotions in a multilingual family might play an important
role in children's emotional development. They propose that the particular
language parents choose to use when discussing and expressing emotion can have
significant impacts on children's emotional understanding, experience, and
regulation.
"Over the past few years, there's been a steadily
growing interest in the languages multilingual individuals use to express
emotions," says Chen. "We were interested in the potential clinical and
developmental implications of emotion-related language shifts, particularly
within the context of the family."
Existing research from psychological science
underscores the fact that language plays a key role in emotion because it
allows the speakers to articulate, conceal, or discuss feelings. When parents
verbally express
their emotions, they contribute to their children's emotional development by
providing them a model of how emotions can be articulated and regulated.
When parents discuss
emotion, they help their children to accurately label and consequently
understand their own emotions. This explicit instruction can further help
children to better regulate their emotions.
Additionally, research from linguistics suggests that
when bilingual individuals switch languages, the way they experience emotions
changes as well. Bilingual parents may use a specific language to express an
emotional concept because they feel that language provides a better cultural
context for expressing the emotion. For example, a native Finnish speaker may
be more likely to use English to tell her children that she loves them because
it is uncommon to explicitly express emotions in Finnish.
Thus, the language that a parent chooses to express a
particular concept can help to provide cues that reveal his or her emotional
state. Language choice may also influence how children experience emotion, such
expressions can potentially elicit a greater emotional response when spoken in
the child's native language. Shifting from one language to another may help
children to regulate their emotional response by using a less emotional,
non-native language as a way to decrease negative arousal, or to help model
culture specific emotional regulation.
Overall, the authors argue that research from
psychological science and linguistics suggests that a child's emotional
competence is fundamentally shaped by a multilingual environment. These
findings may be particularly useful in the development of intervention programs
for immigrant families, helping intervention staff to be aware of how the use
of different languages in various contexts can have an emotional impact.
"Our aim in writing this review was to highlight what
we see as a rich new area of cross-disciplinary research," says Chen. "We're
especially excited to see how the implications of emotion-related language
switching can be explored beyond the parent-child dyad - for example, in
marital interactions, or in the context of therapy and other interventions."
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