PROCESSING EMOTION WORDS IN THE LATE-LEARNED L2

Abstract

Language-emotion link has been a subject of interest for several decades. It has been studied extensively both in the monolingual and bilingual literature. However, due to the numerous factors that are at play in bilingualism, i.e. age and context of acquisition, frequency of use, there is conflicting evidence regarding the emotional load of each language of bilinguals. A great bulk of evidence leans towards the L1 as the more emotional language. This study investigates the perceived emotionality in the late learned language. Our participants (N = 57) were late bilinguals who learned their second language (English) in formal contexts after their first language (Turkish). We used a lexical decision task in which the participants determined whether the visually presented emotion words were real words or non-words. In line with the literature, we report faster response times for positive than for negative words in both languages. Also, the results showed L1 superiority in word processing.