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Journal of Multilingual and


Multicultural Development
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Preface: Bilingual Lives, Bilingual


Experience
Anna Wierzbicka
Published online: 29 Mar 2010.

To cite this article: Anna Wierzbicka (2004) Preface: Bilingual Lives, Bilingual
Experience, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 25:2-3, 94-104, DOI:
10.1080/01434630408666523
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434630408666523

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Preface: Bilingual Lives, Bilingual


Experience

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Anna Wierzbicka
Department of Linguistics, Australian National University, Canberra,
Australia
In a recent interview in the French magazine Epok , the multilingual German
sinologue Christoph Harbsmeier (2004) says that what interests him most is
the influence of language on thought, how we are influenced . . . in our ways
of being and of feeling by our language. He illustrates this general statement
with his own experience:
A change of language brings with it a change of role. When I speak
French, I cant stop making gestures with my hands. I learnt Danish at
Oxford, because my wife-to-be, who is Danish, didnt like my Anglophone personality: when I was speaking English, I was becoming too
intellectual. Fortunately, she liked my Danish personality.
The theme of this special issue / multilingualism and emotions / promises to
throw a new light on the vital issues that Harbsmeier is talking about.
Emotions are central to human life, and bilingualism provides a new
perspective on emotions which promises to lead to new insights, as well as to
offer crucial evidence for the old debates. At the same time, in a world in
which more people are bilingual than monolingual, bilingualism, too, is
central to most peoples lives; and a look at multilingualism from the point of
view of emotions promises to radically change and expand traditional
accounts of this phenomenon and immeasurably deepen our understanding
of it. Furthermore, research into the interface of emotions and bilingualism
promises to throw new light on wider issues of the relationship between
languages, culture, and self / a point to which I will return shortly.
Without attempting an exhaustive survey of issues which can be seen as
pertinent to the theme of multilingualism and emotions I will focus in this
preface on a few points, which from my own perspective are particularly
interesting and important.
To begin with, the vocabulary of emotions is undoubtedly different from
language to language. This means that the set of concepts by means of which
the speakers of any given language make sense of their own and other
peoples feelings is specific to a particular language. I will illustrate this with
reference to Polish, my mother tongue, and English, the language of my
adoptive country, Australia. Since Polish and English emotion concepts do not
match, speakers of Polish have a different set of conceptual categories for
classifying / and interpreting / their own and other peoples feelings from
the speakers of English. For example, as I have discussed in a recent article
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2004 A. Wierzbicka
Vol. 25, No. 2&3, 2004

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focused on the concept of grief (Wierzbicka, 2003), Polish has no word for
grief, whereas English has no word for the important Polish concept of
nieszczescie , roughly disaster-cum-unhappiness (in Russian, nescaste , in
French malheur ). This means that the same event, for example the death of a
loved person, can be interpreted by a speaker of Polish through the conceptual
category of nieszczescie and by the speaker of English through the
conceptual category of grief. Since the way we think about what happens
to us is an integral part of the experience, the emotions associated with these
different interpretations may also be different. This means that the emotional
lives of speakers of different languages (in this case English and Polish) are
likely to be different, to some extent.
The differences in the sets of interpretive tools provided by different
languages can be analysed with great precision by linguistic semantics. In
particular, as I have argued in many publications, the natural semantic
metalanguage, based on empirically established universal human concepts
(cf. Goddard & Wierzbicka, 2002), allows us to pinpoint both the commonalities and the differences in the emotion vocabularies of different languages
with great precision. Semantic differences associated with different vocabularies are objective and can be compared rigorously and objectively by means
of the common measure of universal human concepts. But how can one
compare human emotional experiences which in contrast to the meanings of
words are inherently subjective? In particular, how can one establish that the
differences in the meaning of words matter in peoples lives? Here, I believe,
the perspective of bilingual persons is invaluable: it can complement an
objective semantic analysis with insights derived from subjective experience.
The language-specific character of the emotional vocabulary of a natural
language (for example, English) is undeniable and has been documented in
countless semantic studies (see, e.g. Harkins & Wierzbicka, 2001; Wierzbicka,
1992, 1999; cf. also Russell, 1991). But it is always possible for a monolingual
sceptic to dismiss the evidence of semantics as irrelevant and to claim that the
absence of a word does not prove the absence of a concept, and that moreover
the absence of a concept does not prove the absence of an emotion (cf. e.g.
Pinker, 1997). It is harder, however, to dismiss the testimony of a bilingual:
obviously, only a bilingual person can compare subjective experiences linked
with the use of different words, different expressions, different languages. I am
not saying that every opinion of every bilingual person should be regarded as
authoritative, or that testimonies of bilingual persons should replace all other
methods of studying human emotions. Rather, I am saying that such
testimonies need to be taken into account, and that they complement semantic
(and other) objective approaches. In what follows, I will permit myself to
illustrate these points by drawing on my own experience as a bilingual / a
Pole in Australia, living, on a daily basis, through two languages, Polish and
English.
My daughters were raised in Australia. They are bilingual. While they often
speak English to each other and to their father (who is an Australian but who
speaks very good Polish), normally, they speak Polish to me. When they were
younger, one of our recurring emotional exchanges took the following form

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(as will be discussed shortly, the English glosses given below are inaccurate
and misleading):
Nie gniewaj sie (na mnie)!
Dont be angry (with me)!
Daughter: Ja sie nie gniewam! Nie mow, ze sie gniewam.
Im not angry! Dont say that Im angry.
Mother:
Ja nie mowie, ze ty sie gniewasz. Ja tylko prosze, zebys sie nie
gniewala.
Im not saying that youre angry. Im just asking you not to be
(become) angry.
Daughter: Ty wiesz, ze ja sie gniewam, kiedy mowisz, ze ja sie gniewam,
kiedy ja sie nie gniewam.
You know that I get angry when you say that Im angry when Im
not angry.
Mother:
Ale ja widze, ze sie gniewasz.
But I can see that you are angry.

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Mother:

I have taken note of such little exchanges for years, always with a feeling that
we were miscommunicating, and that a linguistic, cultural and emotional
misunderstanding was involved / a kind of misunderstanding that is
probably common in the lives of bilingual persons. I now realise that at the
heart of this misunderstanding lies a (mis-)identification of two expressions
from two different languages. Thus a bilingual child (for whom English was a
dominant language) was in her mind matching the Polish verb gniewac sie
with the English adjective angry, whereas in fact the two differ slightly (but
significantly) in meaning. While the Polish noun gniew can be roughly
matched with the English noun anger, the Polish verb gniewac sie , usually
used with a complement (na kogos with someone, na mnie with me), is
relational. It conveys something like I dont want you to feel bad feelings
towards me and it implies an underlying close relationship. The utterance nie
gniewaj sie! appeals for a continued mutual warmth, which is important to the
speaker. The pragmatic meaning of this appeal is soothing and affectionate.
Thus in a popular kindergarten song, a child addresses another child as
follows:
prawa [raczke] mi daj, lewa [raczke] mi daj, i juz sie na mnie nie gniewaj.
give me your right [hand, literally: little hand, handie], give me your
left [hand] and dont be angry with me anymore (i.e. lets be friends
again).
On the other hand, the English phrase dont be angry could be interpreted as
critical and accusatory. There is no appeal there to an underlying close
relationship and no attempt to soothe and to restore mutual warmth. The very
fact that I cant assign to the verb gniewac sie a simple English gloss which
would show that it differs in meaning from to be angry is instructive. I would
have to write a whole story: one person is thinking bad thoughts about
another person, manufacturing in this way (as it were deliberately) bad
feelings towards that other person; these bad feelings are outwardly visible

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97

(in particular, to the target person), and they clash with the usual good
feelings between the two persons in question. Prototypically, but not
necessarily, it is an emotional stance of a parent towards a child. (I think that
the Russian verb serditsja has similar implications, cf. Apresjan, 1997.)
Thus, the concept of gniewac sie (na kogos) is different from that of being
angry. These different concepts are linked with different cultural models and
different emotional scripts. Quite apart from a possible linguistic misunderstanding (as when my daughters interpreted my nie gniewaj sie as an
equivalent of dont be angry ) there is a cultural and emotional mismatch
here: I could not say an English equivalent of nie gniewaj sie to anyone, not only
because there isnt one in the English language, but also because this way of
speaking, thinking and feeling belongs to my Polish cultural world, not to the
Anglo world.
Recently, one of my daughters explained to me that what used to annoy her
about my utterance nie gniewaj sie , which she interpreted as meaning the same
as dont be angry, was what she saw as an implicit accusation of letting her
emotion (anger) interfere with the rational argument. In fact this was not what
I meant at all, but for years none of us was aware of the linguistic mismatch. I
might add that from a Polish point of view there is nothing wrong with a
heated argument. The Anglo cultural scripts valuing a cool way of arguing in
which emotions do not interfere with cool reason has no counterpart among
Polish cultural scripts, and in fact, the Polish word closest to cool (chlodny) is
rather pejorative. On the other hand, Polish culture, with its ideal of
serdecznosc (from serce heart), values sustained interpersonal warmth,
frequently manifested verbally (e.g. in diminutives) and non-verbally (cf.
Wierzbicka, 1999). In fact, the reason why chlodny cool sounds pejorative in
Polish is that it implies an unpleasant lack of interpersonal warmth. Polish
has a number of expressions referring to interpersonal rather than purely
personal feelings and implying an underlying warm relationship. For
example, the expression miec do kogos zal implies something like a reproachful
feeling directed at someone loved and loving, and przykro implies a hurt
caused by the lack of warmth from someone whom we expect to be warm
towards us (cf. Wierzbicka, 2001).
The semantic difference between the English adjectival phrase to be angry
and the Polish verbal phrase gniewac sie na kogos illustrates differences in
conceptualisation which apply also at the level of theoretical constructs like
emotions. The theme of this special issue has been formulated as bilingualism and emotions, and given the status of emotions in contemporary
scholarly literature this is perfectly understandable and justifiable. It needs to
be borne in mind, however, that emotion itself is a construct which depends
on the contemporary English language, and that many other languages do not
have words corresponding exactly to the English word emotion. As noted by
the philosopher Thomas Dixon (2003: 1), even in English, the category of
emotions is relatively recent, and although it currently tends to be taken for
granted, it is far from a neutral analytical tool:
Emotions are everywhere today. Increasing numbers of books and
articles about the emotions are being produced; for both academic and

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broader audiences; by neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers.


As the author of one recent book on the science of the emotions puts it:
Emotion is now a hot topic. According to another, the last three decades
have witnessed an explosion in emotions studies, in the fields of
cognitive psychology, anthropology and literary history, which constitutes a veritable revolution. . . . It is surprising, then, to discover that the
emotions did not exist until just under two hundred years ago.
In his book, Dixon investigates the creation of the emotions as a psychological
category associated with the term emotion which has replaced earlier ways of
thinking associated with terms like appetites , passions , affections , affects and
sentiments .
Thus even the theme of this special issue, bilingualism and emotions,
reflects a language-specific Anglo perspective. I do not think this is a problem,
as long as the point is noted and taken into account. But for a Polish/English
bilingual like myself, one of the key differences between my two emotional
worlds is that one of them is, and the other is not, conceptualised via the
category of emotions. For example, the expression gniewac sie na kogos does
not mean to experience a particular emotion (e.g. that of feeling angry).
Rather, it refers to a complex configuration of elements involving interpersonal
relations, as well as feelings and the expression of feelings. It implies a certain
stance towards another person, involving thinking bad things about them
and feeling bad feelings towards them.
Different languages are linked with different ways of thinking as well as
different ways of feeling; they are linked with different attitudes, different
ways of relating to people, different ways of expressing ones feelings and so
on (cf. Lutz, 1988). They are linked with different cultural scripts, including
emotional scripts (Goddard, 1997, 2000; Wierzbicka, 1994, 1999). The
experience of bilingual people is an invaluable source of insight into such
differences.
A point which seems to me particularly important is that experience of
bilingual people should not be construed as merely their experience of speaking
two languages but rather as their experience of living with other people through
two different languages . To take an example, one of the most important insights
emerging from the recent literature bearing on the issue bilingualism and
emotions is that a persons language acquired first (at the mothers knee) is
often endowed with a greater emotional force than the second language. For
example, it has often been noted that anger expressed in ones first language
may feel more real, and more intense, than that expressed in ones second
language (cf. Dewaele, this issue; Harris, this issue; Pavlenko, this issue). My
own experience is consistent with this generalisation. At the same time,
however, in my experience, anger and related emotions and attitudes are
often expressed by a switch away from the speakers first language. The
emotional distance created by the use of the second language can sometimes
convey anger and other bad feelings better than anything said in ones first
language, which often (though of course not always) is the language of
emotional closeness and intimacy.

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The way we interpret our own inner experience depends on the language in
which we interpret it / and this may depend, to some extent, on the language
of our interlocutor. Take, for example, the Polish verb denerwowac sie and the
corresponding inner / and outer / state. There is no corresponding word in
English, and I think with good (cultural) reason. Roughly speaking, denerwowac sie designates a state of visible agitation, linked with unsuccessful
attempts to control events (cf. Wierzbicka, 1994). Using the natural semantic
metalanguage of simple and universal human concepts (cf. Goddard &
Wierzbicka, 2002), we can portray the state of mind of a person who says
denerwuje sie (very roughly, Im agitating/agitated) as follows:
I think like this now:
some things are happening to me now
I dont want these things to be happening
I have to do something because of this
I dont know what I can do
when I think like this I feel something bad because of this
I know that if other people can see me now they can know that I think like
this now
In Polish, people often say denerwuje sie , and the cognitive scenario spelled
out above is culturally salient and culturally acceptable. To draw again on my
personal experience, when I call my sister in Poland (from Australia) I would
not hesitate to say to her that I denerwuje sie (for this or that reason). On the
other hand, when I speak to my Anglophone friends in Australia I would not
say the equivalent of denerwuje sie / first of all, because there is no equivalent
expression in English, but also, because such a state of uncontrolled inner and
outer agitation is not part of my English-speaking persona. There are cultural
scripts in Anglo culture which encourage emotional self-control and a rational,
economical use of inner resources. Thus, I might say in English Im angry or
Im upset (neither of which has an exact equivalent in Polish) but not
something like Im keeping myself in a state of aimless inner and outer
agitation. Im angry about something is consistent with an active attitude: I
dont want things like this to happen. I want to do something because of this.
Im upset describes a state of being temporarily out of emotional control; it
implies that the bad feeling, over which the experiencer has no control, is
viewed as a temporary departure from a normal state. Since I never describe
myself in English in a way similar to the Polish expression denerwuje sie , I do
not think about myself in this way when I am speaking English; and as the
interpretation put on our experience shapes that experience, the experience
itself is different. In a sense, then, I do not only project a different persona but
am in fact a different person in my Anglophone and Polonophone relationships.
It may be asked: can this be proved? Presumably, not in a lab, and not by
methods acceptable in a lab. But who says that only knowledge that can be
obtained by methods acceptable in a lab is valid or worth having? I will take
one more example from my own experience. I have a baby granddaughter,

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who lives far away from me but whom I often visit. When I come back from
these visits and when my Anglophone friends ask me how she is, I am often
stuck for words. I just cant find English words suitable for talking about my
tiny granddaughter. It is not that I am not familiar with the register of English
used for talking about babies but I feel that this register does not fit the
emotional world to which this baby belongs for me. No doubt one reason is
that Polish was my first language and that as such it is imbued with an
emotional force that English doesnt have for me. But this is not the only
reason. Another reason is that Polish words that I could use to talk about my
baby granddaughter do not have exact semantic equivalents in English and
therefore feel irreplaceable. For example, I could say in Polish that she is
rozkoszna , using a word glossed in Polish/English dictionaries as delightful,
but I couldnt possibly use the word delightful about her myself / not only
because delightful has no emotional force for me but because its meaning,
which is not identical with that of rozkoszna , doesnt fit my way of thinking
and feeling about this baby. Rozkoszna has a greater emotional force by virtue
of its meaning, and delightful would sound, from the point of view of a
bilingual but culturally Polish person, too light, too objective and too
lacking in emotional intensity. In fact, in English, too, most people would be
probably reluctant to describe their own child or grandchild as delightful,
because the word appears to imply an outsiders perspective and a lack of
personal emotional involvement. People might, however, describe their own
child or grandchild as adorable, or as a cutie, or a sweetie; and they might
describe other peoples babies as gorgeous. None of these options are
available to me.
Of course when people ask me about my little granddaughter they are not
asking, at least not overtly, about my emotions, and theoretically, I could reply
providing, in a nonemotional language, some information about her development. But this, too, goes against the grain of my Polish emotional scripts. In
Polish, the language used for talking about babies relies on a wide range of
emotionally coloured diminutives, and to talk about a baby in a purely
descriptive language would seem strangely cold and loveless. For example, in
Polish I could say that she now has a lot of loczki dear-little-curls, or that she
has six zabki dear-little-teeth, or that for her age she is still malutka dear-littlesmall. Since English doesnt have such diminutives, I would have to use
descriptive loveless words like curls , teeth or small , and I feel I couldnt do
that. I might add that in Polish I would never say to a baby something like Ill
wash your hands or I will give you some milk using the plain words for
hands or milk, I would only use the diminutive forms comparable to dearlittle-hands or handies . Although I rarely correct my familys Polish, which is
extremely good, I do sometimes correct them when they use, in reference to
the baby, nondiminutive words such as reka hand, usta mouth, glowa head,
nos nose: raczka, Id say, usteczka , glowka , nosek . Speaking to or about a baby
in English, one could use the word handies (in the plural) but not handie; and
one would normally not use mouthie, nosie or headie. In Polish, however, such
diminutives not only exist but are virtually obligatory in speaking to or about a
baby, at least in a family setting. If plain, nondiminutive words were used for a

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babys eyes, ears, hair, legs, back, etc. they would all sound very cold and
clinical.
Of course in English, too, people often talk about babies in an emotional
language, describing them as cute , sweet , dear, adorable , lovely, even gorgeous.
But again, I feel I couldnt use any of these words about my little granddaughter, not only because they all leave me cold (not being anchored in my
childhood experiences and thus having no visceral emotional resonance) but
also because their meaning does not fit my own way of thinking and feeling,
and so they would not sound true to me. As a result of all these factors, when
I am asked about my granddaughter, I often find myself mumbling,
inadequately from everyones point of view, that she is well.
It is important to bear in mind that the two languages of a bilingual person
differ not only in their lexical and grammatical repertoires for expressing and
describing emotions but also in the sets of emotional scripts regulating
emotion-talk. Often, but not always, important emotional scripts are
epitomised by tell-tale lexical labels such as, for example, shrill , cool , wet ,
emotional and over the top in English. From an Anglo point of view, it is bad to
be shrill or wet (in speaking) and it is good to be cool: the very fact that
such words exist in present-day English, with the meaning they have, provides
incontrovertible evidence for the existence of the cultural norms associated
with them. These norms may not be shared by all speakers of English, but they
are familiar to them. Polish does not have equivalents of the words shrill , cool
and wet (in the relevant meanings), and it doesnt have the corresponding
cultural scripts. On the other hand, it has words like serdeczny and serdecznosc
(roughly, warm and warmth), which have no equivalents in English, and
which point to certain emotional scripts which are salient in Polish culture. A
person living his or her life through Polish and English has to choose, on a
daily basis, not only between two languages but also between two sets of
cultural scripts, including emotional scripts.
Thus when bilingual immigrants speak to people who share the same two
languages (for example, to their bilingual children) they have to make
linguistic (or lexical) choices, but when they speak to monolingual speakers
of the host country, they have to choose communicative styles (regulated by
different cultural scripts). For example, the Anglo cultural script reflected in
the word wet can make it difficult for a Pole living in an Anglo society to speak
about children in English in accordance with Polish cultural scripts, even if
appropriate lexical and grammatical resources could be found, because an
awareness of Anglo cultural scripts puts a pressure on the bilingual person to
modify their normal ways of speaking. (This applies also to non-verbal
expressions of emotions. For example, Poles who greet each other by kissing in
a Polish social context would often refrain from doing so in a mixed, or Anglo
context, for example, on university campus.) Thus in speaking in English
about my baby granddaughter I am conscious of the need not to sound
excessively emotional, and this restricts my ability to speak freely as much as
the lack of adequate English words does.
In discussions about the relationship between language, culture and self
one often hears the following argument: If a persons self were partly
culturally and linguistically constituted, bilingual people would have to be to

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some extent schizophrenic. Since obviously they are not, peoples selves must
be largely independent of language and culture. The testimony of many
bilingual people who have reflected on their own experience shows that this
argument is spurious. For bilingual people, living with two languages can
mean indeed living in two different emotional worlds and also travelling back
and forth between those two worlds. It can also mean living suspended
between two worlds, frequently misinterpreting other peoples feelings and
intentions, and being misinterpreted oneself, even when on the surface
communication appears to proceed smoothly. The fact that to a monolingual
person all this may seem hard to believe underscores the limitations of a
monolingual perspective in human sciences and the importance of the
subjective knowledge of bilingual persons as a source of insight into human
nature and human lives.
The metaphorical expressions codeswitching and codemixing can be
useful as an abbreviated way of referring to speech practices common in the
life of bilingual persons, but they can also be misleading. A language is not a
code for encoding pre-existent meanings. Rather, it is a conceptual, experiential and emotional world. Shifting from one language to another is not like
shifting from one code to another to express a meaning expressible equally
well in both these codes. Often, the very reason why a bilingual speaker shifts
from one language to another is that the meaning that they want to express
belongs to the other language. This underlying motivation is particularly
clear in the case of cultural key concepts like those encoded in the English
words privacy, self -esteem or unfair, but it is also very clear in the case of
expressive expressions such as, for example, interjections (cf. Besemeres, this
issue). It is a common experience to hear an immigrant using some emotive
interjections of their second language long before they have learned that
language well, and also, to hear them using some key interjections of their first
language when speaking the second language long after they have become
fluent in it. For example, for an Italian male immigrant in Australia, the key
Australian expletive bloody may well be among the first English words that he
starts using regularly, while at the same time Italian expressive expressions
like mamma mia may be retained for a very long time in his English. This is
clearly not a matter of an arbitrary codemixing but rather, of living with one
foot in one emotional world, and the other, in another.
The metaphors of codeswitching and codemixing appear to deny the
intimate links between a persons native language and their inner self, which
were strongly emphasised by the philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer. To quote:
Language is not something by means of which consciousness communicates with the world. . . .Language is not an instrument, not a tool. . . .
Such an analogy is false, because our consciousness never faces the
world reaching / as if in a languageless state / for a tool of
communication. Rather, in all our knowledge about ourselves and in
all our knowledge about the world we are already enveloped by
language, by our own language. We grow up, we get to know the
world, people, and ourselves, in the process of learning to speak. To
learn to speak does not mean to learn to use a certain pre-existing tool

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for designating a world with which we are already familiar; rather, it


means becoming familiar with and getting to know the world itself, and
the world as we encounter it. . . . (1967: 95 /96; my translation)
I believe that what Gadamer says about consciousness in general applies also
to peoples feelings. Language is not a tool for expressing a persons feelings /
feelings that could be equally well expressed in another language. Rather, our
very feelings depend on our language (cf. Panayiotou, this issue). We learn to
make sense of our raw feelings through the categories imposed on them by our
language, and this categorisation enters into the fabric of our feelings, and
gives them shape and direction.
In the responses of bilingual persons cited in Pavlenkos study (this issue)
several people used terms like wrong and untrue in relation to attempts to
express their emotions in their second language. I think that the intuition
reflected in such responses is illuminating. The terms of the second language
dont match those of the first language, and they may also not match the
speakers emotions shaped or coloured by the first language. If so, then they
are literally not true, not right as descriptions of those emotions. For example,
if my inner experience is that of zdenerwowanie or of gniewanie sie (na kogos)
any English expression that I might use to express those experiences would be
inadequate, wrong, not true.
This doesnt mean that the emotional expressions of a persons second
language can never become psychologically true. Often, however, they are
not; and since bilingual persons (e.g. immigrants) often have to communicate
with monolingual interlocutors, a sense of distortion, of falsehood, and not
being true to oneself is often inescapable. No doubt one reason is that the
emotion terms of the second language may not have the subjective force that
those of the first language have acquired through their existential, autobiographical grounding. Another reason, however, may be that the bilingual
persons emotions have been moulded, to some extent, by the expressive
devices (lexical and grammatical) of their first language, and that consequently, the expressive devices of the second language literally do not fit them.
Traditionally, the literature on bilingualism has focused on issues like the
bilingual brain, bilingual memory or neurofunctional bases of language
organization in bilinguals. A focus on bilingualism and emotions can help, I
think, to shift the attention from bilingual brains to bilingual lives / especially
the bilingual lives of immigrants and their children. Given the scale of
migration in the contemporary world, the importance of the latter problem can
hardly be overestimated. To quote the Korean/American scholar Young Yun
Kim (2000: 1): Millions of people change homes each year, crossing cultural
boundaries. Immigrants and refugees resettle in search of new lives . . . In this
increasingly integrated world, cross-cultural adaptation is a central and
defining theme. An interest in bilingualism and emotions can help to
integrate the psycholinguistic approaches to bilingualism with studies aiming
at a better understanding of cross-cultural lives, including the special
problems and needs of immigrants. At the same time, an interest in
bilingualism and emotions can help to restore the balance between, on the
one hand, objective and scientific study of language and cognition and on

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the other, a study open to the soft data of human testimonies and subjective
experience, including experiential knowledge of bilingual persons.
It seems clear that if we want to tap that knowledge of bilingual persons a
wide variety of approaches must be allowed and attempted. This is, I think, a
special strength of the present issue: the wide variety of approaches, methods
and perspectives represented in the papers included here. The editors should
be congratulated for this diversity as much as for the thematic unity of the
issue and for their imagination in addressing a theme which in the coming
years will no doubt be increasingly recognised as important across a range of
disciplines both theoretical and applied.
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Professor Anna Wierzbicka,
Department of Linguistics, Australian National University, Canberra 0200,
Australia (anna.wierzbicka@anu.edu.au).
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Wierzbicka, A. (1994) Emotion, language, and cultural scripts. In Sh. Kitayama and
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