This article was downloaded by: [Eindhoven Technical University]On: 21 November 2014, At: 19:46Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Journal of Multilingual andMulticultural DevelopmentPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmmm20

Preface: Bilingual Lives, BilingualExperienceAnna WierzbickaPublished online: 29 Mar 2010.

To cite this article: Anna Wierzbicka (2004) Preface: Bilingual Lives, BilingualExperience, 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

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoeveras to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Anyopinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of theauthors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracyof the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verifiedwith primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and otherliabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connectionwith, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms& Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Preface: Bilingual Lives, BilingualExperience

Anna WierzbickaDepartment of Linguistics, Australian National University, Canberra,Australia

In a recent interview in the French magazine Epok , the multilingual Germansinologue Christoph Harbsmeier (2004) says that what interests him most is‘the influence of language on thought, how we are influenced . . . in our waysof being and of feeling by our language’. He illustrates this general statementwith his own experience:

A change of language brings with it a change of role. When I speakFrench, I can’t stop making gestures with my hands. I learnt Danish atOxford, because my wife-to-be, who is Danish, didn’t like my Anglo-phone personality: when I was speaking English, I was becoming toointellectual. Fortunately, she liked my Danish personality.

The theme of this special issue �/ multilingualism and emotions �/ promises tothrow a new light on the vital issues that Harbsmeier is talking about.

Emotions are central to human life, and bilingualism provides a newperspective on emotions which promises to lead to new insights, as well as tooffer crucial evidence for the old debates. At the same time, in a world inwhich more people are bilingual than monolingual, bilingualism, too, iscentral to most people’s lives; and a look at multilingualism from the point ofview of emotions promises to radically change and expand traditionalaccounts of this phenomenon and immeasurably deepen our understandingof it. Furthermore, research into the interface of emotions and bilingualismpromises to throw new light on wider issues of the relationship betweenlanguages, culture, and self �/ a point to which I will return shortly.

Without attempting an exhaustive survey of issues which can be seen aspertinent to the theme of ‘multilingualism and emotions’ I will focus in thispreface on a few points, which from my own perspective are particularlyinteresting and important.

To begin with, the vocabulary of emotions is undoubtedly different fromlanguage to language. This means that the set of concepts by means of whichthe speakers of any given language make sense of their own and otherpeople’s feelings is specific to a particular language. I will illustrate this withreference to Polish, my mother tongue, and English, the language of myadoptive country, Australia. Since Polish and English emotion concepts do notmatch, speakers of Polish have a different set of conceptual categories forclassifying �/ and interpreting �/ their own and other people’s feelings fromthe speakers of English. For example, as I have discussed in a recent article

0143-4632/04/02 094-11 $20.00/0 – 2004 A. WierzbickaJ. OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT Vol. 25, No. 2&3, 2004

94

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

9:46

21

Nov

embe

r 20

14

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, nescast’e , inFrench malheur ). This means that the same event, for example the death of aloved person, can be interpreted by a speaker of Polish through the conceptualcategory of ‘nieszczescie’ and by the speaker of English through theconceptual category of ‘grief’. Since the way we think about what happensto us is an integral part of the experience, the emotions associated with thesedifferent interpretations may also be different. This means that the emotionallives of speakers of different languages (in this case English and Polish) arelikely to be different, to some extent.

The differences in the sets of interpretive tools provided by differentlanguages can be analysed with great precision by linguistic semantics. Inparticular, as I have argued in many publications, the ‘natural semanticmetalanguage’, based on empirically established universal human concepts(cf. Goddard & Wierzbicka, 2002), allows us to pinpoint both the common-alities and the differences in the emotion vocabularies of different languageswith great precision. Semantic differences associated with different vocabul-aries are objective and can be compared rigorously and objectively by meansof the common measure of universal human concepts. But how can onecompare human emotional experiences which in contrast to the meanings ofwords are inherently subjective? In particular, how can one establish that thedifferences in the meaning of words matter in people’s lives? Here, I believe,the perspective of bilingual persons is invaluable: it can complement anobjective semantic analysis with insights derived from subjective experience.

The language-specific character of the emotional vocabulary of a naturallanguage (for example, English) is undeniable and has been documented incountless semantic studies (see, e.g. Harkins & Wierzbicka, 2001; Wierzbicka,1992, 1999; cf. also Russell, 1991). But it is always possible for a monolingualsceptic to dismiss the evidence of semantics as irrelevant and to claim that theabsence of a word does not prove the absence of a concept, and that moreoverthe 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 linkedwith the use of different words, different expressions, different languages. I amnot saying that every opinion of every bilingual person should be regarded asauthoritative, or that testimonies of bilingual persons should replace all othermethods of studying human emotions. Rather, I am saying that suchtestimonies need to be taken into account, and that they complement semantic(and other) objective approaches. In what follows, I will permit myself toillustrate these points by drawing on my own experience as a bilingual �/ aPole in Australia, living, on a daily basis, through two languages, Polish andEnglish.

My daughters were raised in Australia. They are bilingual. While they oftenspeak English to each other and to their father (who is an Australian but whospeaks very good Polish), normally, they speak Polish to me. When they wereyounger, one of our recurring ‘emotional’ exchanges took the following form

Preface 95

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

9:46

21

Nov

embe

r 20

14

(as will be discussed shortly, the English glosses given below are inaccurateand misleading):

Mother: Nie gniewaj sie (na mnie)!‘Don’t be angry (with me)!’

Daughter: Ja sie nie gniewam! Nie mow, ze sie gniewam.‘I’m not angry! Don’t say that I’m angry.’

Mother: Ja nie mowie, ze ty sie gniewasz. Ja tylko prosze, zebys sie niegniewal a.‘I’m not saying that you’re angry. I’m 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 I’m angry when I’mnot angry’.

Mother: Ale ja widze, ze sie gniewasz.‘But I can see that you are angry.’

I have taken note of such little exchanges for years, always with a feeling thatwe were miscommunicating, and that a linguistic, cultural and emotionalmisunderstanding was involved �/ a kind of misunderstanding that isprobably common in the lives of bilingual persons. I now realise that at theheart of this misunderstanding lies a (mis-)identification of two expressionsfrom two different languages. Thus a bilingual child (for whom English was adominant language) was in her mind matching the Polish verb gniewac siewith the English adjective angry, whereas in fact the two differ slightly (butsignificantly) in meaning. While the Polish noun gniew can be roughlymatched with the English noun anger, the Polish verb gniewac sie , usuallyused with a complement (na kogos ‘with someone’, na mnie ‘with me’), isrelational. It conveys something like ‘I don’t want you to feel bad feelingstowards me’ and it implies an underlying close relationship. The utterance niegniewaj sie! appeals for a continued mutual warmth, which is important to thespeaker. The pragmatic meaning of this appeal is soothing and affectionate.Thus in a popular kindergarten song, a child addresses another child asfollows:

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 yourleft [hand] and don’t be angry with me anymore (i.e. let’s be friendsagain)’.

On the other hand, the English phrase don’t be angry could be interpreted ascritical and accusatory. There is no appeal there to an underlying closerelationship and no attempt to soothe and to restore mutual warmth. The veryfact that I can’t assign to the verb gniewac sie a simple English gloss whichwould show that it differs in meaning from to be angry is instructive. I wouldhave to write a whole story: one person is thinking ‘bad thoughts’ aboutanother person, manufacturing in this way (as it were deliberately) ‘badfeelings’ towards that other person; these ‘bad feelings’ are outwardly visible

96 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

9:46

21

Nov

embe

r 20

14

(in particular, to the target person), and they clash with the usual ‘goodfeelings’ between the two persons in question. Prototypically, but notnecessarily, it is an emotional stance of a parent towards a child. (I think thatthe Russian verb serdit’sja has similar implications, cf. Apresjan, 1997.)

Thus, the concept of ‘gniewac sie (na kogos) ’ is different from that of ‘beingangry’. These different concepts are linked with different cultural models anddifferent emotional scripts. Quite apart from a possible linguistic misunder-standing (as when my daughters interpreted my nie gniewaj sie as anequivalent of don’t be angry ) there is a cultural and emotional mismatchhere: I could not say an English equivalent of nie gniewaj sie to anyone, not onlybecause there isn’t one in the English language, but also because this way ofspeaking, thinking and feeling belongs to my Polish cultural world, not to theAnglo world.

Recently, one of my daughters explained to me that what used to annoy herabout my utterance nie gniewaj sie , which she interpreted as meaning the sameas don’t be angry, was what she saw as an implicit accusation of letting heremotion (anger) interfere with the rational argument. In fact this was not whatI meant at all, but for years none of us was aware of the linguistic mismatch. Imight add that from a Polish point of view there is nothing wrong with aheated argument. The Anglo cultural scripts valuing a ‘cool’ way of arguing inwhich ‘emotions’ do not interfere with ‘cool reason’ has no counterpart amongPolish cultural scripts, and in fact, the Polish word closest to cool (chl odny) israther 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 chl odny ‘cool’ sounds pejorative inPolish is that it implies an ‘unpleasant lack of interpersonal warmth’. Polishhas a number of expressions referring to ‘interpersonal’ rather than purelypersonal feelings and implying an underlying warm relationship. Forexample, the expression miec do kogos zal implies something like a reproachfulfeeling directed at someone loved and loving, and przykro implies a hurtcaused by the lack of warmth from someone whom we expect to be warmtowards us (cf. Wierzbicka, 2001).

The semantic difference between the English adjectival phrase to be angryand the Polish verbal phrase gniewac sie na kogos illustrates differences inconceptualisation which apply also at the level of theoretical constructs like‘emotions’. The theme of this special issue has been formulated as ‘bilingu-alism and emotions’, and given the status of ‘emotions’ in contemporaryscholarly literature this is perfectly understandable and justifiable. It needs tobe borne in mind, however, that ‘emotion’ itself is a construct which dependson the contemporary English language, and that many other languages do nothave words corresponding exactly to the English word emotion . As noted bythe philosopher Thomas Dixon (2003: 1), even in English, the category of‘emotions’ is relatively recent, and although it currently tends to be taken forgranted, it is far from a neutral analytical tool:

Emotions are everywhere today. Increasing numbers of books andarticles about the emotions are being produced; for both academic and

Preface 97

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

9:46

21

Nov

embe

r 20

14

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 decadeshave witnessed an explosion in emotions studies, in the fields ofcognitive psychology, anthropology and literary history, which consti-tutes a veritable ‘revolution’. . . . It is surprising, then, to discover that theemotions did not exist until just under two hundred years ago.

In his book, Dixon investigates the creation of ‘the emotions’ as a psychologicalcategory associated with the term emotion which has replaced earlier ways ofthinking associated with terms like appetites , passions , affections , affects andsentiments .

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�/Englishbilingual like myself, one of the key differences between my two ‘emotionalworlds’ is that one of them is, and the other is not, conceptualised via thecategory of ‘emotions’. For example, the expression gniewac sie na kogos doesnot mean to experience a particular emotion (e.g. that of ‘feeling angry’).Rather, it refers to a complex configuration of elements involving interpersonalrelations, as well as feelings and the expression of feelings. It implies a certainstance 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 asdifferent ways of feeling; they are linked with different attitudes, differentways of relating to people, different ways of expressing one’s feelings and soon (cf. Lutz, 1988). They are linked with different ‘cultural scripts’, including‘emotional scripts’ (Goddard, 1997, 2000; Wierzbicka, 1994, 1999). Theexperience of bilingual people is an invaluable source of insight into suchdifferences.

A point which seems to me particularly important is that experience ofbilingual people should not be construed as merely their experience of speakingtwo languages but rather as their experience of living with other people throughtwo different languages . To take an example, one of the most important insightsemerging from the recent literature bearing on the issue ‘bilingualism andemotions’ is that a person’s language acquired first (‘at the mother’s knee’) isoften endowed with a greater emotional force than the second language. Forexample, it has often been noted that anger expressed in one’s first languagemay feel more real, and more intense, than that expressed in one’s secondlanguage (cf. Dewaele, this issue; Harris, this issue; Pavlenko, this issue). Myown experience is consistent with this generalisation. At the same time,however, in my experience, ‘anger’ and related emotions and attitudes areoften expressed by a switch away from the speaker’s first language. Theemotional distance created by the use of the second language can sometimesconvey ‘anger’ and other ‘bad feelings’ better than anything said in one’s firstlanguage, which often (though of course not always) is the language ofemotional closeness and intimacy.

98 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

9:46

21

Nov

embe

r 20

14

The way we interpret our own inner experience depends on the language inwhich we interpret it �/ and this may depend, to some extent, on the languageof our interlocutor. Take, for example, the Polish verb denerwowac sie and thecorresponding inner �/ and outer �/ state. There is no corresponding word inEnglish, and I think with good (cultural) reason. Roughly speaking, denerwo-wac sie designates a state of visible agitation, linked with unsuccessfulattempts to control events (cf. Wierzbicka, 1994). Using the ‘natural semanticmetalanguage’ of simple and universal human concepts (cf. Goddard &Wierzbicka, 2002), we can portray the state of mind of a person who saysdenerwuje sie (very roughly, ‘I’m agitating/agitated’) as follows:

I think like this now:

‘some things are happening to me now

I don’t want these things to be happening

I have to do something because of this

I don’t 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 spelledout above is culturally salient and culturally acceptable. To draw again on mypersonal experience, when I call my sister in Poland (from Australia) I wouldnot hesitate to say to her that I ‘denerwuje sie ’ (for this or that reason). On theother hand, when I speak to my Anglophone friends in Australia I would notsay the equivalent of denerwuje sie �/ first of all, because there is no equivalentexpression in English, but also, because such a state of uncontrolled inner andouter agitation is not part of my English-speaking persona. There are culturalscripts in Anglo culture which encourage emotional self-control and a rational,economical use of inner resources. Thus, I might say in English I’m angry orI’m upset (neither of which has an exact equivalent in Polish) but notsomething like ‘I’m keeping myself in a state of aimless inner and outeragitation’. I’m angry about something is consistent with an ‘active’ attitude: ‘Idon’t want things like this to happen. I want to do something because of this’.I’m upset describes a state of being temporarily out of emotional control; itimplies that the ‘bad feeling’, over which the experiencer has no control, isviewed as a temporary departure from a ‘normal’ state. Since I never describemyself in English in a way similar to the Polish expression denerwuje sie , I donot think about myself in this way when I am speaking English; and as theinterpretation put on our experience shapes that experience, the experienceitself is different. In a sense, then, I do not only project a different persona butam in fact a different person in my Anglophone and Polonophone relation-ships.

It may be asked: can this be proved? Presumably, not in a lab, and not bymethods acceptable in a lab. But who says that only knowledge that can beobtained by methods acceptable in a lab is valid or worth having? I will takeone more example from my own experience. I have a baby granddaughter,

Preface 99

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

9:46

21

Nov

embe

r 20

14

who lives far away from me but whom I often visit. When I come back fromthese visits and when my Anglophone friends ask me how she is, I am oftenstuck for words. I just can’t find English words suitable for talking about mytiny granddaughter. It is not that I am not familiar with the register of Englishused for talking about babies but I feel that this register does not fit theemotional world to which this baby belongs for me. No doubt one reason isthat Polish was my first language and that as such it is imbued with anemotional force that English doesn’t have for me. But this is not the onlyreason. Another reason is that Polish words that I could use to talk about mybaby granddaughter do not have exact semantic equivalents in English andtherefore feel irreplaceable. For example, I could say in Polish that she isrozkoszna , using a word glossed in Polish�/English dictionaries as ‘delightful’,but I couldn’t possibly use the word delightful about her myself �/ not onlybecause delightful has no emotional force for me but because its meaning,which is not identical with that of rozkoszna , doesn’t fit my way of thinkingand feeling about this baby. Rozkoszna has a greater emotional force by virtueof its meaning, and delightful would sound, from the point of view of abilingual but culturally Polish person, ‘too light’, ‘too objective’ and toolacking in emotional intensity. In fact, in English, too, most people would beprobably reluctant to describe their own child or grandchild as ‘delightful’,because the word appears to imply an outsider’s perspective and a lack ofpersonal emotional involvement. People might, however, describe their ownchild or grandchild as ‘adorable’, or as ‘a cutie’, or ‘a sweetie’; and they mightdescribe other people’s babies as ‘gorgeous’. None of these options areavailable to me.

Of course when people ask me about my little granddaughter they are notasking, at least not overtly, about my emotions, and theoretically, I could replyproviding, in a nonemotional language, some information about her develop-ment. But this, too, goes against the grain of my Polish emotional scripts. InPolish, the language used for talking about babies relies on a wide range ofemotionally coloured diminutives, and to talk about a baby in a purelydescriptive language would seem strangely cold and loveless. For example, inPolish I could say that she now has a lot of loczki ‘dear-little-curls’, or that shehas six zabki ‘dear-little-teeth’, or that for her age she is still malutka ‘dear-little-small’. Since English doesn’t have such diminutives, I would have to usedescriptive ‘loveless’ words like curls , teeth or small , and I feel I couldn’t dothat. I might add that in Polish I would never say to a baby something like ‘I’llwash your hands’ or ‘I will give you some milk’ using the plain words forhands or milk, I would only use the diminutive forms comparable to ‘dear-little-hands’ or handies . Although I rarely correct my family’s Polish, which isextremely good, I do sometimes correct them when they use, in reference tothe baby, nondiminutive words such as reka ‘hand’, usta ‘mouth’, gl owa ‘head’,nos ‘nose’: raczka , I’d say, usteczka , gl owka , nosek . Speaking to or about a babyin English, one could use the word handies (in the plural) but not handie ; andone would normally not use mouthie , nosie or headie . In Polish, however, suchdiminutives not only exist but are virtually obligatory in speaking to or about ababy, at least in a family setting. If plain, nondiminutive words were used for a

100 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

9:46

21

Nov

embe

r 20

14

baby’s eyes, ears, hair, legs, back, etc. they would all sound very cold andclinical.

Of course in English, too, people often talk about babies in an emotionallanguage, describing them as cute , sweet , dear, adorable , lovely, even gorgeous .But again, I feel I couldn’t use any of these words about my little grand-daughter, not only because they all leave me cold (not being anchored in mychildhood experiences and thus having no visceral emotional resonance) butalso 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, whenI am asked about my granddaughter, I often find myself mumbling,inadequately from everyone’s point of view, that ‘she is well’.

It is important to bear in mind that the two languages of a bilingual persondiffer not only in their lexical and grammatical repertoires for expressing anddescribing emotions but also in the sets of ‘emotional scripts’ regulatingemotion-talk. Often, but not always, important ‘emotional scripts’ areepitomised 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 tobe ‘shrill’ or ‘wet’ (in speaking) and it is good to be ‘cool’: the very fact thatsuch words exist in present-day English, with the meaning they have, providesincontrovertible evidence for the existence of the cultural norms associatedwith them. These norms may not be shared by all speakers of English, but theyare familiar to them. Polish does not have equivalents of the words shrill , cooland wet (in the relevant meanings), and it doesn’t have the correspondingcultural scripts. On the other hand, it has words like serdeczny and serdecznosc(roughly, ‘warm’ and ‘warmth’), which have no equivalents in English, andwhich point to certain emotional scripts which are salient in Polish culture. Aperson living his or her life through Polish and English has to choose, on adaily basis, not only between two languages but also between two sets ofcultural scripts, including emotional scripts.

Thus when bilingual immigrants speak to people who share the same twolanguages (for example, to their bilingual children) they have to makelinguistic (or lexical) choices, but when they speak to monolingual speakersof the host country, they have to choose communicative styles (regulated bydifferent cultural scripts). For example, the Anglo cultural script reflected inthe word wet can make it difficult for a Pole living in an Anglo society to speakabout children in English in accordance with Polish cultural scripts, even ifappropriate lexical and grammatical resources could be found, because anawareness of Anglo cultural scripts puts a pressure on the bilingual person tomodify their ‘normal’ ways of speaking. (This applies also to non-verbalexpressions of emotions. For example, Poles who greet each other by kissing ina Polish social context would often refrain from doing so in a mixed, or Anglocontext, for example, on university campus.) Thus in speaking in Englishabout my baby granddaughter I am conscious of the need not to sound‘excessively emotional’, and this restricts my ability to speak freely as much asthe lack of adequate English words does.

In discussions about the relationship between language, culture and selfone often hears the following argument: ‘If a person’s self were partlyculturally and linguistically constituted, bilingual people would have to be to

Preface 101

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

9:46

21

Nov

embe

r 20

14

some extent schizophrenic. Since obviously they are not, people’s selves mustbe largely independent of language and culture’. The testimony of manybilingual people who have reflected on their own experience shows that thisargument is spurious. For bilingual people, living with two languages canmean indeed living in two different emotional worlds and also travelling backand forth between those two worlds. It can also mean living suspendedbetween two worlds, frequently misinterpreting other people’s feelings andintentions, and being misinterpreted oneself, even when on the surfacecommunication appears to proceed smoothly. The fact that to a monolingualperson all this may seem hard to believe underscores the limitations of amonolingual perspective in human sciences and the importance of thesubjective knowledge of bilingual persons as a source of insight into ‘humannature’ and human lives.

The metaphorical expressions ‘codeswitching’ and ‘codemixing’ can beuseful as an abbreviated way of referring to speech practices common in thelife of bilingual persons, but they can also be misleading. A language is not acode for encoding pre-existent meanings. Rather, it is a conceptual, experi-ential and emotional world. Shifting from one language to another is not likeshifting from one code to another to express a meaning expressible equallywell in both these codes. Often, the very reason why a bilingual speaker shiftsfrom one language to another is that the meaning that they want to express‘belongs’ to the other language. This underlying motivation is particularlyclear in the case of cultural key concepts like those encoded in the Englishwords privacy, self -esteem or unfair, but it is also very clear in the case ofexpressive expressions such as, for example, interjections (cf. Besemeres, thisissue). It is a common experience to hear an immigrant using some emotiveinterjections of their second language long before they have learned thatlanguage well, and also, to hear them using some key interjections of their firstlanguage when speaking the second language long after they have becomefluent in it. For example, for an Italian male immigrant in Australia, the keyAustralian expletive bloody may well be among the first English words that hestarts using regularly, while at the same time Italian expressive expressionslike mamma mia may be retained for a very long time in his English. This isclearly not a matter of an arbitrary ‘codemixing’ but rather, of living with onefoot in one emotional world, and the other, in another.

The metaphors of ‘codeswitching’ and ‘codemixing’ appear to deny theintimate links between a person’s native language and their inner self, whichwere strongly emphasised by the philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer. To quote:

Language is not something by means of which consciousness commu-nicates with the world. . . .Language is not an instrument, not a tool. . . .Such an analogy is false, because our consciousness never faces theworld reaching �/ as if in a languageless state �/ for a tool ofcommunication. Rather, in all our knowledge about ourselves and inall our knowledge about the world we are already enveloped bylanguage, by our own language. We grow up, we get to know theworld, people, and ourselves, in the process of learning to speak. Tolearn to speak does not mean to learn to use a certain pre-existing tool

102 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

9:46

21

Nov

embe

r 20

14

for designating a world with which we are already familiar; rather, itmeans becoming familiar with and getting to know the world itself, andthe world as we encounter it. . . . (1967: 95�/96; my translation)

I believe that what Gadamer says about consciousness in general applies alsoto people’s feelings. Language is not a tool for expressing a person’s feelings �/

feelings that could be equally well expressed in another language. Rather, ourvery feelings depend on our language (cf. Panayiotou, this issue). We learn tomake sense of our raw feelings through the categories imposed on them by ourlanguage, and this categorisation enters into the fabric of our feelings, andgives them shape and direction.

In the responses of bilingual persons cited in Pavlenko’s study (this issue)several people used terms like ‘wrong’ and ‘untrue’ in relation to attempts toexpress their emotions in their second language. I think that the intuitionreflected in such responses is illuminating. The terms of the second languagedon’t match those of the first language, and they may also not match thespeaker’s emotions shaped or coloured by the first language. If so, then theyare 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 beinadequate, ‘wrong’, ‘not true’.

This doesn’t mean that the emotional expressions of a person’s secondlanguage can never become psychologically ‘true’. Often, however, they arenot; and since bilingual persons (e.g. immigrants) often have to communicatewith monolingual interlocutors, a sense of distortion, of falsehood, and notbeing true to oneself is often inescapable. No doubt one reason is that theemotion terms of the second language may not have the subjective force thatthose of the first language have acquired through their existential, autobio-graphical grounding. Another reason, however, may be that the bilingualperson’s emotions have been moulded, to some extent, by the expressivedevices (lexical and grammatical) of their first language, and that conse-quently, the expressive devices of the second language literally do not fit them.

Traditionally, the literature on bilingualism has focused on issues like ‘thebilingual brain’, ‘bilingual memory’ or ‘neurofunctional bases of languageorganization in bilinguals’. A focus on ‘bilingualism and emotions’ can help, Ithink, to shift the attention from bilingual brains to bilingual lives �/ especiallythe bilingual lives of immigrants and their children. Given the scale ofmigration in the contemporary world, the importance of the latter problem canhardly be overestimated. To quote the Korean�/American scholar Young YunKim (2000: 1): ‘Millions of people change homes each year, crossing culturalboundaries. Immigrants and refugees resettle in search of new lives . . . In thisincreasingly integrated world, cross-cultural adaptation is a central anddefining theme’. An interest in ‘bilingualism and emotions’ can help tointegrate the psycholinguistic approaches to bilingualism with studies aimingat a better understanding of cross-cultural lives, including the specialproblems and needs of immigrants. At the same time, an interest in‘bilingualism and emotions’ can help to restore the balance between, on theone hand, ‘objective’ and ‘scientific’ study of language and cognition and on

Preface 103

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

9:46

21

Nov

embe

r 20

14

the other, a study open to the ‘soft data’ of human testimonies and subjectiveexperience, including experiential knowledge of bilingual persons.

It seems clear that if we want to tap that knowledge of bilingual persons awide variety of approaches must be allowed and attempted. This is, I think, aspecial strength of the present issue: the wide variety of approaches, methodsand perspectives represented in the papers included here. The editors shouldbe congratulated for this diversity as much as for the thematic unity of theissue and for their imagination in addressing a theme which in the comingyears will no doubt be increasingly recognised as important across a range ofdisciplines 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).

References

Apresjan, J. (1997) Serdit’sja. In Apresjan, J. (ed.) Novyj Ob’’jasnitel’nyj Slovar’ Sino-nimov Russkogo Jazyka (pp. 362�/367). Moskva: Skola Jazyki Russkoj Kul’tury.

Dixon, T. (2003) From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gadamer, H-G. (1967) Kleine Schriften I. Philosophie. Hermeneutik . Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr(Paul Siebeck).

Goddard, C. (1997) ‘Cultural values’ and ‘cultural scripts’ of Malay (Bahasa Melayu).Journal of Pragmatics 27 (2), 183�/201.

Goddard, C. (2000) ‘Cultural scripts’ and communicative style in Malay (BahasaMelayu). Anthropological Linguistics 42 (1), 81�/106.

Goddard, C. and Wierzbicka, A. (eds) (2002) Meaning and Universal Grammar: Theory andEmpirical Findings . Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Harbsmeier, Ch. (2004) Portrait. Epok 43 (Fevrier), 50�/51.Harkins, J. and Wierzbicka, A. (eds) (2001) Emotions in Crosslinguistic Perspective. Berlin:

Mouton de Gruyter.Kim, Y.Y. (2000) Becoming Intercultural. Thousand Oaks: Sage.Lutz, C. (1988) Unnatural Emotions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Pinker, S. (1997) How the Mind Works. New York: Norton.Russell, J. (1991) Culture and the categorization of emotions. Psychological Bulletin 110

(3), 426�/450.Wierzbicka, A. (1992) Semantics, Culture, and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in

Culture-Specific Configurations . New York: Oxford University Press.Wierzbicka, A. (1994) Emotion, language, and ‘cultural scripts’. In Sh. Kitayama and

H.R. Markus (eds) Emotion and Culture: Empirical Studies of Mutual Influence (pp.130�/198). Washington: American Psychological Association.

Wierzbicka, A. (1999) Emotions Across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wierzbicka, A. (2001) A culturally salient Polish emotion: Przykro (pron. pshickro) . In J.Harkins and A. Wierzbicka (eds) Emotions in Crosslinguistic Perspective (pp. 337�/358).Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Wierzbicka, A. (2003) Emotion and culture: Arguing with Martha Nussbaum. Ethos 31(4), 577�/600.

104 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

9:46

21

Nov

embe

r 20

14