LANGUAGE AND EMOTION: A HERITAGE LANGUAGE PERSPECTIVE
Interdisciplinary Research Teams 2021 - 2022
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Our project investigates the phenomenon that bilinguals and multilinguals often report feeling different when switching languages. Expanding on a study by Dewaele and Nakano (2012), which found that multilinguals feel more logical, serious, and emotional in earlier acquired languages, and more different and fake in later acquired languages, we study these same 5 emotions: logical, serious, emotional, fake, and different, but in the context of heritage languages. In our analysis, however, we do not organize our data based on order of acquisition, but by whether a language is a heritage language.
Our research involves a mixed methods approach. We collected quantitative and qualitative survey data, and conducted focus groups at Rutgers University New Brunswick. Our 90 participants included students, faculty, and staff at Rutgers University New Brunswick who self identify as speaking a heritage language other than English.
MOTIVATIONS
As Rutgers is one of the most diverse campuses in America, we felt that this research was relevant to our community. Many students, faculty, and staff at Rutgers speak a language other than English, and this has an effect on our campus culture. Rutgers is a place of many different diverse experiences, and we hope that showcasing these experiences will help promote a compassionate attitude. In a world where we are seeing an increase in ethnic divides, especially with the rise in social/media and online communities, we think it's important to share the commonalities and complexities of the human experience. Thus, our research does not focus on any language in particular, but on the general experience of living and working in a community where one may not always operate in the langauges that they feel the most at home in. Our research will show that speaking a heritage language can be a profound experience regardless of what the language is.
RESEARCH
