earticle

영어

The principle of linguistic relativism supports that the language we use influences the way we think and how we perceive the world, leading to a number of studies on bilinguals’ different thinking and feeling process made available by each language. From this perspective, the main purpose of this paper is to examine bilingual speakers’ perception, categorization, and construction of emotions: how they experience the difference of emotional intensity across two languages. To accomplish this goal, this paper reviews relevant research conducted on bilingualism and emotions and potential of autobiographical writing in the field. This study not only examines several language memoirs written by bilingual writers illustrating their life experiences that specifically elicit the different emotional intensities when living with two languages, but also it analyzes a web-based survey from Korean-English bilinguals who are learning English as their second language. The findings suggest that bilinguals experience different emotional intensities and resonances depending on the various internal and external factors acting on language acquisition and learning.