AUTHOR=Tang Dong , Fu Yang , Wang Huili , Liu Bo , Zang Anqi , Kärkkäinen Tommi 

TITLE=The embodiment of emotion-label words and emotion-laden words: Evidence from late Chinese–English bilinguals

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1143064

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1143064

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=In terms of the precise definition of emotion words, although many studies have confirmed the distinction between emotion-label words (words directly label emotional states) and emotion-laden words (words indirectly name emotion, but can evoke it through connotation), the existing evidence is inconclusive. In the current study, the emotional categorization task was adopted to investigate whether emotion-label and emotion-laden words are embodied by directly comparing how the two kinds of emotion words are processed in individuals’ native language (L1) and the second language (L2) among Chinese-English bilinguals. The results revealed that apart from L2 negative emotion-laden words, both types of emotion words in L1 and L2 produced significant emotion effects, with faster response times and/ or higher accuracy rates. In addition, processing facilitation for emotion-label words over emotion-laden words was observed irrespective of language operation; a significant three-way interaction between the language, valence and emotion word type was noted. Taken together, L2 negative emotion-laden words tend to be disembodied, and emotion-label words are more affectively embodied than emotion-laden words in both L1 and L2, which can be explained from the perspective of embodied cognition. The emotion word type effect evidenced in both L1 and L2 suggested that the emotion word type should be taken into consideration in future emotion word research.