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Article published In: Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 35:2 (2022) ► pp.675–705

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Expressing emotion

A pragmatic analysis of L1 German and L1 Brazilian Portuguese English as a lingua franca users

ORCiD logo with link | Universitat Politècnica de València
ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de Jaén
Published online: 12 August 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.20028.mes
Abstract
The acquisition of pragmatic competence, namely, the capability to ‘produce and comprehend […] discourse that is adequate to the L2 socio-cultural context’ ( (2013). Intercultural Pragmatics. Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, p. 64) is a major challenge for learners with a medium-to-advanced level of language proficiency, and a main concern for teachers. To study it, two approaches exist: the ethnopragmatic perspective (Wierzbicka, A. (2004). Preface: Bilingual Lives, Bilingual Experience. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 25(2–3), 94–104. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and the intercultural pragmatics perspective (Maguire, L., & Romero-Trillo, J. (2013). Context dynamism in classroom discourse. In I. Kecskes, & J. Romero-Trillo (Eds.), Research trends in intercultural pragmatics (pp. 145–160). Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Because of its complexity, the study of emotions is core in pragmatic competence acquisition.
This paper explores the way English as a lingua franca (ELF) users with different L1s express their emotions, as compiled in the Corpus of Language and Nature (Romero-Trillo, J., Riesco-Bernier, S., Díez-Bedmar, M. B., Pérez-Vidal, M., Gladkova, A., Gerdes, K. E., & Espigares, T. (2013, March 14–16). CLAN project: The representation of landscape universals in language [Conference presentation]. International Conference on Corpus Linguistics, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain.). To do so, 115 texts from L1 German speakers and 115 texts from L1 Brazilian Portuguese speakers are explored following corpus-based and corpus-driven approaches. The former was conducted by analysing the presence in the subcorpora of the items in two emotion word lexicons. To complement the information obtained, further corpus-based analyses of the use of modals and intensifiers employed by the participants to express emotion were conducted. The corpus-driven approach allowed the manual identification of any linguistic unit employed by ELF users to express emotion which had not been previously considered. The results cast light on the linguistic units that ELF users from the two backgrounds employ to express emotion in the same situations. The findings highlight the differences and similarities in their use of the language as well as the suitability of the lexicons to study emotion in ELF.
Resumen
La expresión de la emoción: Un análisis pragmático del uso del ILF por parte de hablantes con lengua materna alemán y con lengua materna brasileño
La adquisición de competencia pragmática, es decir, la capacidad de “producir y comprender […] discurso que sea adecuado al contexto sociocultural L2” ( (2013). Intercultural Pragmatics. Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, p. 64, nuestra traducción) es un gran desafío para alumnos con un nivel de lenguaje medio a avanzado y una fuente de preocupación para los profesores. Dos enfoques principales estudian esta cuestión: la perspectiva etnopragmática (Wierzbicka, A. (2004). Preface: Bilingual Lives, Bilingual Experience. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 25(2–3), 94–104. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), y la perspectiva pragmática intercultural (Maguire, L., & Romero-Trillo, J. (2013). Context dynamism in classroom discourse. In I. Kecskes, & J. Romero-Trillo (Eds.), Research trends in intercultural pragmatics (pp. 145–160). Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Debido a su complejidad, el estudio de las emociones es fundamental en la adquisición de la competencia pragmática.
Este artículo explora la forma en que los usuarios de inglés como lengua franca (ILF) de diferentes L1 expresan sus emociones, tal como se recopila en el Corpus of Language and Nature (Romero-Trillo, J., Riesco-Bernier, S., Díez-Bedmar, M. B., Pérez-Vidal, M., Gladkova, A., Gerdes, K. E., & Espigares, T. (2013, March 14–16). CLAN project: The representation of landscape universals in language [Conference presentation]. International Conference on Corpus Linguistics, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain.). Para ello, se exploran 115 textos de hablantes con alemán como lengua materna y 115 textos de hablantes de brasileño como lengua materna siguiendo enfoques corpus-based y corpus-driven. El primero se realizó analizando la presencia en los subcorpus de los ítems listados en dos léxicos de palabras relacionadas con las emociones en los subcorpus. Para complementar la información obtenida, se realizaron análisis del uso de verbos modales y de intensificadores empleados por los participantes para expresar emociones. El enfoque basado en corpus (corpus-based) permitió la identificación manual de cualquier unidad lingüística empleada por los usuarios de ILF para expresar emociones que no hubiera sido considerada previamente. Los resultados aportan información sobre las unidades lingüísticas que los usuarios de ILF emplean para expresar emociones en las mismas situaciones desde dos lenguas maternas diferentes. Los hallazgos destacan las diferencias y similitudes en su uso del lenguaje, así como la idoneidad de los léxicos existentes para estudiar las emociones en el ILF.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.State of the art
    • 2.1ELF
    • 2.2Pragmatic competence: Emotion and feeling from a pragmatic perspective
      • 2.2.1Ethnopragmatic perspective
      • 2.2.2Intercultural perspective
    • 2.3Learning to express emotion in an LF: The acquisition of pragmatic competence
    • 2.4Emotions in the CEFR and the Companion Volume
    • 2.5Tools to analyse emotions
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1The corpus
    • 3.2Corpus-based approaches: The use of lexicons and complementation of the information obtained
    • 3.3A corpus-driven approach: Searching for emotion words
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Quantitative analyses
      • 4.1.1Merriam-Webster
      • 4.1.2The NRC Affect Intensity Lexicon
      • 4.1.3Intensifiers and modals
    • 4.2Qualitative analyses
      • 4.2.1Exploring the use of the lemmas in the lexicons further
      • 4.2.2Searching for other linguistic units employed to express emotion: Beyond lexicons, modal verbs and intensifiers
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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