Switching Codes, Switching Code:Bilinguals’ Emotional Responses inEnglish and GreekAlexia PanayiotouUniversity of Cyprus, Nicosia, CyprusThis paper investigates the verbal construction of emotions in a bilingual/biculturalsetting, the target languages and cultures being American English and CypriotGreek. To examine whether bilingual speakers express different emotions in theirrespective languages, a study was carried out with 10 bilingual/bicultural profes-sionals. A scenario was presented to them first in English and a month later in Greekand their verbal reactions were recorded. The participants’ responses were thenanalysed through three questions: (1) whether they translate from one language tothe other; (2) whether and when codeswitching occurs; (3) whether there is a patternin the use of emotion words. The analysis of the results shows that respondentsdisplayed different reactions to the same story depending on the language it wasread to them in. The paper argues that participants changed their social code, i.e.sociocultural expectations, with the change in linguistic code. These findings raiseinteresting questions about the relationship between language, emotions andcognition, and the formation of the bilingual self.Keywords: emotions, bilingualism, social constructionism, discursive psychology,Greek/English bilinguals, linguistic scenariosIntroductionThis paper addresses an important theoretical question in research on thecultural construction of emotions: does one’s emotional reaction shift when thelanguage shifts? Specifically, this paper asks: if the same scenario or situationappears in a different language and/or culture, does a person (1) interpret thisscenario differently? and (2) provide a different emotional response? Workingwithin a social constructionist framework, I explored the expression ofemotions in a bilingual/bicultural setting, the target languages and culturesbeing American English and Cypriot Greek. In the study, 10 bilingual/bicultural professionals were presented a scenario first in English and a monthlater in Greek. Their verbal reactions to the text were recorded and thesubsequent responses analysed by asking whether they translated from onelanguage to the other in the two contexts; whether codeswitching occurredand why; and whether a pattern existed in the emotion words used.The study relied on the use of bilingual/bicultural informants in order toaddress the issue of translatability of emotion words in English and Greek.In doing so, it also addressed the critique of previous cross-culturalpsychological research which saw monolingual subjects used in this type ofresearch as rarely equivalent (Mesquita & Frijda, 1992). Bilinguals, as peoplewho cross physical, linguistic and cultural boundaries, offer an optimal pool0143-4632/04/02 124-16 $20.00/0 – 2004 A. PanayiotouJ. OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT Vol. 25, No. 2&3, 2004124for cross-cultural comparison of emotion terms because they subjectivelyexperience two languages and two cultures. In this study then bilingualism isused as a means through which one can access emotional representations andas a phenomenon worthy of study in emotion research (see also Dewaele &Pavlenko, 2002; Pavlenko, 2002b).The Cultural Construction of EmotionsAlthough it is tempting to think of emotions as natural givens (Gergen,1999) or as part of human nature, the viewpoint adopted in this study is thatemotions are culturally and linguistically constructed (Armon-Jones, 1986;Averill, 1980; Parrott & Harre´, 1996; Rosaldo, 1980; Wierzbicka, 1992, 1998,1999; Winegar, 1995) and psychologically equivalent to statements (Harre´&Gillett, 1994: 146). I define emotions as a subcategory of feelings (Levy, 1984)which help organise thoughts and behaviour (Lutz, 1988). Emotions are‘biologically generated elements which must be enriched by meanings beforebecoming emotional experiences’ (Parrott & Harre´, 1996: 2). In my analysis ofthe bilinguals’ responses, I relied on the following fundamental aspects ofwhat defines an emotion: (1) a biologically manifested element, (2) boundedby a bodily experience, (3) understood as a cognitive appraisal of a situation,(4) created and learned within a particular cultural meaning-making system,(5) constituted in context and (6) located within a cultural categorisationsystem. In this respect, hunger is not an emotion as it violates the last fourpremises; stenahoria1is, as it fulfils all six although not necessarily sequentially.Stenahoria is a socioculturally determined pattern of experience and expressionwhich is acquired and subsequently felt in the body and featured in specificsocial situations. In other words, I am not claiming that emotions begin asbiologically generated elements, only that at some point they are biological aswell. As shown in another study (Panayiotou, 2001), it is also possible to learnan emotion in a new language/culture (so 3, 4, 5 and 6 are met). At that pointthe new cultural element manifests a physiological component as well.Language, in this respect, provides a means through which one can accessemotions (not only in terms of understanding another person’s emotions butalso in making sense of our own) but it does not necessarily determine anemotion; in other words, the issue of whether a person actually feels sad in agiven context or is just constructing an appropriate verbal response and claimsto be ‘sad’, is not an issue that this study addresses nor one that could beaddressed in a social constructionist framework.The study is located in the context of discursive psychology which ‘focuseson the role of linguistic practices in the formation and expression of the mind’(Harre´, 1998: 42). Language in this study is assumed to be at the core ofpsychological constructs and the focus is on the use of ‘vocabularies throughwhich emotions are described and catalogued in particular cultures’ (Harre´&Gillett, 1994: 160). Without negating the bodily component of emotions, I arguethat emotions are language dependent (Searle, 1995), as the raw or bodilyexperience of an emotion must be filtered through a cultural meaning-makingsystem (Parrot & Harre´, 1996), i.e. language, before it can be defined as anBilinguals’ Emotional Responses125emotion. Language, then, is assumed to both actively construct and recon-struct emotions (Pavlenko, 2002a).Research DesignObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to explore the construction of emotions