Every time you learn a foreign language, you will acquire a new personality?

Source | Psychology Today

Translation |? A deer

The first time I noticed that personality may change with language was in a foreign teacher's class in a university. Usually very cold and taciturn friends, every time they discuss freely, they become flowers and flowers, and often one person can take up the speech time of the whole group. People who seldom go to the canteen will even take the initiative to invite everyone to have afternoon tea with foreign teachers.

My little sister still praised TA's hospitality until she returned to China, but I don't know that when speaking Chinese, this friend is as expensive as gold and as cold as ice-so, will speaking English make us extroverted? Or is it another language that releases people's hidden personality? See what Fran? ois Grosjean, a professor of Swiss linguistics, said ~

first part

Friend a: "when I talk to British and American people, I sometimes feel embarrassed and slow down ... but when I talk to others in Spanish, I don't feel shy at all." On the contrary, I have become witty and outgoing, and I am more friendly to people than when I speak English. "

Partner B: "When I speak English, my tone is relaxed, and the overall dialogue is more polite. I often use words like "please" and "sorry". But when I speak Greek, my speech is straightforward, my tone becomes anxious, and the whole is a bit rude. "

Little friend C: "I find that when I speak Russian, the whole person will become gentler and softer." When I speak English, I feel a little aggressive and more outspoken when dealing with people. "

Are these bilingual friends joking? When they change their language, will their personalities change? This is not impossible. After all, in the Czech proverb, there is indeed a saying "learn a new language and gain a new soul".

Although many bilingual users report that their personality changes when they speak in different languages, few researchers have explored this issue. In her early academic career, Professor Susan M.Ervin-Tripp (1927-20 18) from the Department of Psychology of Berkeley University conducted such a study. She recruited some Japanese-American women and asked them to supplement some unfinished sentences in Japanese and English respectively.

She found that the sentence endings given by these Japanese women vary greatly according to the language they use (Ervin, 1964). Take chestnuts for example. The same sentence begins with "When my wishes conflict with my family". The Japanese version of the Japanese woman ends with "... this is a very unhappy era", while the English version of this woman ends with "end" ... will I do what I want to do? ...

More than forty years later, Professor David Luna of Baruch College and his colleagues conducted another experiment. In the experiment, they asked some Hispanic American female college students to interpret several advertisements with the theme of women in Spanish. Six months later, they interpreted the same advertisements in English (Luna, Ringberg,&; Pelachio, 2008). The researchers found that when students interpret these advertisements in Spanish, the women in advertisements are considered as independent and open new women, while when the same group of students interpret advertisements in English, the women in advertisements are considered as more dependent and more caring traditional women.

Both the personal experiences described by bilingual users at the beginning of the article and the research results of researchers mentioned later have made me deeply curious about the connection between language and personality. I have noticed that most bilingual users living in a single culture are not really bothered by this phenomenon.

But what about bilinguals living in mixed cultures? As I mentioned in the book Bilingual: Life and Reality, the so-called "personality changes" we observe may only be some changes in attitudes and behaviors with the changes in cultural scenes. In essence, the bilinguals living in mixed cultures in the study actually showed the behaviors and attitudes expected by the corresponding cultures in different cultural situations.

Usually, when faced with different objects and different life situations, bilingual users will change their language to adapt to the environment. Different situations will lead to different attitudes and behaviors. The "personality change" people experience is more likely to be an adaptation to the situation, rather than the change of personality structure caused by the change of language itself.

Think about the way we talk to our good friends and our behavior in front of ta; Then think about how we speak and act when facing our superiors (such as principals, religious leaders or leaders). In front of superiors and friends, our performances, attitudes and feelings are very different-the objects and situations are different, so our behaviors are different-although the language we speak has not changed.

The same is true for bilingual users, but the language they use has also changed. In other words, it is the changes in the environment, culture and conversation objects, not the language changes themselves, that change the attitudes, feelings and behaviors (including the language used) of bilinguals. Fundamentally speaking, there may be no direct causal relationship between language and personality.

A Swiss friend who speaks English, French and German once told me that it might be appropriate to end here: "When I communicate with my sister in English, French or German, my personality has not changed. However, depending on where we were at that time, we may adjust our behavior according to local habits. "

? the second part

In the first part, I discussed whether the personality of bilingual users will change when they change languages. I introduced some personal experiences of bilingual users and two related empirical studies-both of which seem to show that personality does change with the change of language. Later, I suggested that it may be the difference between the environment and the interviewee that leads to the change of words and deeds, not the language change itself. In other words, there is no direct causal relationship between personality and language.

After the first part of the article was published, it received many comments from netizens. Netizens (probably all bilingual users) have different views on whether the personality structure has changed. About one-third of people think that their personality has not changed, and one-third think that their personality has changed. I am not surprised by this disagreement, because even the researchers themselves have not come to a conclusion.

A supporter of the "personality change theory" believes that sometimes personality is directly related to language, and is not only influenced by intermediate variables such as environment and conversation object. He put forward an interesting point that "the initial indirect causal relationship can be developed into direct relationship". Then he quoted Pavlov's classic experiment, that is, dogs not only secrete saliva because of food (unconditioned stimulus), but also respond to Bell (conditioned stimulus) and secrete saliva after establishing conditioned action.

His statement explains the phenomenon put forward by another netizen to some extent. The netizen found that one of her teachers was very strict and even a little scary when speaking one language, but she was more friendly and amiable when speaking another language. The netizen also said: "If you are being scolded by this teacher, try to manipulate the conversation between you from one language to another, and you can get away quickly!"

Although people have different views on personality change, most netizens agree that people will have different behaviors, attitudes and performances in different situations and in the face of different interlocutors (which may cause language changes). Therefore, bilingual users in mixed culture will change their words and deeds to adapt to the environment when necessary, without changing their personality structure. In this regard, a netizen said very well: "It's not that our personality has changed, but that when we use one language, a certain part of our personality can't be expressed as clearly as when we use another language."

As another netizen said, I hope that future research can use both explicit and implicit tests to examine people's attitudes and self-concepts-this is particularly important, because not everyone may be good at judging whether they "feel different" when changing languages. In a recent study, researcher O? A ń ska-Ponikwia (2012) investigated why some people feel personality changes while others don't.

She invited 100 bilingual users to participate in her own research. Some of them can speak two languages since childhood, some begin to learn a second language after emigrating, and some are college students who have stayed in other countries for a long time. She asked these people to fill out a personality questionnaire in two languages and asked them to score on a self-made scale. The items in the scale include "When I speak English, I feel like a different person" and "My friends say that when I speak English, I will become different from myself".

She found that only those who have good emotional skills and social skills can notice that they will be different from themselves when changing languages. She believes that when some people change their language, they don't report differences in behavior, perception and expression, not because these changes don't exist, but because these people don't notice them. She guessed that only people with above-average emotional intelligence can notice the changes in their personality and behavior when they change their language.

Personally, I am very happy to see more research results on this issue in the future. This is not only because I am a professor of linguistics, but more importantly, as a bilingual, in case I fall into the category of "low emotional intelligence", these findings will help me better understand my behavior changes when changing languages ~

refer to

Owen, S. (1964). Analysis of the interaction among language, topic and listener. In John Gompers and Dale hymes (editor. ), ethnography of communication, special issue of American anthropologist, 66, Part2, 86- 102.

Katarzyna O？ Ansca-Ponik via (20 12). What has personality and? Emotional intelligence? What is the relationship between "feeling different" when using a foreign language? Education? And bilingual, 15(2), 2 17-234.

Luna, D, Lindbergh, T. & ampPeracchio, L.(2008). One person, two identities: frame transformation in dual culture. Magazine? Consumers? Research, vol. 35, no.2, pp. 279-293.

Grosjean, F. Personality, thinking and? Dreaming and the mood of bilinguals. Grosjean chapter 1 1, F. (20 10). Bilingual: life and reality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.