Affective Word Processing in Native and Nonnative English Speakers: A Neuropragmatic Perspective

Abstract

This chapter constitutes the empirical heart of the book. Two electrophysiological (EEG) experiments were designed to investigate how the build-up of linguistic context might impact neurocognitive responses to affective adjectives in the first (L1) and second (L2) language of proficient, immersed Polish-English bilinguals. Experiment 2, published elsewhere (Jonczyk et al., Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 16(3): 527-540, 2016), is distilled to its essence. In experiment 1, participants viewed noun-adjective pairs (e.g. war-dead), and were asked to determine whether the pair was related in meaning. In experiment 2, the same adjectives were embedded in natural sentential context (e.g. Incurably ill Patrick did not realise that in a month he would already be dead); here, participants decided whether the sentences were meaningful. This "pragmatic twist" in the design enabled for the first time to uncover robust differences in cortical activation to affective adjectives in L1 and L2 that revealed themselves both in the early (N400 modulation) and late (LPC modulation) stages of processing. This effect was limited to adjectives embedded in affectively salient sentences, providing evidence that affective experience is boosted when individuals read natural language, which, in turn, may reveal differences in affect processing in the bilinguals' respective languages.