The landscape of emotional language processing in bilinguals: A review

Language is arguably the most complex tool we have to express and convey emotions. The interplay between language and emotion has long captivated the disciplines of linguistics, psychology and cognitive science, and at the heart of this relationship lies the phenomenon of bilingualism. Languages have an inventory of emotionally charged words called the emotional lexicon, which are uniquely processed compared to other various word types. Understanding how these words with affective features are processed and the similarities and differences between the first language (L1) and the second or later acquired languages (L2) is relevant for better understanding of the mental architecture of the bilingual mind. In this review, we offer a general overview of the rich and fertile literature published on the topic of emotions and bilingualism, which carries significant implications beyond laboratory settings, manifesting relevance in both professional and personal domains. The key findings gathered from cognitive psycholinguistic studies employing diverse experimental paradigms including memory tasks, visual word processing (including tasks such as lexical decision, the emotional Stroop task, or affective priming), sentence processing, as well as electrophysiological and neuroimaging research will be discussed. Furthermore, we will examine a noteworthy phenomenon that has garnered substantial attention in the literature on language and bilingualism, the foreign language effect on decision-making and moral judgments. This phenomenon may elucidate intricate dynamics related to the processing of emotions, offering valuable insights into how bilingualism intersects with cognitive and emotional experiences.