Monday, February 21, 2011

switching language can change your personality

This article talks about how bilingual people would swich their personality when speaking or hearing a different language. This was a study on bilingual hispanice women, they found that found that women classified themselves and others as more assertive when they spoke Spanish than when they spoke English. This phonomenon is known as frame shifting, when people have different ways of interpretation and reactions in between languages. I found this study interesting because the U.S is known as the melting pot, especially in New York City, where you encounter all different kinds of ethnic groups, hears all different kinds of languages. I felt the same way as a bilingual person, speaking Chinese and English, that I would unconsciously speak these two language with different attitude and interprete it differently. English is not my native language, so when speaking in English, I would be more concious about the content and the situation I am in, where as in speaking in Chinese, I would speaking faster and have more emotions attach to it. I am not sure about the different personality thing, to me it is just a different kind of mood in speaking the languages, or maybe there is some psychological factors invloved that I am not aware of.

1 comment:

jjbs said...
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