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Many multilingual people switch into a different self with each language: they argue more reservedly in Mandarin than in Swiss German, are more emotional in Albanian or prefer to solve problems in English. What is behind the phenomenon?
The steam extractor is roaring in the family kitchen and the children are just coming home. “I speak almost exclusively Italian with them,” says author and yoga teacher Elisa Malinverni in the broadest Bernese German. Her two children generally answer in German. But today the older son interjects: “Mängisch parleni o Italiano!”
When I have to encourage my children in the morning, I switch to Bernese German.
There is a colorful back and forth, a switching between Italian and Bernese German in this house. And yet: For Elisa Malinverni, every language has its own function. «For me, Italian is, on the one hand, the language of saying sayings. There’s this flirty vibe and I can channel my inner Sophia Loren. But Italian also has a certain severity because it is deeply connected to my mother, a very authoritarian figure in my life.”
Legend:
Author Elisa Malinverni has a different language for different facets of her life.
Maya Varenka Kovatsch
What was once frowned upon in her own parents’ house, switching between Italian and German, is now consciously used by the mother of two as a tool in everyday life: “When I have to drive my children in the morning, I switch to Bernese German. Then I’m less strict with them than in Italian.”
The “emotional resonance” of languages
“Many multilingual people perceive a language and personality switch,” says Jean-Marc Dewaele, professor of applied linguistics at Birkbeck University in London.
Originally raised in Belgium, he knows the phenomenon from his own experience: “I read and write poems almost exclusively in French. We speak a lot of Dutch in the family. But as an academic, I am British: both in my choice of words, in my attitude and in my habitus.”
Jean-Marc Dewaele’s thesis was confirmed in numerous studies with a total of 1,500 participants: 80 percent of the multilingual people examined stated that they behaved differently depending on the language. According to Dewaele, the “emotional resonance” of languages works in the background.
Multilingualism and morality
A well-known thought experiment from moral psychology makes the emotional resonance of languages tangible: five people are lying tied up on a railway track. A train is heading towards them without brakes. Only you have the opportunity to stop the train by pushing a very strong person off a bridge onto the track. «Would you do that? Tu le ferais? Would you do that? Would you like to do that?”
Depending on the language in which the moral dilemma is presented to you, you might come to a different conclusion. This is the result of a study published in 2014 study the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.
Study participants reacted more emotionally in their first language and more rationally in their second language.
In the first language, 80 percent of those surveyed decided against pushing the man off the bridge. In English, the participants’ second language, the ratio changed: three times more respondents said they would do it and decided according to the principle of utility, i.e. more utilitarian.
The study leaders came to the conclusion that psychological distance and pragmatism are greater in the second language than in the first language. “The study participants reacted more emotionally in their first language and more rationally in their second language,” adds Jean-Marc Dewaele, who is familiar with the study.
Depending on the context in which you learned a language, more or less emotions are associated with it: “We learn our mother tongue or first language in a family, very emotional context. When we learn a language in a classroom, linguistic access to the emotional world is often completely missing. In the first language the emotional resonance is very great, in the second case it is small.”
Use the language switch consciously
Like author and yoga teacher Elisa Malinverni, multilingual people can actively use the Switch. For example, it can be helpful to think about financial issues in a more rational second language.
Language switching can also be used as a tool in psychotherapy, says Jean-Marc Dewaele. “Patients may be able to describe trauma more easily in a more rational second language. At a later point in time, these can be pronounced in the first language, even if the therapist does not understand the language.”
Language as a facet of one’s own personality
Languages, with their emotional resonance, can resonate with the speaker in different ways, like instruments. “I think it’s wonderful to experience yourself differently in different languages,” summarizes Elisa Malinverni. “You have your own language for almost every facet of your personality.”
The linguist Jean-Marc Dewaele adds: An original second or foreign language can also become a new language of the heart.