Emotion word development in bilingual children living in majority and minority contexts

The lexicon of emotion words is fundamental to interpersonal communication. To examine how emotion word acquisition interacts with societal context, the present study investigated emotion word development in three groups of child Korean users aged 4–13: those who use Korean primarily outside the home as a majority language (MajKCs) or inside the home as a minority language (MinKCs), and those who use Korean both inside and outside the home (KCs). These groups, along with a group of L1 Korean adults, rated the emotional valence of 61 Korean emotion words varying in frequency, valence, and age of acquisition. Results showed KCs, MajKCs, and MinKCs all converging toward adult-like valence ratings by ages 11–13; unlike KCs and MajKCs, however, MinKCs did not show age-graded development and continued to diverge from adults in emotion word knowledge by these later ages. These findings support the view that societal context plays a major role in emotion word development, offering one reason for the intergenerational communication difficulties reported by immigrant families.

情感词汇表对于人际交流至关重要。本研究旨在探讨情感词汇习得与社会语境之间的相互作用，调查了4至13岁韩国儿童使用者的情感词汇发展情况，分为三组：主要在家外使用韩语作为主要语言（MajKCs）或在家内使用韩语作为少数族裔语言（MinKCs）的儿童，以及在家内外都使用韩语的儿童（KCs）。这些群体以及一组第一语言为韩语的成人，对61个韩语情感词汇的情感价值进行了评估，这些词汇在频率、情感价值和习得年龄上有所不同。结果显示，KCs、MajKCs和MinKCs在11至13岁时均趋向于成熟的情感价值评分；然而，与KCs和MajKCs不同，MinKCs没有显示出年龄分级的进展，并在这些较晚的年龄阶段继续在情感词汇知识上与成人产生差异。这些发现支持了社会语境在情感词汇发展中的主导作用，为移民家庭报告的代际沟通困难提供了一个原因。