Expression of Emotions as a Part of Socio-Cultural Identity - from the Perspective of Sla

Expression of emotions as a part of socio-cultural identity, from the perspective of SLA.

Language is more than just a tool to communicate. It connects people with something greater than themselves. A common language breaks barriers between people. It allows people that share a language to identify with each other although they are different. A new language makes you notice things that you have always missed.. And the language shows the way to the heart of the people and, therefore, helps to move through all levels of society.

When individuals change socio-cultural environment their ideas and conceptions cannot some times find the equivalents in the new environment and in this case our socio-linguistic identity can be destabilized. In searching for the balance between out future and the past and the appreciation of concepts and ideas that we never knew, we can preserve our own identity, or try to negotiate our past and acquire the new face of our identity, or we can become wiser and adopt our past identity to the new conditions in order to benefit from our L2 language and culture. In any case the choice to preserve, to negotiate own identity or to adopt it to the new concepts in favor of something new, or "cool", or more beneficial is self conscious, i.e. controlled and maintained by individual and certainly it affects the language use at first.

To come closer to the formulation of the main inquiry of this essay we would like to present the following citation:

What we have to translate, in effect, is not a word but a whole culture, to see how an emotion - and the name of that emotion - fits into the systematic worldview, language and the way of life of the society.

(Solomon, 1995:256)

As a L2 learner we try to impose our ideas and concepts on the acquired language, however sometimes it's appeared to be challenging in terms of the expression of emotions.

We always had the feeling that we can translate to L2 the most emotion concepts, presented in our L1 but when we do so we do not feel any satisfaction or we do not have a feeling of them, even it seems sometimes that the exact translation from L1 to L2 is more unnatural, artificial. In order to check whether it's only our feeling or it's a rather common problem we appealed to a kind of socio-linguistic study, which took place in multi- linguistic and - cultural environment. For us was interesting to see how the L2 speaker, of a high proficiency level of language would engage with an emotional topic in the context of formal and informal discourse. To summarize our goals for this essay we can formulate two questions:

- The expression of emotions in L2: is it challenging or not and if so what kind of explanations can be found among L2 speakers.

- The socio-linguistic identity in multicultural environment: is it maintained or negotiated and which factors play role in this kind of choice.

On a basis of the data, we have received at the time of our studies, and on a basis of our own experience as L2 learner, and with the support of some works we will try to find some possible answers to above posted questions.

Identity and language

First of all we need to determine what we understand under linguistic and socio-cultural identity and how it could be related to the process of SLA.

Since its beginning, SLA research has tried to take into account the fact that any acquisition of the language does not happen only in the learner's mind , but in the interaction of the mind and the social context (Brown, Malmkjaer & Williams, 1996). Certainly in such interaction the personal identity plays one of the central roles, which can determine the motivation and the success in L2. The identity of an individual person is defined by its social affiliation. Giles and Byrne (1982, in Pavlenko and Backledge, 2004) developed a theory of ethnolinguistic identity which considers language to be its representative, marker of ethnic identity and group membership. The L1 used in his social environment, transmitted to him by social and linguistic interactions, forms his linguistic identity. Therefore from the socio-linguistic perspective of SLA, while we acquiring the new language we have the same chance to acquire the socio-cultural and linguistic identity of target language community as well. It appeared to be hard in the condition of formal education, in the class room, where there is no interaction with the target language community, but it's absolutely different in the case of longitudinal study abroad or traveling or immigration. By achieving the high proficiency level of L2 one would like to perfect his target language by imitating the natives and replacing his identity by the identity of the target language society. Such situation occurred very often among immigrants, and the explanation for it we could probably find following and Norton (1995: 8) "identity references desire - the desire for recognition, the desire for affiliation and the desire for security and safety". For the immigrants, who made such choice to live and work in the homogeneous society of their L2, recognition is crucial for their successful happy lives. But is it the same in the context of multicultural society?

In nowadays in multilingual context English is considered to be a lingua franca as an alternative code which allows its users to distinguish a peer universe in which their complex, multilingual identities can be performed and recognized in a way they are not within the larger society.

According to Graddol (1998:27, cited in Cortese & Duszak, 2005:141) "... young people tend to see English as a language of international youth culture associate it with a common generational identity rather the specific national roots. However this generational identity does not conflict with their national identities, which are well expressed and conveyed by their mother tongues. This explains why even speaking English Germans will want to sound like Germans [...], not like Britons and Americans". English is not a marker of their Anglo-American identity, it's a lingua franca in which they perform duties and benefit from using it.

In her study Pavlenko and Blackledge (2004:21) proposed three types of identities:

- imposed identity: or non-negotiated are those that individuals cannot contest or resist.

- Assumed identities, which are accepted and not