Switching Languages May = Switching Personalities

[Chris Allen Thomas]

These are very interesting findings, but would you call this "personality"? 
Cultural identification and self-image are up for grabs frequently, based on 
experience (which affects the frames we access). What it says to me is that 
frames can be language specific, and the same message in one language has a 
completely different meaning in another.
Chris Allen Thomas
Educational Linguistics (Ph.D. Student)
Graduate School of Education
University of Pennsylvania
My Webpage: http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~chthomas


Quoting paulston+ at pitt.edu:

> > Switching Languages May = Switching Personalities
> > Fascinating study:
> >
> > People who are bicultural and speak two languages may actually shift
> > their personalities when they switch from one language to another,
> > according to new research. . . .The authors studied groups of Hispanic
> > women, all of whom were bilingual, but with varying degrees of
> > cultural identification. They found significant levels of
> > "frame-shifting" (changes in self perception) in bicultural
> > participants--those who participate in both Latino and Anglo culture.
> > . . .
> >
> > In one of the studies, a group of bilingual U.S. Hispanic women viewed
> > ads that featured women in different scenarios. The participants saw
> > the ads in one language (English or Spanish) and then, six months
> > later, they viewed the same ads in the other language. Their
> > perceptions of themselves and the women in the ads shifted depending
> > on the language. "One respondent, for example, saw an ad's main
> > character as a risk-taking, independent woman in the Spanish version
> > of the ad, but as a hopeless, lonely, confused woman in the English
> > version," write the authors.
> >
> >
> http://educationpolicyblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/switching-languages-may-
switching.html
> >
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> >
> One reason that one behaves/reacts differently in different languages is
> that the people you speak with/to are from a different culture and they
> behave differently which in turns colours your behaviour.  I don't think
> we need to drag Whorf into bilingualism -- even if undergraduates love
> him. Christina
>