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A recent study by Keysar, Hayakawa, and An (2012) suggests that "thinking in a foreign language" may reduce decision biases because a foreign language provides a greater emotional distance than a native tongue. The possibility of such "disembodied" cognition is of great interest for theories of affect and cognition and for many other areas of psychological theory and practice, from clinical and forensic psychology to marketing, but first this claim needs to be properly evaluated. The purpose of this review is to examine the findings of clinical, introspective, cognitive, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging studies of affective processing in bilingual speakers in order to identify converging patterns of results, to evaluate the claim about "disembodied cognition," and to outline directions for future inquiry. The findings to date reveal two interrelated processing effects. First-language (L1) advantage refers to increased automaticity of affective processing in the L1 and heightened electrodermal reactivity to L1 emotion-laden words. Second-language (L2) advantage refers to decreased automaticity of affective processing in the L2, which reduces interference effects and lowers electrodermal reactivity to negative emotional stimuli. The differences in L1 and L2 affective processing suggest that in some bilingual speakers, in particular late bilinguals and foreign language users, respective languages may be differentially embodied, with the later learned language processed semantically but not affectively. This difference accounts for the reduction of framing biases in L2 processing in the study by Keysar et al. (2012). The follow-up discussion identifies the limits of the findings to date in terms of participant populations, levels of processing, and types of stimuli, puts forth alternative explanations of the documented effects, and articulates predictions to be tested in future research.

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This study examines imagined professional and linguistic communities available to preservice and in-service English as a second language and English as a foreign language teachers enrolled in one TESOL program. A discursive analysis of the students' positioning in their linguistic autobiographies suggests that the traditional discourse of linguistic competence positions students as members of one of two communities, native speakers or non-native speakers/L2 learners. The analysis also suggests that contemporary theories of bilingualism and second language acquisition, in particular Cook's (1992Cook's ( , 1999 notion of multicompetence, open up an alternative imagined community, that of multicompetent, bilingual, and multilingual speakers. This option allows some teachers to construe themselves and their future students as legitimate L2 users rather than as failed native speakers of the target language.In the past decade, the English teaching profession engaged in a lively debate on the status of non-native speakers (NNSs) in the field, pointing to numerous ways in which NNSs are treated as second-class citizens (cf. Braine, 1999). To address this problem from the perspective of critical pedagogy, Brutt-Griffler and Samimy (1999) conducted a pioneering study of a graduate seminar in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) where students, all second language (L2) users of English, were invited to examine the native/non-native speaker (NS/NNS) dichotomy, drawing on their own teaching experiences and learning trajectories. The authors' findings indicate that although the process of empowerment is neither simple nor linear, teacher educators can help NNS students to generate a new sense of professional agency and legitimacy.

How do bilinguals experience emotions? Do they perceive and express emotions similarly or differently in their respective languages? Does the first language remain forever the language of the heart? What role do emotions play in second language learning and in language attrition? Why do some writers prefer to write in their second language? In this provocative book, Pavlenko challenges the monolingual bias of modern linguistics and psychology and uses the lens of bi- and multilingualism to offer a fresh perspective on the relationship between language and emotions. Bringing together insights from the fields of linguistics, neurolinguistics, psychology, anthropology, psychoanalysis and literary theory, Pavlenko offers a comprehensive introduction to this cross-disciplinary movement. This is a highly readable and thought-provoking book that draws on empirical data and first hand accounts and offers invaluable advice for novice researchers. It will appeal to scholars and researchers across many disciplines.

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