Pavlenko's preface captures one's attention immediately. She believes that writing about human beings should include personal as well as scholarly insights. She then proceeds to demonstrate the value of the personal perspective, beginning with her own bilingual experience as a student of linguistics. She reports that, as a student, she continually asked questions of her teachers about bilingual issues because they were marginalized in her training. As a result of this marginalization, she is firmly committed to exposing the monolingual bias in all areas of linguistic research; she also rejects the view that language is a static system. Emotions, she argues, have been undertheorized in bilingual studies and SLA. Pavlenko brings new attention to research from SLA, bilingual studies, ethnographies, psycholinguistics, psychology, neurophsychology, memoirs, and anecdotes from her own life. The methodologies and research questions differ, as do the definitions of emotion in these fields. Pavlenko presents a comprehensive examination of relevant literature in all of these areas and frames that exploration with probing questions and results from her own research (a Web-based survey) and experience. She examines both emotion terms and emotion repertoires and asks: For multilingual speakers, are these repertoires distinct? Do they refer to universal notions of emotion varying only in their linguistic expression?
After laying out the value of a multilingual perspective, she examines the history of bilingual approaches to language and emotion, emphasizing the need to examine the language of emotion. She then moves through the linguistic hierarchy from prosody to semantics to discourse and social cognition, ending with an integrated perspective. In each chapter, she explains the dominant research paradigms as well as their failings. Additionally, she presents new findings based on her wide research. For example, she argues convincingly that it is not that the first language (L1) is the language of emotion and the second language (L2) that of detachment. Identities, particular discursive events, and linguistic ideologies all play a role in considering multilingualism and emotions.
In chapter 2, Pavlenko describes the myth of a link between bilingualism and psychopathology, prevalent until fairly late in the past century, and makes the very important point that multilinguals and emotion are not unitary phenomena, nor is there a single definition of language and emotion. Chapter 3 looks at vocal cues that signal emotion. As she points out, linguists researching pitch, loudness, rate, and rhythm do not discuss emotion and even object to emotion as an umbrella term. Still, research exists that has examined cross-cultural miscommunication of vocal cues in discourse analysis. Pavlenko cites a number of laboratory tests that indicate that, not surprisingly, native speakers rate higher at interpreting emotion among other native speakers of a particular language.
In chapter 4, Pavlenko examines semantic levels of emotion terms, noting that these are not equivalent from one language to another. She examines the three competing paradigms for approaching the emotion lexicon—nativist, universalist, and relativist—and then moves on to examine crosslinguistic differences that are admitted in each paradigm. Chapter 5 examines pragmatic questions. Pavlenko explains that expressions might be intended to produce a particular speech act, not express emotion—for example, Carrie might say she's sad, but what she really wants is the toy. Pavlenko also notes the importance of nonverbal communication and points out variation in styles within cultures. Studies indicate that different repertoires are used by bilinguals in different contexts; privacy, as a concept, is drawn upon by Russian bilinguals in the United States—for example. Pavlenko's own Web-based study shows that bilinguals use their affective repertoires strategically to achieve their own personal satisfaction.
In chapters 6 and 7, Pavlenko focuses on languages and emotions, first from an embodied perspective and then through a neurological perspective that considers psychoanalytic studies. One finding, for example, is that L1 taboo words elicit a stronger physical response than those in the L2 for clinical patients as well as healthy bilinguals.
Despite the wide disciplinary range of the research, I believe it would have been useful for Pavlenko to suggest a semantic scope for the term “emotion.” The studies she cites focus on terms that immediately come to mind, such as happiness and anger, but also discuss anomie, frustration, and desire. Still, Pavlenko's approach to the relationship between language and emotion is intriguing and invites new research agendas—one of her goals. Most importantly, she eloquently points out the need for more and better studies of multilinguals, and she convinces the reader not only through her argument but also through the subjective and evocative texts she cites. This thoughtful text would be useful in courses on SLA, bilingualism, and linguistic anthropology.
