Saudi Bilinguals’ Language Preferences for Emotional Expression: Exploring Their Language Emotional Resonance and Codeswitching Habits

Abstract

The present study follows the wave of research regarding language and emotions (Harris et al., 2003; Dewaele, 2004b, 2006, 2010; Panicacci & Dewaele, 2018; Dewaele et al., 2023) by investigating the relationship between Saudi bilinguals’ language emotional resonance (LER) and codeswitching (CS) habits on their language preferences for emotional expression. It examines the effects of sociobiographical factors (gender and education level), linguistic factors (frequency of use, proficiency levels, and language dominance) of their Arabic L1 and English L2, and topic (personal/emotional, taboo/swearwords, religious, and hobbies and interests) and interlocutor (family, friends, colleagues, and strangers) types on the mentioned dependent variables. 172 Saudi participants filled out an online questionnaire adapted from the BEQ (Dewaele & Pavlenko, 2001-2003) and the RER-LX scale (Toivo et al., 2022). The collected data went under quantitative descriptive analyses. The findings elucidated that females had higher LER for the second language (L2) and CS more frequently, and participants with lower degrees experienced more CS. Moreover, participants who were more proficient in the L2 and used it often still preferred the first language (L1) for emotional expression. Furthermore, topic and interlocutor types majorly affected CS frequency, and L1 had higher LER and is most participants' preferred language for emotional expression. Finally, the participants were shown to have reduced emotional resonance (RER) for the L2 and used it as a distancing mechanism. This study represents the dynamic nature between LER and CS for bilingual speakers. The implications of this dissertation suggest increasing the sample size, including age of acquisition (AoA) and context of acquisition (CoA) as preliminary variables, and employing proficiency assessments for better accuracy of results in future research.