Emotion Language and Emotion Narratives of Turkish-English Late Bilinguals

The primary focus of this research was to investigate the emotion language and emotion narratives of Turkish-English late bilinguals who have been living in the U.S. Previous research has shown that the emotion language and narratives of second language learners and native speakers of English are different. This study focused on late bilinguals who had learnt English in instructed settings in their home country, and came to the U.S. for M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. The study consisted of two parts. In the first part, the elicited personal narratives of Turkish-English late bilinguals in English were compared to those elicited from native speakers of English with regard to both emotion and emotion-laden word production and narrative structure. The results showed that there were differences between the emotion language and narratives of the bilinguals and native speakers in their English narratives. In the second part of the study, personal narratives were elicited from Turkish-English late bilinguals in their first language, Turkish and their emotion language and narrative structure from their English narratives were compared to their narratives produced in Turkish. Similarly, the results showed that the emotion language and emotion narratives of bilinguals in English and Turkish were different. In conclusion, late bilinguals\u27 emotion language and narratives are different in their first and second languages. Furthermore, they are different from the emotion language and narratives of native speakers