中国英语学习者情感词汇的心理表征

Representation of English Emotion Words among English Learners in China

通过3个独立实验用于探索中国英语学习者的情感词汇心理表征,并试图发现英语情感词与具体词、抽象词之间存在的异同。实验结果发现:中国英语学习者的情感词较抽象词更容易回述;情感词表征的概念在具体性、形象性和语境通达性方面都不同于具体词和抽象词,它们比抽象词更加具体、比抽象词更容易产生镜像和语境;它们所诱发的反应词与刺激词之间的语义关系也少于具体词和抽象词。这些都可以说明,尽管存在学习环境、语言文化的差异,中国英语学习者的情感词不同于具体词和抽象词,应当被当作一个单独的词类来看待。

The present study aims to find out the representation of English emotion words among English learners in China. The distinctive features of emotion concepts in memory are examined in 3 separate experiments. The first demonstrates that English emotion words among Chinese learners are different from concrete words and abstract words, and they are easier to be recalled than abstract words. In the second experiment, ratings of abstract, concrete, and e- motion words are compared on concreteness, imageability, and context availability scales. Results revealed a differ- ence between all 3 word types on each of the 3 scales. Experiment 3 aims to probe into the difference of semantic association among emotion, concrete and abstract words. The results shows that the semantic relationship between the stimulus emotion words and their response words is much less than that of the abstract and concrete ones. The results are most consistent with the predictions of the semantic activation model.