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Are stories just as transporting when not in your native tongue?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2019

ASHLEY CHUNG-FAT-YIM Open the ORCID record for ASHLEY CHUNG-FAT-YIM [Opens in a new window] ,
ELENA CILENTO ,
EWELINA PIOTROWSKA  and
RAYMOND A. MAR
ASHLEY CHUNG-FAT-YIM*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto
ELENA CILENTO
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto
EWELINA PIOTROWSKA
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto
RAYMOND A. MAR
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto
*
†Address for correspondence: Ashley Chung-Fat-Yim, Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3. e-mail: ashc88@yorku.ca
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Abstract

We spend much of our time consuming stories across different types of media, often becoming deeply engaged or transported into these stories. However, there has been almost no research into whether processing a story in one’s non-native language influences our level of transportation. We analyzed three existing datasets in order to compare engagement with English-language stories for those who reported English as their first language and those who reported English as their second language. Stories were presented as text (Study 1), audio (Study 2), and short films (Study 3). Across all studies, equivalent levels of narrative transportation between language groups were found, even after accounting for age and years of English fluency. These results are in contrast to some previous proposals that emotional reactions are attenuated during non-native language processing, despite equivalent levels of comprehension. Our evidence indicates that individuals processing a narrative in their second language feel just as transported into the story as those processing the same narrative in their native language.

Keywords

narrative transportationsecond language processingbilingualismemotiondiscourse
Type
Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 11 , Issue 2: Special Issue on Iconicity , June 2019 , pp. 285 - 309
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Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2019 

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Footnotes

*

The authors would like to thank David MacDonald for his assistance with the literature review. This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council under Grants # 435-2012-1420 and # 435-2017-1030, awarded to RM.

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