language choice, foreign language effect, social norms, moral decision-making

Michał B. Paradowski, Institute of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw
Meagan Y. Driver, Michigan State University/Georgetown University
Alexandra Dylman, Department of Special Education, Stockholm University

It has often been posited that bilinguals are more emotional and subjective when speaking their mother tongue while more distanced and objective when using their second language (Dewaele 2004; Harris 2004; Pavlenko 2005; Caldwell-Harris & Ayçiçeği-Dinn 2009; Opitz & Degner 2012). This perception is shared both by listeners/readers and by the bilinguals themselves (Gumperz 1982).
However, a series of recent studies (Gawinkowska, Paradowski & Bilewicz 2013; Costa et al. 2014; Geipel, Hadjichristidis & Surian 2015, 2016; Cipolletti, McFarlane & Weissglass 2016; Corey et al. 2017; Brouwer 2020; Dylman & Champoux-Larsson 2019; Karataş 2019; Driver 2020) have gone beyond this simple, clear-cut distinction between the more ‘emotional’ L1 and the more ‘distanced’ L2 by revealing a new dimension once social norms and moral decisions are taken into account. Researchers have begun to extend the scope of enquiry into social norms (e.g. manifest in the use of swear words) as well as moral judgments, usually by making reference to the ‘foreign-language effect’ (henceforth FLE; Keysar, Hayakawa & An 2012), which posits that speakers make more utilitarian, cost-and-effect judgments in their L2 but more conservative and deontological decisions in their L1.
While the above-mentioned early studies support the FLE with respect to moral judgments and language, not all studies have been able to corroborate its existence (e.g. Čavar & Tytus 2017; Hayakawa et al. 2017; Brouwer 2019; Krautz & Čavar 2019). This discrepancy leads to the necessity of looking towards factors that can strengthen the current understanding of the FLE and the limits on its manifestations.
This symposium brings together researchers investigating the influence of language choice (L1, L2, L3+) on performance and actions involving social normativity as well as moral decision-making. We invite contributions from scholars who apply different ① perspectives, research questions (judgments of misconduct, perception of outgroups, gambling, decision-making, etc.), ② conditions (e.g., single-language blocks, alternate language blocks, code-switching, etc.) and ③ experimental paradigms (behavioural – reaction times, skin electroconductivity, eye-tracking/pupillometry; translation, ratings, questionnaire data, interviews) from a wide array of ④ language contexts and populations. In considering the FLE from multiple angles, this symposium seeks to tease out the possible moderating variables that may explain when and under what conditions the FLE and related phenomena seem to hold and when they do not.

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