Conférence : Affect, proficiency and decision-making in a second language: Insights from a police interrogation room

Conférencière : Aneta Pavlenko, Drexel University et University of York (Royaume-Uni)

Résumé : In the past decade, psychology has witnessed an explosion of studies of decision-making by bi- and multilingual individuals. The accumulated findings reveal that decision-making in the L1 is more impulsive, while in the L2 participants make more rational choices, a tendency dubbed the foreign language effect (Costa et al., 2014; Del Maschio, 2022a, b; Keysar et al., 2012; Pavlenko, 2017; Purpuri et al., 2024; Stankovich et al., 2022). In applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, meanwhile, we have seen increased concerns about ways in which limited L2 proficiency and social inequalities constrain L2 speakers’ ability to make informed decisions (Angermeyer, 2015; Filipović, 2022; Pavlenko, 2023; Pavlenko et al., 2019). In this talk, I will consider how the insights and recommendations derived from both strands of research apply to one life-changing event: a suspect’s decision to remain silent or talk to the police. Then I will turn the tables and use insights from the criminal justice system to interrogate the state of affairs in academia: Do we need to – and can we – speak to each other across the disciplinary boundaries? Do we want to – and know how to – speak to stakeholders in the outside world? How much does academic research affect language decisions in the criminal justice system? And how can research in Canada shed light on the issues that can’t be easily addressed in the UK and the USA?

Biographie : Aneta Pavlenko (Ph.D. in Linguistics, Cornell University, 1997) is a Research Professor at Drexel University (USA) and a Visiting Scholar at the University of York (UK). Her research examines the relationship between multilingualism, cognition, and emotions, including in legal contexts. She has lectured widely in North America, Europe and Asia, has authored more than a hundred articles and published eleven books, the latest of which is Multilingualism and history(Cambridge University Press, 2023). She has testified in court as an expert witness and co-chaired, with Diana Eades, the international Communication of Rights Group that produced the Guidelines for communicating rights to non-native speakers of English in Australia, England and Wales, and the USA(2015). She is Past President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and winner of the 2006 BAAL Book of the Year award, the 2009 TESOL award for Distinguished Research, the 2021 AAAL Research article award and the 2023 AAAL Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award.

Commanditaires : Département de linguistique, Département de didactique des langues, Institut de sciences cognitives et le CRLEC.