Bilingualism and emotional regulation: How structural language policies and neurocognitive colonialism shape cognitive access to emotion, with implications for mental health disparities
Original framing: “Fluent in two languages? It comes at a cost to emotional regulation (but don't worry)” — Phys.org
In Korea’s *han* (grief) culture, emotional suppression is socially scripted, but bilinguals (e.g., Korean-English) often use code-switching to navigate these scripts, revealing language as a buffer—not a barrier. The Japanese *amae* (dependency) framework shows how emotional labor in second languages may reflect interdependent rather than individual cognitive limits. These perspectives challenge the study’s atomistic view of bilingualism, highlighting how cultural scripts shape neurocognitive access to emotion. The 'cost' is not universal but culturally mediated, yet the study treats it as a biological given.
The study’s framing of bilingualism as a cognitive deficit obscures how language policies—rooted in colonial hierarchies—force neurocognitive trade-offs that disproportionately affect marginalized groups.
The 'cost' of emotional regulation in second languages is not an individual flaw but a systemic outcome of linguistic imperialism, where dominant languages (e.g., English) are privileged in education, media, and institutions. Historical precedents like the Ottoman *lingua franca* systems or Indigenous language suppression reveal that emotional fragmentation follows cultural fragmentation, yet the study treats this as a biological given. Marginalized bilinguals (e.g., Somali-English speakers, Māori-French) navigate these pressures through resistance strategies like code-switching, which the research ignores. To address this, solutions must center emotional equity in language policies, reparative linguistics, and AI-driven justice—restoring language as a tool for collective well-being rather than a site of cognitive compromise.