Do you feel like a different person when you speak a foreign language? Here is why!

An article by Valentina Bianchini

“I learnt Danish at Oxford, because my wife-to-be, who is Danish, didn’t like my Anglophone personality: when I was speaking English, I was becoming too intellectual. Fortunately, she liked my Danish personality” (Wierzbicka, 2004).

If the words of the multilingual German professor Christoph Harbsmeier (2004) resonate with you, you’ve probably already experienced the surprising, weird phenomenon of feeling like having different personalities when speaking different languages.

If you are not familiar with this phenomenon, let me describe the most common “symptoms” for you. Many bilingual or multilingual people experience “feeling different” or “acting different” across the languages they can speak, including being funnier, being more goal-oriented, having a different tone of voice or different body language and so on.

For example, just two days ago my mum confessed that her south-Italian personality re-emerges when she speaks dialect rather than standard Italian. From an observer’s point of view, I can testify she’s right: her south-Italian personality includes shouting on the phone, talking a lot about family issues, laughing more, using more hand gestures. Even her tone of voice is slightly different.

Similar experiences have been reported even by people who speak one or more foreign languages. Contrary to bilinguals, in this case the foreign language(s) has been learnt later in life and its mastery is not necessarily at the level of a native speaker. Nonetheless, some people do declare they feel like a slightly different person when switching to a second language.

How is that possible? Is it really that different languages come with different personalities? Is it then possible to develop a new personality by learning a foreign language?

Here is what research tells us.

As the experience of feeling quite different when speaking different languages has been vastly reported, researchers have two possible hypotheses to explain this phenomenon: either people suffer (or benefit?) from a split personality — quite in line with schizophrenic symptoms (Adler, 1977) — or people only act differently across languages, but personality stays the same (this explanation is known as the “cultural accommodation hypothesis”).

Let’s see some research examples.

In one study (Chen & Bond, 2010) Hong-Kong Chinese-English bilingual bicultural participants were asked questions by a Caucasian interviewer and by a Chinese interviewer, both in English and in Cantonese. As mentioned before, all participants were bilingual and bicultural: this is an important detail, as it means that they had internalised the cultural norms of both the English and the Chinese cultural context.

The interviews were rated by external observers, who judged participants to be more assertive, open and extraverted when speaking in English rather than in Cantonese, and when talking in Cantonese to the Caucasian interviewer rather than to the Chinese interviewer.

These results speak for the cultural accommodation hypothesis: it seems that different languages activate a set of rules and personality traits belonging to different cultures.

The cultural accommodation explanation is strongly confirmed by another study (Luna, Ringberg & Peracchio, 2008) where bicultural bilingual and monocultural bilingual participants were observed. Contrary to bicultural bilinguals, monocultural bilinguals are proficient in both languages, but they did not get exposed to one of the cultures. Therefore, if it is true that the reason why people feel different when speaking different languages is because different languages activate different cultural norms, this activation effect should not be present in monocultural bilinguals.

In this study, both English-Spanish bicultural bilinguals and English-Spanish monocultural bilinguals were asked to rate words related to the spectrum “feminine — masculine and dependent- independent”. Half of the participants rated the words in Spanish and the other half in English. Results showed differences in the ratings between the two languages only for bicultural bilinguals, with participants being more likely to give non-stereotypical judgments (e.g. feminine associated with independence) in Spanish rather than in English. On the contrary, no differences were found for monocultural bilinguals!

This suggests that the two languages — English and Spanish — activated different internal cultural norms, belonging to the Hispanic and Anglo culture, that guided participants in their rating choices. However, this activation was not possible for monocultural bilinguals, because they do not have access to the cultural norms of one of the two languages — so there is nothing to be activated, basically.

From these results, it seems that bilinguals do not suffer from schizophrenia (*sigh of relief), but rather that they change their behavioural, cognitive and emotional response according to the cultural norms primed by the language they’re using in a specific moment.

How about people who speak more than one language as a foreign language? Is the “feeling different” phenomenon still present?

The answer is “yes”, it is present. One study (Ożańska-Ponikwia, 2012) was run with Polish participants who spoke English as a foreign language and who were exposed to the cultural norms of English-speaking countries. Findings showed that some personality traits of participants were positively correlated with “feeling different” when speaking a foreign language. In particular, the results showed that participants who were more extraverted, friendly, cooperative and open to new experiences were more likely to feel different when speaking English. “Feeling different” was also linked to higher scores in Emotional Intelligence.

In line with previous research, this study shows that people who speak more than one language do not have a split personality. Rather, it seems that some personality traits might explain why some people do notice certain changes in their behaviour when speaking a foreign language, with Extraversion, Agreeableness, Openness to Experience and Emotional Intelligence being linked to higher awareness of “feeling different”, compared to people scoring lower on these traits.

So, does personality change when switching language?

To draw a conclusion on the topic, research has shown that many people, both bilinguals and foreign-language speakers, often feel different when switching across languages. It seems that these changes are strongly connected with having been exposed to the cultural norms belonging to the languages spoken, which are activated when the linguistic switch happens.

In line with that, research suggests that people engage in a behavioural, emotional and cognitive change dictated by the cultural switch, rather than really having a split personality. Finally, it seems that some personality traits might affect the degree to which people are aware of “feeling different” across the languages they speak, suggesting that those changes might just happen every time different cultural norms are activated, although not everybody is able to notice them.

Want to know more around this topic?

There is plenty of research on the topic and this post is not meant to be a complete review of the literature. If you feel inspired and would like to know more on the topic, I suggest you research on Google Scholar with key words like “bilingualism”, “personality changes”, “foreign language”, “self”, “selves”.

References:

Chen, S. X., & Bond, M. H. (2010). Two languages, two personalities? Examining language effects on the expression of personality in a bilingual context. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(11), 1514–1528.

Luna, D., Ringberg, T., & Peracchio, L. A. (2008). One individual, two identities: Frame switching among biculturals. Journal of consumer research, 35(2), 279–293.

Ożańska-Ponikwia, K. (2012). What has personality and emotional intelligence to do with ‘feeling different while using a foreign language?. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 15(2), 217–234.

Wierzbicka, A. (2004). Preface: Bilingual lives, bilingual experience. Journal of multilingual and multicultural development, 25(2–3), 94–104.

Nodoushan, A. S. (2014). The Bilingual Self or Selves?. Online Submission, 8(3), 107–116.

Adler, K. (1977). Collective and individual bilingualism: A sociolinguistic study. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.