Have you ever been told by someone that you sound different depending on which one of your languages you speak? Moreover, have you ever been described as having different personalities for different languages?
If you speak more than one language, it is likely that you have noticed this variation—you go from Language 1 to Language 2 and suddenly, you swear a bit more often, or find it easier to say what is on your mind. Because languages differ in their capability of expressing emotion, multilinguals have been observed to behave or articulate their feelings differently based on the language of choice1—we adjust the way we speak to fit the limitations of our mode of communication, similarly to how a retail employee will put on their ‘customer service voice’ whenever they deal with people at work (which, at least in my experience, manifests in a higher-pitched tone).
Language Voices Culture
An important aspect to consider when discussing personality is culture. As something that shapes our personal values and influences our perception of the world, culture is also a blueprint for communication—it provides us with a script of sorts, from which we gain awareness on how to express ourselves2. Language brings this script to life, and thus, serves as a tangible representation of our character. Because of that, it also reflects what is deemed appropriate in a particular culture, resulting in slight variation from one language to another, or even one speaker to another.
Polish culture is largely based on complaining—expressing negative attitudes towards oneself and society is normalised and can be used for in-group solidarity3. Complaining can be regarded as a type of politeness speech in Polish, as it is used in lieu of small talk and creates an understanding between the speakers. This can lead to the perception that Polish speakers are honest and direct, but also pessimistic. This heavily contrasts the American culture of affirmation and positive attitude no matter the situation4, which can in turn be viewed as insincere and unnatural. These differences in perspective are reflected in speech through the frequent use of profanity or complaints in Polish or the routine pleasantries of ‘Hi, how are you? I’m great, thank you’ in English, which give us a glimpse of the type of person our interlocutor is.
Language in the Digital Age
Although so far, I have only discussed spoken language, this phenomenon certainly extends to the digital sphere as well. On the internet, this switch in expression can be analysed from multiple different angles, for example how we speak depending on the platform. Do you type the same way on TikTok as you would on Twitter? Do you hear your favourite YouTuber speak the same way in their video essays as they do in their Instagram stories?
Furthermore, there can be a certain dissonance between our offline and online language, since we have more control over how we are perceived on the internet due to the parts of ourselves we decide to share. Just like Instagram feeds, language use can be very calculated and specific, which serves as another remainder that not everything online is as it seems.
To wrap up, I thought I would share a personal anecdote and see if anyone has experienced something similar. As we all know, there are many different ways to express laughter through text—‘haha’, ‘lol’, or ‘lmao’ are some popular English options. In Polish, it is still quite common to type ‘XD’ or its variations (non-capital letters, multiple Ds, etc.), which, from my understanding and depending on the person, can be perceived as ‘cringy’ when used in English. I cannot begin to count how many times my intrinsic reaction to a funny message or a meme from my friend was to type a long string of XDs before I realised that they are not Polish and embarrassingly deleting it to replace it with a more socially acceptable ‘LMAO’ instead.
Has something like this ever happened to you? Have you noticed a difference in how you speak in your languages or how you use them online? Please let me know in the comments!
- Pavlenko A. (2008). Emotion and emotion-laden words in the bilingual lexicon. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11, 147–164. doi:10.1017/S1366728908003283 ↩︎
- Tsai J. L., Knutson B., Fung H. H. (2006). Cultural variation in affect valuation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 288–307. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.2.288 ↩︎
- Kurtyka, A. (2019). I complain, therefore I am: On indirect complaints in Polish. Journal of pragmatics, 153, 34-45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2019.04.009 ↩︎
- Wojciszke, B. (2004). The negative social world: The Polish culture of complaining. International Journal of Sociology, 34(4), 38-59. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207659.2004.11043140 ↩︎
Super interesting topic! I was born in Sweden then lived most of my childhood in America before moving back to Sweden for highschool so I had the experience of being exposed to teenagers speaking Swedish online for the first time at like 14. It was like being thrown in the deep end I found it so fascinating how memes were translated and which words were abbreviated when texting because most of my experience with the language was just verbal. It’s also made me kind of terrified of texting new people in Swedish to this day because I’m just not familiar with the digital vocabulary in the same way I am in English.
I really loved the topic of this blog post, it was very interesting! It’s true, sometimes linguistic differences they can cause confusion, especially when people don’t share the same cultural background. During my Erasmus in Paris, I was a bit confused at first while texting with my friends because they say ‘mdr’ instead of ‘ahaha’ (as we do in Italy) when they laugh. But thankfully, now we have emojis to bridge those language gaps! 😂
There’s this phrase that is used so frequently during my major Dutch language and culture: “Language creates the world.” As in: how we call certain things makes how we see it (if we wouldn’t have the word ‘cat’, we would not notice, or at least notice less the phenomenon ‘cat’. I really think that has something to do with this, since we as humans need to relate to these phenomenons and that helps us create our identity for at least a bit too, I suppose?