Alexithymia and learning experience: their relation in foreign language acquisition

Abstract

Both positive and negative emotions have demonstrated to have an impact on the foreign language learners’ academic experiences. Many research over the decades have focused on the influence of negative emotions in language learning, and in recent years positive emotions have been increasingly researched as well. Results show that students’ emotions in the classroom environment play a big role on their learning experience, facilitating or debilitating their learning progress in the event of positive and negative emotions respectively. Anyway, when talking about individual differences and when recognizing the importance of emotions as a motivational drive for academic progress and success, it is important to take into account the existence of alexithymic people as well. The word “alexithymia” literally refers to the situation or condition in which people don’t have words to describe their own emotions (from Greek, “a”=lack, “lexis”= word, “thymos”= emotion). People with alexithymia, indeed, find it difficult to recognize and identify their own and other people’s emotions. Alexithymia is not a medical condition, it does not have a diagnosis because it can be present along a continuum: therefore, people can present various degrees of this condition. The main goal of my research is to investigate how the second language learning experience of alexithymic people can be affected by the absence of emotional recognition and emotional cues.