UNTRANSLATABLE EMOTIONS AS SITES OF TRANSLANGUAGING: L1 AFFECTIVE CONCEPTS, ENGLISH EXPRESSION, AND EMOTIONAL AUTHENTICITY AMONG ESL LEARNERS

Abstract

There exist emotional constructs that can never be conveyed using another language. Certain emotional experiences — such as Korean han, Turkish hüzün, Arabic yaʿaburnee, and Urdu kasak and hijr — are unique to their source cultures and resist direct translation into any other language. The central challenge lies in how ESL learners, whose first language (L1) lexically encodes such affective states, negotiate and articulate these emotions within the expressive constraints of English. This study investigates that negotiation.

Three research questions guide this inquiry: (1) which L1 emotional concepts prove most resistant to English expression; (2) what translanguaging strategies ESL learners deploy when attempting such expression; and (3) whether English-mediated articulations of these emotions preserve the affective authenticity of their L1 counterparts. The theoretical framework draws on translanguaging theory, which reconceptualises cross-linguistic communication as a natural and dynamic feature of human language behaviour (García & Wei, 2014; Li Wei, 2018).

A qualitative design employing Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is adopted (Smith et al., 2009). Data are generated from 8–12 Urdu/Punjabi-speaking ESL learners at the University of Okara, Pakistan, through three instruments: an emotion elicitation task, a semi-structured interview guide, and a reflective written assignment. Data analysis follows the thematic analysis framework of Braun and Clarke (2006).

The study advances the hypothesis that untranslatable emotions constitute authentic sites of translanguaging, where two distinct linguistic worlds converge within a single speaker. In doing so, it offers a novel Pakistani sociolinguistic perspective within ESL research and contributes to the emotional turn in applied linguistics by interrogating whether a second language can ever carry the full affective weight of a first language (Pavlenko, 2005; Dewaele, 2010).