Culture shapes the ways people perceive and verbalize emotions. The study presents a new positive emotion in LX learning, drawn from emotional preferences that encompass L1 culture.
MacIntyre and Gregersen (2012) introduced Positive Psychology to SLA researchers and thus provided an impetus to researchers to explore areas that had remained in the shadows. Positive Psychology offered a theoretical basis and an established methodology that appealed to researchers as well as teachers (MacIntyre, Gregersen & Mercer, 2016). Dewaele and MacIntyre (2014) developed the concept of Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) which became the most studied positive emotion in the following years (Dewaele & Li, 2020).
This study presents a new positive emotion construct, 外语平和心态 (Foreign Language Peace of Mind (FLPOM)), in the Chinese LX learning context, drawn from the Chinese cultural tradition, that is, the tripartite of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. FLPOM reflects an amalgam of a low-arousal positive (LAP) emotional state (i.e., inner peace) and a state of harmony and balance, as differentiated from the high-arousal positive (HAP) emotional state (e.g., joy, enthusiasm) or hedonistic view of well-being (Lee et al., 2013).
A measurement scale of FLPOM was developed and administered to Chinese LX learners, along with the Chinese Foreign Language Enjoyment scale (Li, Jiang & Dewaele, 2018) which can potentially reflect slightly more HAP states. Correlation and discriminant validity analysis confirmed that FLPOM and FLE were related but discriminable emotion constructs. Stepwise regression analyses revealed that FLPOM was a stronger predictor of Chinese LX learners' language achievement than FLE.
