Abstract. Language is the most omnipresent and powerful cultural artifact that we humans possess to mediate our knowledge of the world, our connection to the other(s), and our own thought and self-regulation. As Halliday (1975) stated, the main two essential functions of language are to interact with others (social interaction) and to interact with ourselves (thinking). In recent years, there has been an urgent need in European society for educational involvement in processes that develop pluricultural and plurilingual competences for collaborative dialogue to enhance the acceptance of otherness and avoid inequalities between social groups (Coste and Cavinalli 2015). Emotions have a filter effect (Mora 2013) and therefore the affective issues that surround this educational approach need to be explored, as innovative approaches are often rejected due to insufficient knowledge of what they involve and due to fear of change. In order to offer some answers, this chapter analyzes studies on how affective factors and emotions influence language acquisition and learning and proposes methodological principles and practical tasks that can be applied to language education and that may ensure the learning of values, attitudes, skills, knowledge and critical thinking needed in a plurilingual and pluricultural society. Based on the fact that cognition and emotion are intertwined factors, I describe the main research findings of the different trends in emotion and language research. I review some existing differences between first and second language acquisition from an affective perspective. I also discuss motivation and language anxiety, which foster or hinder learners’ willingness to communicate as two poles that are almost entirely independent of each other but not opposite ends of a single continuum. This chapter also includes some insights on mediation which, considered as a paradigm shift in the foreign language classroom and through the different out-of-class language learning possibilities (Piccardo 2014, 2018), can provide an environment where learners maximize their emotional intelligence, their plurilingual and intercultural communicative skills. Finally, I delve into studies of emotions in learning a foreign language and round off this chapter with methodological recommendations for language education.
How to cite. Fonseca-Mora, M. C. (2023). Emotion in language education and pedagogy. In G. Schiewer, J. Altarriba & B. Ng (Eds.), Volume 3 (pp. 2195-2217). By Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795486-043
