THE EFFECT OF EMOTIONAL CONTEXT ON NOUN EVALUATION AMONG IRANIAN PRE-INTERMEDIATE ENGLISH LEARNERS

The purpose of current research was to investigate the influence of emotional context on noun evaluation. A total number of 60 female learners participated in the study. Participants were presented with 48 "adjective+ noun" phrases, where 24 adjectives were positive and 24 adjectives were negative words and the nouns included 16 positive, 16 neutral and 16 negative words, then they were asked to make an evaluation on the emotional valence of the target nouns based on a 5–point Likert scale. In a control condition, 48 isolated nouns were presented with no context. Results showed that nouns embedded in a positive context were biased toward a positive direction, and nouns embedded in a negative context were biased toward a negative direction. The findings of the study also showed that the modualatory effect of negative context on a positive noun was greater than that of a positive context on a negative noun. Moreover, the modulatory effect of emotional context was constrained by the inherent meaning of target noun. As the words are the basic units of language, and understanding them is crucial for survival in our highly language-oriented society, the findings of this study can offer a new approach to the teaching and learning of foreign language vocabulary.