Although it has been well established that emotional content influences language comprehension, the effects of emotionality on L2 (second language: English) word processing require further clarification. Notably, most previous studies unsystematically mixed words of different lexical categories, although they often showed processing differences. Here, using the same set of tightly matched negative, positive, and neutral words across three lexical categories (i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives), we examined the effects of emotionality and lexical category on L2 word processing by conducting three experiments. In these experiments, three groups of late Chinese–English bilinguals performed three tasks: the emotional Stroop task (Experiment 1), the lexical decision task (Experiment 2), and the emotional categorisation task (Experiment 3), respectively. Overall, our data suggested that emotionality and lexical category exerted no influence on L2 word processing in the emotional Stroop task, but acted interactively to influence it in the other two tasks. The results evidenced that the processing of L2 emotional words was sensitive to task type. Therefore, we conclude that future research on L2 word processing should fully consider the emotionality, lexical category, and task type.

In recent years, Cognitive Translatology, a new frontier subject, has been established after the interaction of Cognitive Linguistics with Translatology. Aiming to further the development of Cognitive Translatology, this paper investigates the application of major theories in cognitive linguistics to Chinese-English translation practice, including Prototype Category Theory, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Conceptual Metonymy Theory, Iconicity Theory and Figure-Ground Theory. It is found that these theories have strong explanatory power and instructive significance for translation practice.