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Previous experimental work shows that negation processing can be direct in bipolar contexts where positive/negative states of affairs can be expressed by available lexical opposites (remember/forget) in monolingual speakers. However, in a unipolar context where such opposites are not available (sing/not sing), the processing first proceeds through the positive and only then the negative state of affairs. We test this claim with bilinguals to answer two questions. To what extent do (a) the processing routes and (b) the conceptual representations of the negated statement differ in bipolar/unipolar contexts when bilinguals process negation in their L1 and L2? 40 Chinese–English bilinguals were tested in a Negative Stroop Task (Expt. 1), in which they were instructed to verify whether the positive/negative English/Chinese colour expressions matched the colour they were printed in, either in bipolar (black/white) or unipolar contexts (green/not green). We also zoomed in on the conceptual representations of negation and tested another 40 Chinese–English bilinguals in an Orientation Task (Expt. 2). Participants compared positive/negative descriptions against pictures regarding the location of a star in either bipolar (left/right) or unipolar contexts (East/not East). The results suggest that language can drive changes when bilinguals process negation, with variations in the bipolar and unipolar contexts.
