By Orianna Soublette
Living in South Florida my entire life, I have grown up around individuals from a variety of cultures. I am a native English and Spanish speaker, and I learned Italian in college. My parents are Venezuelan immigrants and I have witnessed firsthand the importance of language comprehension for connecting with people from different backgrounds. Undoubtedly, the ability to communicate with another person is useful on a day-to-day basis. However, the role that the comprehension of foreign languages plays on empathizing with others on a psychological level is often overlooked. Throughout my life, I have seen how my multilingual peers have thrived in social spaces with people of various backgrounds, leading me to imagine that these individuals are more likely to have successful relationships in the workplace as well. That being said, I decided to pursue two majors (psychology and Italian) because one of my goals is to study psycholinguistics, specifically the mechanisms of language acquisition in children and emotional expression in monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual children and adults. Language studies in the U.S. often involve Spanish and English speakers and, although I am interested in studying those languages, I would also like to incorporate Italian speakers into my studies. There is a rapidly growing Italian population in South Florida, which I have learned from my involvement in Florida Atlantic University’s Italian Program (the most complete Italian program in the Southeastern United States). Aside from conducting research, my goal in the long-term is to establish multilingual academies for children grades K-12.
