THE CONNECTION BETWEEN INTENSIVE PRE-SLEEP L2 EXPOSURE AND THE OCCURRENCE OF FOREIGN- LANGUAGE DREAMS

Even though people mostly dream in their native language (L1), it sometimes happens that bilinguals and plurilinguals dream in other languages as well (their L2, L3, etc.). The objective of this study was to explore whether intensive exposure to a foreign language, especially immediately before sleep, can lead to the occurrence of L2 dreams. The main hypothesis tested was that it is possible to be sufficiently exposed to a foreign language to dream in it, even without living in an environment where the given language is spoken as L1. Fifty-four university students from Serbia were asked to reflect on their foreign-language dreams, after which a total of 75 dream narratives were analysed. The results suggest that there may be a strong link between intensive pre-sleep L2 exposure and the occurrence of L2 dreams, although this is not the only possible factor.