The cluster focuses on the interdependencies between language and affect. What we feel and how we feel depends to a large part on language and images. Emotions may support or constrain our language acqusition; contrariwise language competencies influence our emotional communication abilities. The most widely discussed models of emotion in more recent psychology and neuroscience tend to disregard the role of language as well as of other cultural sign systems. Conversely, the current language models in modern linguistics say little or nothing about emotional processes. The cluster aims to reverse this trend.

It appears to be a distinctive feature of the ways symbolic and emotional practices interact in human communication that these practices apply not just to real phenomena, but also to imaginary constructions. The cluster will investigat —throughout its research areas—the forms and functions of configurations of emotion, symbolic practices, and imaginary (fictive) phenomena, especially in the realms of language and the arts.

The four areas of research of the cluster examine

• A: the relations between affective phenomena and various representational media (language, sound, image)
• B: the artistic practices and poetics of (re)presenting/shaping emotions
• C: correlations between emotional and linguistic competencies (and their disorders) and
• D: modes of emotion modeling at the level of cultural codes and patterns of social behavior.

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