Research Area A investigates the representation, production and expression of feelings in language and non-linguistic semiotic practices. The guiding hypothesis is that the specifics of human semiotic systems, their use and acquisition exert a major influence on the experience, expression and evocation of human emotions. Language and related non-linguistic modalities (gestural-mimic, auditory-visual) not only express already existing emotions, but also evoke their production and circulation.

In the 20th century, both the psychology of language and linguistics have widely neglected affects in language and multi-modal communication. Similarly, research on emotions has largely ignored language-related processes. Combining methods and theories from the fields of psychology, linguistics, media studies and neuroscience, Research Area A aims to help close these gaps. This research area focuses particularly on forms of emotion, cognition and language as well as their interaction related to the acquisition, processing and multi-modal use of language.

The focal points of this research area are:

1. Language and emotion in human development

2. The emergence and processing of affects in language and other semiotic systems

1. Language and Emotion in Human Development

Goal: 
To investigate the role of emotions in children’s language acquisition and the contribution of linguistic processes to the development and modulation of emotions throughout the life span, using complementary behavioral and neurocognitive methods. Comparisons between human and non-human primates will deepen this perspective. 

Research questions:
What is the role of emotional cues and memory consolidation during sleep in vocabulary acquisition? Is there a general, evolutionary based "negativity bias" – in other words, do negative emotional stimuli attract greater attention than positive or neutral stimuli? Is there a general relation between rhythmic patterns of verbal and non-verbal signals and their affective evaluation? What are the mechanisms underlying emotional learning in the context of verbal as compared to pictorial material? Are different neuronal structures involved in learning positive and negative emotions, as animal studies suggest?

Distinctive Profile:
Until now, linguistic and psychological models of language acquisition basically have excluded emotional processes. Within developmental psycholinguistics and developmental neuroscience the way in which emotions develop in interaction with the acquisition of symbolic semiotic systems has rarely been investigated. To study the species-specific features of human sociality and competence by systematically exploring their emotional components and forms of expression using both behavioral and neurocognitive methods is the basic characteristic of this focal point of research. 

2. The Emergence and Processing of Affects in Language and Other Semiotic Systems

Goal:
Theoretical approaches and interdisciplinary methods will be developed in order to shed light on the affective aspects of language-related processes. In addition, the various affect-forming and -eliciting capacities of language as compared to other semiotic systems (e.g., images, film, music) will be investigated. Finally, the extent to which language and other semiotic systems function together in multi-modal language use and contribute to affect circulation will be examined.

Research Questions: 
What is the neurocognitive basis of affective and aesthetic processes in reading? How do emotions depend on one’s mother tongue and on second languages? What roles do language rhythm and meter play in the emotional coloring of spoken expression? How are affective speech processing and personality traits or disorders related? Are there differences in the processing of affective information with verbal versus pictorial material? How is the complex interaction between language and emotion accounted for in theories of rhetoric, linguistics, psychology (e.g., in models of semantic memory) and neuroscience (e.g., in models of emotional endo-phenotypes)? How do emotions manifest themselves in language, prosody, gesture, body movement and facial expressions? How do these modalities of affect interact? What roles do verbal, prosodic and facial-gestural cues play in everyday conversation?

Distinctive Profile:
Experimental research on the reception and production of spoken and written language has, despite its long history, largely neglected the role of emotions. It also has neglected the interplay between verbal and non-verbal semiotic practices. This focal point of research within our Cluster replaces the exclusively cognitive perspective on language processing with an interdisciplinary, more comprehensive aproach. It entails cross-linguistic and cross-cultural approaches as well as the multi-method study of affective processes on various complexity levels of verbal and non-verbal materials (individual words, sentences, poems, stories, pictures and picture stories, works of art, film scenes). The extension of the scope of inquiry to both the everyday and the artistic-aesthetic realm is one special feature of this focal point of research, another one being the comparative analysis of linguistic practice in relation to other semiotic practices.