Cluster of Excellence "Languages of Emotion"

The research cluster of Excellence „Languages of Emotion“ (Speaker: Winfried Menninghaus) was established in 2007 and is funded by the German Research Foundation. Researchers from 20 different disciplines (among them psychiatrists, psychologists, biologists, linguists, and multiple scientists from the humanities) focus on the interdependencies between language and affect within four areas of research dealing with the relations between affective phenomena and various representational media (Area A), the artistic practices and poetics of (re)presenting/shaping emotions (Area B), the correlations between emotional and linguistic competencies (and their disorders) (Area C), and the modes of emotion modeling at the level of cultural codes and patterns of social behavior (Area D). Area C is coordinated by Isabella Heuser and Malek Bajbouj together with Georg Witte from the Department of Comparative Literature at Freie Universität Berlin an focusses on emotion learning, emotion regulation and empathy in more than 20 research projects. Among them are project in which –together with collegues from the MPI of Human Development, the MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the Humboldt Universität- the phenomen of alexithymia, the acquirement of emotional competencies by reading and the artificial modulation of emotion are investigated.