This book considers how we reveal ourselves in the language we employ and the action in which we engage. Maria-Ionela Neagu argues that our conceptualization of the world via metaphor should no longer be taken for granted. On the contrary, it must be critically challenged and evaluated, steering argument towards a particular line of action. This book places political discourse at the crossroads of cognitive linguistics and transpersonal psychology to highlight the role of conceptual metaphors in and as arguments. Exploring the interface between argumentation theories and cognitive semantics, Neagu integrates the analysis of conceptual metaphors into the framework of practical reasoning, arguing that political discourse bridges the mental void engendered by people's needs and frustrations. This empirical investigation is centred on the corpus of the American Presidential debates in 2008, as well as Barack Obama's 'State of the Nation' (2009), and 'State of the Union Address' (2010, 2011).

Multimodality is the notion which stands behind the most fertile investigations in communication and language studies nowadays. Multimodal depiction of the surrounding world helps the child to better conceptualise, objectify, and reify abstract notions. Even before children learn to talk, they activate their soft skills, the so-called life/human competences or social skills, and they employ multimodal communication pertaining to gestures and sounds in order to interact. Therefore, when knowledge of the brain and body intertwines with social and emotional intelligence, it fosters human dialogue and it enhances our communication. Offering great insight into the evolution of theoretical and analytical approaches to multimodal meaning construction and soft skills development, this volume is an indispensable resource for (under)graduate students and researchers in applied linguistics, semiotics, media and communication studies, ELT Methodology, and psychology.

"The contributors to the volume, coming from different areas of the Humanities and Social Sciences, address several timely and important issues that bring together richly diverse perspectives and advance current debates in a range of fields, by carefully decoding literary texts covering a large timespan, as well as political discourse, the discourse of advertising, the discourse of education, and transpersonal discourse." -Professor Arleen Ionescu, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Every transdisciplinary study on voyage and/or emotion will offer new insights into the multifarious facets of these two concepts. Taking a sociolinguistic turn, this volume prompts the audience to cross the borders of a variety of genres in order to discover new strands of thought. While the first part highlights the multiple facets of the voyage as initiatory journey, as a quest for an existence code, as a spiritual passage that the traveller experiences in search for the Self or for the Other, the second part of the volume seeks to address the temporality and spatiality of emotions, the ideological dimension of the public and private space, outlining at the same time the perception of the voyage as an intercultural and interlinguistic exchange.

This transdisciplinary study gathers research papers that reveal the multifarious facets of the concept of "persuasion". It is argued that regardless of its degree of intentionality, the act of persuasion underlying each information item prompts the interlocutors to cross the borders of political, historical, linguistic, narrative, psychotherapeutic, and even marketing configurations. The contributors' contention is that political thinking and ideology-grounded linguistic patterns act as a form of social control, both informing and shaping the sense of identity of the manipulated masses and of the oppressed. "Taking a sociolinguistic turn, this volume of interesting scholarly works addresses matters of ideological loadings in a variety of genres, contributing to the development of new research paradigms." - Bledar Toska, University of Vlora "Ismail Qemali"