Significant Emotions - Rhetoric and Social Problems in a Vulnerable Age

Significant Emotions is a piercing examination of the rising use of emotional signifiers in public debate and the rhetoric of an increasingly expansive array of social problems. Building on ideas developed in Ashley Frawley''s previous book, Semiotics of Happiness, it examines in detail the -emotional turn- across the social sciences and the broader cultural rise of the -age of emotion- and its influence on how we talk about and approach new social issues. The book explores the rise of signifiers that have previously gained prominence as powerful explanations of nearly every social ill-from self-esteem, happiness, well-being, resilience and love to rage, stress, and trauma. Conceptualising the rise and comparative decline of various emotional signifiers as cycles of discovery, adoption, expansion and exhaustion, the book argues that rather than calling into question one or another of these signifiers, it is necessary to penetrate deeper to the underlying cultural currents