Communication between people of different linguistic, social and cultural background is of great importance today in virtually all spheres of human interaction. Meanwhile, communication in crucial domains such as diplomacy, international cooperation, military and political conflicts are typically fraught with hazards of misconception and misinterpretation and ways have to be found for communication to be effective and constructive. In this context, it becomes imperative to carefully elaborate language- and culture-sensitive strategies to minimize the risks, especially with regard to an appropriate assessment and response. The aim of the project ELIN was therefore to address the question how emotions affect such interactions, especially in conflict scenarios with an emphasis on mediation and solutions. The project gathered an interdisciplinary team from affective sciences, psycholinguistics, lexical semantics, interpretation studies, and critical discourse analysis, among others. Central emotion concepts have been studied such as anger, guilt, shame and pride, looking also at eight widespread languages in the world (English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, German and Hebrew). In addition, the project addressed the role of cultural differences displayed with emotions and thus gave a precious practical contribution in the field of diplomacy.