About me
Brief biography
I have an MA in Applied Linguistics and a PhD in Linguistics from Lancaster University. I joined Birkbeck, University of London, as Lecturer in Spanish in 1995, progressing through the ranks to Professor of Linguistics and Spanish. Previous jobs include lectureships at University of Limerick (Ireland), and Thames Valley University (London). I became Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and Spanish at Birkbeck in Oct 2023.
My current work is in digital discourse analysis and pragmatics. Some of the areas and topics I am interested in are the following:
– Pragmatics of interaction
– Pragmatics of social media
– Hate studies / racist discourse
– Small talk
– (Im)politeness studies
-Regional pragmatic variation
-(E-)Service encounter interactions
-Speech act realization in digital discourse
-Address forms
-Discourse markers
I have published extensively in these areas and have contributed chapters to key compendia in the field. several handbooks and encyclopaedias in the field: Pragmatics of Social Media (2017); Pragmatics of Society (2 Pragmática; Enciclopedia de Lingüística Hispánica, The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Pragmatics) and to numerous other international volumes. I am on the editorial board of several international journals.
My work has involved studying different aspects of language use in Ecuadorian and other varieties of Spanish (e.g., Peninsular, Bolivian, Venezuelan and Mexican) as well as in British and American English.
My current projects explore racist insults against Afroecuadorian and Afroperuvian women on X/Twitter (with C. García), and rapport management in Uber complaints on X/Twitter (with H. Powell).
Teaching and examining
The courses I have taught at undergraduate and postgraduate level include: Pragmatics, Spanish Pragmatics, Spanish Discourse Analysis, Language and Social Interaction, Spanish as a foreign language, Translation and Interpreting; Word and Image: The Construction of the Other in the Hispanic World, Research Methods, Study skills.
I have examined the following PhD theses:
Solidarity, supportiveness and creative language use in second-language interpersonal talk (2005). Gerrard Mugford. Institute of Education/UCL https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10020494/
From ‘Ways of Speaking’ to ‘Ways of being in the World’: A contrastive Analysis of Requestive behavior in Peninsular Spanish and American English (2007). Ana López. Universidad de Santiago de Compostela. https://investigacion.usc.gal/documentos/5d1df66b29995204f766b6af
Micro-family language policy at work in a Spanish-English bilingual family. (2007). Ane Ortega-Etcheverry. Queen Mary, University of London.
Pragmática intercultural: el acto de habla del cumplido en las culturas española y coreana (2008). Hong Joo Choi. http://eprints.ucm.es/8311/1/T30689.pdf)
Análisis pragmalingúístico de resoluciones de conflictos. Las mediaciones laborales (2008). Susana Ridao Rodrigo. Universidad de Almerٕía.
La agresividad verbal y sus manifestaciones (2009). María Ester Brenes Peña. Universidad de Sevilla.
La gestión de las relaciones interpersonales en la interacción médico-paciente: estudio contrastivo inglés británico-español peninsular (2009). María de la O Hernández López. Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla.
https://investiga.upo.es/investigadores/159661/tesis
Estudio crítico del discurso parlamentario chileno: la acusación contra la ministra de educación
Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (2010). Claudia Poblete (I was asked to write a report on the scientific quality of the thesis).
La cortesía valorizadora en la conversación coloquial española: estudio pragmalingüístico (2011). Universidad de Granada. María Jesús Barros García. https://digibug.ugr.es/flexpaper/handle/10481/17612/19835851.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
La descortesía en el lenguaje radiofónico: (El discurso de Federico Jiménez Losantos) (2011). Jose Manuel López Martín. Universidad de Sevilla.
https://idus.us.es/handle/11441/24298
Un análisis pragmático-experimental del humor gráfico. Sus aplicaciones al aula de ELE (2011). Elisa Gironzetti. Universidad de Alicante.
https://rua.ua.es/dspace/handle/10045/35847
Code-switching among London Greek-Cypriots: A Study of Question-Response Pairs (2012). Marilena Paraskeva. Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication, Birkbeck, University of London (Internal examiner). https://vufind.lib.bbk.ac.uk/vufind/Record/477712
Los déficits pragmáticos en el discurso oral de niños con síndrome de Asperger (2012). Universidad de Almería. Francisco José Rodríguez Muñoz. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/tesis?codigo=142370
The speech intelligibility of English learners of Spanish at Key Stage 4 (2013). Ángel Osle Ezquerra. Queen Mary, University of London https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/8602/Osle%20Ezquerra_final.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1
The contribution of explicit instruction vs. implicit instruction to the acquisition of requests and requests responses by EFL students in Iran (2014). Sadegh Sadghidizaj. University of Lancaster
Tertulia política y (des)cortesía verbal (2014). Marina Sanz. Universidad de Sevilla.
https://idus.us.es/handle/11441/24302
Multilingual couples’ disagreement: Taiwanese partners and their foreign spouses (2016). Yu-Feng (Yvonne) Chi. Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication, Birkbeck, University of London (Internal examiner). https://vufind.lib.bbk.ac.uk/vufind/Record/562398
La petición en español peninsular: producción y percepción de la cortesía verbal en las estrategias de petición de hablantes nativos y francófonos de Bélgica (2022). Aurélie Marsily. Université Catholique de Louvain.
https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal:262159
Research dissemination
- (2022) ‘Emplumado … TÚ NO REPRESENTAS A NADIE’. Discriminación y racismo en Twitter.
- IV Congreso Internacional RECod: En torno a la comunicación digital en español: Cultura participativa y discurso en la Red, Universidad de Alicante, 6-7 October 2022 [Conferencia plenaria]. https://recod.org/iv-congreso-internacional-recod/
- (2022) ‘Ándate al páramo’: Racist slurs against Ecuadorian indigenous leaders on Twitter’. University of Essex, 8 December 2022 [Conferencia invitada https://www.essex.ac.uk/events/2022/12/08/racist-slurs-against-ecuadorian-indigenous-leaders-on-twitter
- (2022) Discriminación y racismo en Twitter. Latin American House, London, 2 May 2022 [Conferencia invitada]. https://casalatina.org.uk/past-events/#jp-carousel-3829
- (2021). “Ándate al páramo”: Prácticas lingüísticas de exclusión y discriminación en la interacción interétnica ecuatoriana en Twitter. American Pragmatics Association (AMPRA) International Symposium, Buenos Aires (12-13 Nov 2021) [Conferencia plenaria] https://ub.edu.ar/escuela-de-lenguas-y-estudios-extranjeros/congreso-lenguas-2021-international-symposium-american
- (2021). ‘Avances en la investigación de los actos de habla en el mundo hispánico’, XIX Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Lingüística y Filología de América Latina (forma virtual), 8-13 August 2021. [Conferencia invitada]
- (2021). ‘Cortesía y variación pragmática regional,’ University of Princeton, 8 Nov 2021. [Conferencia invitada]
- (2020) “Responding to compliments among teenage girls on Instagram” (con Hebe Powell). Paper presented at the The 9th Symposium on Intercultural, Cognitive and Social Pragmatics (EPICS), Seville, 4-6 November 2020 [comunicación] https://eventos.upo.es/event_detail/37759/detail/9th-international-symposium-on-intercultural-cognitive-and-social-pragmatics-epics-ix-4th-6th-novem.html
- (2019) Variación regional en un contexto digital, Dept. of Spanish Philology, University of Seville, Seville, 11 November 2019 (Conferencia invitada).
- (2018) “El estudio de prácticas comunicativas en el español ecuatoriano desde la perspectiva de la pragmática”, 1st Symposium on Ecuadorian Spanish, University of Guelph, Canada, 2-3 June 2018 [Conferencia invitada] https://www.uoguelph.ca/arts/ses18/speakers
- (2018) “La cortesía en Mercado Libre’. Jornadas en torno a la comunicación digital, Universidad de Belgrano, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 5-6 de octubre de 2018. [Conferencia invitada] https://www.facebook.com/Universidad.de.Belgrano/photos/ii-jornadas-en-torno-a-la-comunicaci%C3%B3n-digital-educaci%C3%B3n-discurso-y-traducci%C3%B3n-c/10155737592987987/?paipv=0&eav=AfYTKIh_qbO0H97Cbeohvj4CFGaJU4WtP7yo3OQYuYn3eTtyJSQNlWjfiiNuf91MrHY&_rdr
- (2018) ‘(Des)cortesía y variación pragmática regional’, VIII Coloquio Internacional del Programa EDICE (Des)cortesía, actividades de imagen e identidad en discursos en español. Universidad de Sevilla, Spain, 23 to 26 October 2018. https://edice.asice.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/LIBRO-DE-RES%C3%9AMENES-DEFINITIVO.pdf
- (2018) Doing sociability on Facebook in an American network of friends and family, Goldsmiths, University of London, March 2018.
- (2018) Complimenting and responding to compliments on Facebook, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, 27 October 2018.
- (2018) ‘Interpersonal work in service encounters on Mercado Libre Argentina: A comparison between buyer and vendor patterns across two market domains’ (con Hebe Powell), 11th International Conference on Im/Politeness, Valencia, 4-6 July, 2018. https://congresos.adeituv.es/sympol11/
Other professional activities
- Editorial board member:
- Peer review work:
- Journals
- Publishing houses
- Funding bodies
- Academic promotions
- Professional memberships
About me
Brief biography
I have an MA in Applied Linguistics and a PhD in Linguistics from Lancaster University. I joined Birkbeck, University of London, as Lecturer in Spanish in 1995, progressing through the ranks to Professor of Linguistics and Spanish. Previous jobs include lectureships at University of Limerick (Ireland), and Thames Valley University (London). I became Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and Spanish at Birkbeck in Oct 2023.
My current work is in digital discourse analysis and pragmatics. Some of the areas and topics I am interested in are the following:
– Pragmatics of interaction
– Pragmatics of social media
– Hate studies / racist discourse
– Small talk
– (Im)politeness studies
– Regional pragmatic variation
– (E-)Service encounter interactions
– Speech act realization in digital discourse
– Address forms
– Discourse markers
I have published extensively in these areas and have contributed chapters to key compendia in the field. several handbooks and encyclopaedias in the field: Pragmatics of Social Media (2017); Pragmatics of Society (2 Pragmática; Enciclopedia de Lingüística Hispánica, The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Pragmatics) and to numerous other international volumes. I am on the editorial board of several international journals.
My work has involved studying different aspects of language use in Ecuadorian and other varieties of Spanish (e.g., Peninsular, Bolivian, Venezuelan and Mexican) as well as in British and American English.
My current projects explore racist insults against Afroecuadorian and Afroperuvian women on X/Twitter (with C. García), and rapport management in Uber complaints on X/Twitter (with H. Powell).
Teaching and examining
The courses I have taught at undergraduate and postgraduate level include: Pragmatics, Spanish Pragmatics, Spanish Discourse Analysis, Language and Social Interaction, Spanish as a foreign language, Translation and Interpreting; Word and Image: The Construction of the Other in the Hispanic World, Research Methods, Study skills.
I have examined the following PhD theses:
Solidarity, supportiveness and creative language use in second-language interpersonal talk (2005). Gerrard Mugford. Institute of Education/UCL https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10020494/
From ‘Ways of Speaking’ to ‘Ways of being in the World’: A contrastive Analysis of Requestive behavior in Peninsular Spanish and American English (2007). Ana López. Universidad de Santiago de Compostela. https://investigacion.usc.gal/documentos/5d1df66b29995204f766b6af
Micro-family language policy at work in a Spanish-English bilingual family. (2007). Ane Ortega-Etcheverry. Queen Mary, University of London.
Pragmática intercultural: el acto de habla del cumplido en las culturas española y coreana (2008). Hong Joo Choi. http://eprints.ucm.es/8311/1/T30689.pdf)
Análisis pragmalingúístico de resoluciones de conflictos. Las mediaciones laborales (2008). Susana Ridao Rodrigo. Universidad de Almerٕía.
La agresividad verbal y sus manifestaciones (2009). María Ester Brenes Peña. Universidad de Sevilla.
La gestión de las relaciones interpersonales en la interacción médico-paciente: estudio contrastivo inglés británico-español peninsular (2009). María de la O Hernández López. Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla.
https://investiga.upo.es/investigadores/159661/tesis
Estudio crítico del discurso parlamentario chileno: la acusación contra la ministra de educación
Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (2010). Claudia Poblete (I was asked to write a report on the scientific quality of the thesis).
La cortesía valorizadora en la conversación coloquial española: estudio pragmalingüístico (2011). Universidad de Granada. María Jesús Barros García. https://digibug.ugr.es/flexpaper/handle/10481/17612/19835851.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
La descortesía en el lenguaje radiofónico: (El discurso de Federico Jiménez Losantos) (2011). Jose Manuel López Martín. Universidad de Sevilla.
https://idus.us.es/handle/11441/24298
Un análisis pragmático-experimental del humor gráfico. Sus aplicaciones al aula de ELE (2011). Elisa Gironzetti. Universidad de Alicante.
https://rua.ua.es/dspace/handle/10045/35847
Code-switching among London Greek-Cypriots: A Study of Question-Response Pairs (2012). Marilena Paraskeva. Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication, Birkbeck, University of London (Internal examiner). https://vufind.lib.bbk.ac.uk/vufind/Record/477712
Los déficits pragmáticos en el discurso oral de niños con síndrome de Asperger (2012). Universidad de Almería. Francisco José Rodríguez Muñoz. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/tesis?codigo=142370
The speech intelligibility of English learners of Spanish at Key Stage 4 (2013). Ángel Osle Ezquerra. Queen Mary, University of London https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/8602/Osle%20Ezquerra_final.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1
The contribution of explicit instruction vs. implicit instruction to the acquisition of requests and requests responses by EFL students in Iran (2014). Sadegh Sadghidizaj. University of Lancaster
Tertulia política y (des)cortesía verbal (2014). Marina Sanz. Universidad de Sevilla.
https://idus.us.es/handle/11441/24302
Multilingual couples’ disagreement: Taiwanese partners and their foreign spouses (2016). Yu-Feng (Yvonne) Chi. Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication, Birkbeck, University of London (Internal examiner). https://vufind.lib.bbk.ac.uk/vufind/Record/562398
La petición en español peninsular: producción y percepción de la cortesía verbal en las estrategias de petición de hablantes nativos y francófonos de Bélgica (2022). Aurélie Marsily. Université Catholique de Louvain.
Research dissemination
- (2022) ‘Emplumado … TÚ NO REPRESENTAS A NADIE’. Discriminación y racismo en Twitter.
- IV Congreso Internacional RECod: En torno a la comunicación digital en español: Cultura participativa y discurso en la Red, Universidad de Alicante, 6-7 October 2022 [Conferencia plenaria]. https://recod.org/iv-congreso-internacional-recod/
- (2022) ‘Ándate al páramo’: Racist slurs against Ecuadorian indigenous leaders on Twitter’. University of Essex, 8 December 2022 [Conferencia invitada https://www.essex.ac.uk/events/2022/12/08/racist-slurs-against-ecuadorian-indigenous-leaders-on-twitter
- (2022) Discriminación y racismo en Twitter. Latin American House, London, 2 May 2022 [Conferencia invitada]. https://casalatina.org.uk/past-events/#jp-carousel-3829
- (2021). “Ándate al páramo”: Prácticas lingüísticas de exclusión y discriminación en la interacción interétnica ecuatoriana en Twitter. American Pragmatics Association (AMPRA) International Symposium, Buenos Aires (12-13 Nov 2021) [Conferencia plenaria] https://ub.edu.ar/escuela-de-lenguas-y-estudios-extranjeros/congreso-lenguas-2021-international-symposium-american
- (2021). ‘Avances en la investigación de los actos de habla en el mundo hispánico’, XIX Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Lingüística y Filología de América Latina (forma virtual), 8-13 August 2021. [Conferencia invitada]
- (2021). ‘Cortesía y variación pragmática regional,’ University of Princeton, 8 Nov 2021. [Conferencia invitada]
- (2020) “Responding to compliments among teenage girls on Instagram” (con Hebe Powell). Paper presented at the The 9th Symposium on Intercultural, Cognitive and Social Pragmatics (EPICS), Seville, 4-6 November 2020 [comunicación] https://eventos.upo.es/event_detail/37759/detail/9th-international-symposium-on-intercultural-cognitive-and-social-pragmatics-epics-ix-4th-6th-novem.html
- (2019) Variación regional en un contexto digital, Dept. of Spanish Philology, University of Seville, Seville, 11 November 2019 (Conferencia invitada).
- (2018) “El estudio de prácticas comunicativas en el español ecuatoriano desde la perspectiva de la pragmática”, 1st Symposium on Ecuadorian Spanish, University of Guelph, Canada, 2-3 June 2018 [Conferencia invitada] https://www.uoguelph.ca/arts/ses18/speakers
- (2018) “La cortesía en Mercado Libre’. Jornadas en torno a la comunicación digital, Universidad de Belgrano, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 5-6 de octubre de 2018. [Conferencia invitada] https://www.facebook.com/Universidad.de.Belgrano/photos/ii-jornadas-en-torno-a-la-comunicaci%C3%B3n-digital-educaci%C3%B3n-discurso-y-traducci%C3%B3n-c/10155737592987987/?paipv=0&eav=AfYTKIh_qbO0H97Cbeohvj4CFGaJU4WtP7yo3OQYuYn3eTtyJSQNlWjfiiNuf91MrHY&_rdr
- (2018) ‘(Des)cortesía y variación pragmática regional’, VIII Coloquio Internacional del Programa EDICE (Des)cortesía, actividades de imagen e identidad en discursos en español. Universidad de Sevilla, Spain, 23 to 26 October 2018. https://edice.asice.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/LIBRO-DE-RES%C3%9AMENES-DEFINITIVO.pdf
- (2018) Doing sociability on Facebook in an American network of friends and family, Goldsmiths, University of London, March 2018.
- (2018) Complimenting and responding to compliments on Facebook, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, 27 October 2018.
- (2018) ‘Interpersonal work in service encounters on Mercado Libre Argentina: A comparison between buyer and vendor patterns across two market domains’ (con Hebe Powell), 11th International Conference on Im/Politeness, Valencia, 4-6 July, 2018. https://congresos.adeituv.es/sympol11/
Other professional activities
- Editorial board member:
I am on the editorial/advisory board of the following journals:
Oralia, Análisis del Discurso Oral, https://ojs.ual.es/ojs/index.php/ORALIA/about/editorialTeam
Journal of Pragmatics
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-pragmatics
Pragmática Sociocultural/Sociocultural Pragmatics
http://edice.org/oa-sb/index.php/SOPRAG/index
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/shll/html?lang=en
Discurso & Sociedad http://www.dissoc.org/es/dissoc/comite/
Tonos Digital http://www.tonosdigital.es/ojs/index.php/tonos/about/editorialTeam
Estudios Lingüísticos de la Universidad de Alicante (E.L.U.A)
https://revistaelua.ua.es/about/editorialTeam
Journal of Spanish Language Teaching https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rslt20
Revista Estudios Discurso Digital https://revistas.uva.es/index.php/redd
Verbum et Lingua http://verbumetlingua.cucsh.udg.mx/index.php/VerLin
Español Actual
Previously also: Abehache. Revista de la Asociación Brasileña de Hispanistas, Euroamerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages, Applied Pragmatics and Spanish in Context.
- Peer review work:
titles), publishing houses, conferences, as well as reviews for academic
promotions, as follows:
- Journals:
Journal of Intercultural Studies, Hispania, Revista Internacional de Lingüística
Iberoamericana (RILI), Lenguaje, Cultura y Representación, Spanish in Context,
International Journal of Bilingualism, Sociolinguistic Studies, Language
Teaching, Research on Language and Social Interaction, Ikala: Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura, Intercultural Pragmatics, Pragmatics, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Multilingua, Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, Sintagma Revista de Lingüística, International Multilingual Research Journal, Signo y Seña, Sage Open Journal, Journal of Politeness Research, Classroom Discourse, Onomázein – Revista de Lingüística, Filología y Traducción, Text & Talk, Hispanic Research Journal, Normas, Lengua y
Migración, y Corpus Pragmatics.
- Publishing houses:
I have reviewed chapters for edited volumes published by Brill, John
Benjamins, de Gruyter, Wiley-Blackwell, University of Hawaii Press, Cascadilla Press, University of Ohio Press, Cambridge University Press, etc. Additionally, I have reviewed book proposals and manuscripts for Brill, John Benjamins, Wiley-Blackwell, Routledge, Bloomsbury, Ediciones Universidad de Valladolid, and Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
- Professional bodies:
I am member of Asociación de Lingüística y Filología de América Latina ALFAL, where I co-coordinate Project 17 (Regional Pragmatic Variation) with Catalina Fuentes Rodríguez;
International Pragmatics Association (IPRA);
American International Pragmatics Association (AMPRA);
International Association for the Study of Spanish in Society (SIS) (co-founder).
- Conferences’ scientific committee work:
I have carried out peer review work as member of the scientific
committee of the following events:
the 4th Symposium on Intercultural, Cognitive and Social Pragmatics (Seville, 2010), The Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (Bloomington, Indiana, 2010);
Congreso de la Asociación Española de Lingüística Aplicada AESLA (Salamanca, 2011),
Simposio Internacional sobre la Ironía y el Humor (Alicante, 2011),
Georgetown University Round Table 2015 (Washington, D.C, 2015),
9th International Im/Politeness Conference (Athens, 2015),
3rd International Conference of the American Pragmatics Association (Bloomington, Indiana, 2017);
The 6th Symposium on Intercultural, Cognitive and Social Pragmatics (EPICS) (Seville, 2018),
The 11th LIAR International (Im)Politeness Conference (Linguistic Politeness Research Group) (Valencia, 2018); Congreso Internacional de Estudios Filológicos y Lingüísticos. Homenaje al Profesor Manuel Peñalver Castill,
(Almería, 2021), Congreso Internacional Ciencias del Lenguaje y sus
Aplicaciones (Almería, 2022). The 10th Symposium on Intercultural, Cognitive and Social Pragmatics (EPICS) (Seville, 2022).
- Academic Promotions:
I have acted as external assessor for promotion/tenure applications for the following universities:
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (2007),
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) (2007),
Indiana University, Bloomington (2008),
University of New Hampshire (2011),
Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania (2014),
University of St. Thomas, St Paul, MN (2015),
University of Georgia (2015), Athens, GA (2016).
I was also external assessor for the appointment of a lecturer in Spanish at University of Barcelona through the Serra Hunter Programme (2020).