Dr Eleni Kapogianni

Dr Eleni Kapogianni received her PhD from the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics of the University of Cambridge in 2013. Her PhD thesis, funded by the Greek State Scholarship Foundation I.K.Y., was a definitional and typological investigation of the phenomenon of verbal irony, with respect to the literal-nonliteral distinction. 

Before joining the Department of English Language and Linguistics in September 2013, Eleni taught at the University of Cambridge and the University of Leeds in the areas of semantics, (experimental) pragmatics, discourse analysis, and language acquisition.

Eleni co-ordinates the project “Humor and Critical Literacy”, which aims to promote teaching practices that develop students’ critical skills and social awareness.

Eleni is also the Director of the Centre for Language and Linguistics (CLL), a centre which promotes interdisciplinary collaboration in linguistic research and hosts a guest lecture series attracting national and international contributors. Within the activities of the centre, she co-organises the Interdisciplinary Research and Reading Group “Discourse, Power, and Society”, which focuses on - but is not limited to- the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).

Eleni's main research lies in the areas of pragmatics, discourse analysis, and their various interfaces. She is particularly interested in nonliteral language in discourse, especially verbal irony, parody/satire, and humour. 

Key questions of her research concern the scope of irony, the interaction between irony, sarcasm, and politeness in different discourse settings, and the factors that influence the strength of inferential meaning. She also works on issues concerning intercultural communication, considering both universal and culture-specific characteristics of nonliteral language (irony and humour in particular). 

Additional interests (and areas of potential supervision) include metaphor, lying, deception (especially in the language of politics), conflict/aggression and impoliteness.

Eleni teaches semantics, pragmatics and research skills.