LINDES: Linguistic Descriptions of English - Universidad de Salamanca
Research group lead:
Izaskun Elorza
Izaskun Elorza is Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the Department of English Studies of the University of Salamanca. She has been Affiliate Scholar at the University of Glasgow (2023-2024) and Honorary Research Associate at the University of Liverpool (2006-2007), and has lectured through international exchange programmes and personal invitations at the University of Cardiff and the University of Iceland, among others. Her research interests focus on systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA), corpus-assisted analysis, and their applications to educational, professional and social contexts.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9807-4811
Web page: https://diarium.usal.es/iea/
Research members at the University of Salamanca (alphabetical order):
Nadia M. Arias González
Nadia M. Arias González is an Associate Lecturer at the Department of English Studies of the University of Salamanca and at the Department of Education of Nebrija University in Madrid. She holds degrees in both English (2005) and Spanish Philology (2010) from the University of Salamanca, as well as a master’s degree in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language (2012). She is part of the PhD programme ‘Advanced English Studies: Languages and Cultures in Contact’ from the English Department of the USAL, where she is currently working on her doctoral thesis in the field of Applied Linguistics: “Graphic Narratives of Heritage and Identity: An Intercultural Journey through Graphic Novels”. Her line of research follows a multimodal analysis of the representation of geopolitical, cultural, and emotional borders in graphic novels, as well as the potential use of this kind of narratives as a tool to foster Intercultural Competence in EFL classrooms.
Maria Bîrlea
Maria Bîrlea is a USAL Predoctoral Fellow FPI (funded by the University of Salamanca and Banco Santander, 2023-2027) in the Department of English Studies at the University of Salamanca. Her research interests focus on systemic functional grammar, multimodality, the systematisation of collustration patterns and how they can be applied to educational contexts, including the teaching of English amongst others. Maria holds a degree in English Studies from the University of Salamanca (2020) and completed her MA in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at University College Dublin (2021). She is currently doing her PhD titled: “A corpus-assisted analysis of multimodal patterns of migration in children’s picture books”, which is part of the Project MIAMUL “Children’s picture books about migration: Multimodal analysis and applicability to multicultural and multilingual environments” (Grant PID2021-124786OB-100 funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and by “ERDF A way of making Europe”).
Blanca García Riaza
Blanca García-Riaza holds a Degree in English Studies and a Ph.D. from the University of Salamanca (2012). She is now permanent lecturer and teacher trainer at the Department of English Studies at the University of Salamanca, focusing her teaching on English for educational professionals and ESP for tourism professionals at the School of Education and Tourism. Her research interests focus on new methodologies and technological applications for the teaching of English at university level. She has published a great number of articles and contributed to relevant publications and conferences in the field.
Amanda Ellen Gerke
Amanda Ellen Gerke is Assistant Professor at the University of Salamanca where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in English Studies, including language, linguistics, writing, and language pedagogy. Her research lines include (critical) discourse analysis, genre studies, sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, descriptive linguistics applied to social and educational contexts, and literary discourse analysis.
She has published articles, book chapters, and edited volumes related to social determinants in code-switching, identity formation, language spaces, and speech communities. Her latest volume is co-edited, and titled Latinidad at the Crossroads: Insights into Latinx identity in the Twenty-First Century, Brill-Rodopi (2021).
Carolina Fernández Quintanilla
Carolina Fernández Quintanilla is Lecturer in English language and linguistics at the University of Salamanca. She holds a PhD in linguistics and an MA in English language and literary studies from Lancaster University, and a BA in English philology from the University of Extremadura. Before joining the University of Salamanca, she held several teaching and research positions at the universities of Extremadura, Granada, Huddersfield, Queen’s Belfast, Chester and Lancaster. Carolina specialises in stylistics or literary linguistics. Her research interests focus on narrative, characterisation, dementia fiction, and readers’ responses during reading (especially narrative empathy). She is now expanding her areas of study to include historical sociolinguistics and Irish English within the ReDiaLing project (PI: Carolina Amador-Moreno, University of Extremadura).
Nely Milagros Iglesias Iglesias (University of Salamanca)
Nely Iglesias is Non-tenured Associate Professor in the area of German Studies at the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Salamanca. She has worked extensively in lexicography and has co-authored more than a dozen common German-Spanish dictionaries (PONS, Klett-Verlag, Stuttgart), as well as the Idiomatik Deutsch-Spanisch (Buske, 2013). She has participated in several research projects on phraseology (currently on the project on idiomatic constructions ‘CONSTRIDIOMS’ (PID2019-108783RB-I00) led by Prof. Carmen Mellado at the University of Santiago). Her research interests include corpus linguistics, corpus-assisted analysis, cognitive linguistics, contrastive linguistics, construction grammar, and applications of descriptive linguistics to educational contexts.
She is also a member of the following research groups: (1) FRASESPAL (http://frasespal.com), based at the University of Santiago de Compostela; (2) European Languages and Cultures in Contact (L&C: https://produccioncientifica.usal.es/grupos/3680/detalle?lang=en), affiliated with the University of Salamanca; and (3) the scientific research group CoPrEspa (Prepositional Constructions in Spanish), at the University of Tübingen (Germany).
Vasilica Mocanu
Vasilica is a researcher in Applied Linguistics and a tenure-track professor at the University of Salamanca. Her mixed methods research within the field of applied and sociolinguistics delves into the relationship between language and identity under globalizing processes that trigger human mobility. Vasilica has graduated in English Studies and she obtained her MA in Teaching English as a Foreign Language from Universitat de Lleida. In 2019, she received her doctoral degree with a dissertation on the implications of study abroad for identity development. Vasilica has been a visiting research fellow at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada (2017) and at the Institute of Multilingualism – University of Fribourg, Switzerland (2018).
Agata Zelachowska
Agata Zelachowska is a Part-time Lecturer of the Department of English Studies at the University of Salamanca. Her research interests include discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics with special interest in (Multimodal) Conceptual Metaphor Theory, social semiotics and multimodality, as well as the applications of descriptive linguistics to educational and social contexts.
Research Collaborators (alphabetical order):
Pedro Álvarez Mosquera (University of Salamanca)
Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Salamanca, Spain. My current research focuses on the role of language (and language attitudes) in the social categorization process and intergroup perception in the context of South Africa. My main research interests are in (qualitative and quantitative) Sociolinguistics, Cognitive linguistics, Corpus Linguistics, and Linguistic Landscape (multimodal analysis), among other interrelated areas. I am also an Extraordinary Professor in the Research Focus Area: Understanding and Processing Language in Complex Settings of the North-West University (South Africa), a UNISA Research Fellow (South Africa), a member of the research project ‘Language in a Post-apartheid South African city’ (LaPASC), and the former General Coordinator / Director of the Erasmus + Project BAQONDE (2021-2024).
Carla Amorós Negre (University of Salamanca)
Carla Amorós Negre is Ph.D. in General Linguistics and Associate Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Salamanca (Department of Spanish Language). Her main areas of scholarly interest include language policy and planning, sociolinguistics, linguistic variation, descriptive linguistics applied to social and educational contexts. She has been a visiting researcher in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh and in Fachbereich 10: Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften at the University of Bremen. She is director of the Master’s Degree ‘Máster Universitario en Lengua y Cultura Hispánicas’ (MULCH), as well as co-director of the Master’s Degree ‘La Enseñanza de Español como Lengua Extranjera’.
Jorge Arús-Hita (University Complutense of Madrid)
Jorge Arús Hita is associate professor in English language and linguistics at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. His publications include work in the areas of contrastive functional linguistics and Systemic Functional Linguistics in general. He is co-author, with Julia Lavid and Juan Rafael Zamorano, of Systemic-Functional Grammar of Spanish: a Contrastive Study with English (2010). More recently, he has co-edited the special Lingua issue Dynamicity and Contrast in Systemic Functional Linguistics (2021, with Izaskun Elorza and Tom Bartlett) and the Revista Signos special issue Estudios de Lingüística Sistémico-Funcional en/del Español (2021, with Nora Kaplan).
Thomas Bartlett (University of Glasgow, United Kingdom)
Tom Bartlett is Professor of Functional and Applied Linguistics at the University of Glasgow. His research areas are Systemic Functional Linguistics (including descriptions of Scottish Gaelic), Critical Discourse Analysis and Cultural Linguistics. Tom’s research focuses of the dynamics of language from the clause through to ideological formations; the sociolinguistic concept of voice; and the discourses of sustainability.
Cristina Cañamares Torrijos (University of Castilla-La Mancha)
Cristina Cañamares Torrijos is Associate Professor in Didactics of Language and Literature at the Department of Hispanic Philology of the University of Castilla-La Mancha. Her research interests focus on Children’s Literature, especially children’s picture books, Folk Literature (nursery rhymes and folktales), adult and child literacy and reading promotion, multimodal discourse analysis, and the applications of those to educational, professional and social contexts.
Laura Filardo Llamas (University of Valladolid)
Laura Filardo-Llamas is Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the Department of English Studies of the University of Valladolid. She has also worked at the University of Granada, and she has been a visiting scholar at the University of Ulster-Jordanstown, the University of Lancaster, and the Vrije University of Amsterdam. Her research specialises on Cognitive Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis, with a particular interest in political discourse analysis and social media. Her research is particularly focused on explaining the relation between cognition, discourse, and conflict.
Nora Kaplan de Mizrahi (Nora Kaplan Language Center, Salamanca, Spain)
Nora Kaplan holds a PhD in Discourse Studies and a Masters in TELF from the University of Salamanca and Central University of Venezuela. She has a BA in English Philology from the University of Salamanca. She has published papers in (critical) discourse analysis, SFL and Appraisal theory. She has wide experience as a teacher of English and teacher trainer in South America and Spain. She is the founder and academic director of ‘Nora Kaplan Language Centre’ (www.kaplancentre.com).
Virginia Mattioli (University of Cantabria)
Virginia Mattioli is a Translation Studies scholar and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Philology at the University of Cantabria. She received her BA degree from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and her MA and PhD degree in Applied Languages, Literature and Translation from the University Jaume I (Castellón de la Plana, Spain) with a thesis on a corpus-based comparison of foreign words and otherness acceptance between translated and travel novels. She worked as a Research Assistant for the University of Birmingham, as an Associate Professor in Translation Studies at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso (PUCV) and as a Substitute Professor at the University of Salamanca. Her research interests include cultural, literary and legal translation, corpus-based studies, contrastive linguistics and sociolinguistics.
Arsenio Jesús Moya Guijarro (University of Castilla-La Mancha)
Jesús Moya-Guijarro is Professor at the Faculty of Education in the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). He has published extensively on multimodal discourses in international journals, such as Review of Cognitive Linguistics, Word, Text, Functions of Language, Journal of Pragmatics and Text and Talk. He is co- editor together with Eija Ventola of ‘A Multimodal Approach to Challenging Gender Stereotypes’ (2022, Routledge) and of ‘The World Told and the World Shown: Multisemiotic Issues’ (2009, Palgrave Macmillan). He has also authored ‘A Multimodal Analysis of Picture Books for Children’ (2014, Equinox).
Lorena Pérez Penup (Universidad Don Bosco)
Lorena Pérez Penup is a Research Professor at Universidad Don Bosco in El Salvador. She holds a Ph.D. in Advanced English Studies from the University of Salamanca and a Master’s in TESOL from Central Michigan University. In 2024, she completed a research stay at the Department of Educational Research at Johannes Kepler University Linz in Austria. With extensive experience as an English teacher and teacher trainer, her research interests lie at the intersection of descriptive linguistics and its application to educational, professional, and specialized contexts. Her primary research focus is on academic literacy development, with an emphasis on writing skills in both English and Spanish
Francisco Javier Ruano García (University of Salamanca)
Javier Ruano-García is Associate Professor of the History of the English Language at the University of Salamanca. His main research interests lie in the fields of linguistic variation and sociolinguistics, with a focus on regional dialects of the early and late modern English periods, as well as of corpus linguistics. He is the author of Early Modern Northern English Lexis: A Literary Corpus-Based Study (Peter Lang, 2010) and has edited White Kennett’s Etymological Collections of English Words and Provincial Expressions for Oxford University Press (2018).
Begoña Ruiz Cordero (University of Castilla-La Mancha)
María Begoña Ruiz Cordero is a lecturer at the University of Castilla- La Mancha and belongs to the department of Foreign Languages. She has been teaching English in different educational levels and, therefore, she has been connected to the teaching and learning process from infant level to university level. Her main research lines are: teacher training, CLIL, multimodal discourse analysis, the implementation of bilingualism in infant and primary education and the results obtained in English language competence by students who are immersed into bilingual programmes.
Pilar Sánchez García (University of Salamanca)
Pilar Sánchez-García, MA in English Language and Literature from the University of Salamanca and a PhD in English Linguistics in 2000, with a dissertation supervised by Gudelia Rodríguez on the spelling representation of Northern English dialects during the nineteenth century. I have taught in the Department of English Philology in Salamanca since 1994, where I obtained a position as Associate Professor in 2015. I teach undergraduate and MA courses on the history of the English language, linguistic variation in literary texts, and English diachronic dialectology. I am also one of the authors and compilers of the digital archive ‘Salamanca Corpus’ (https://salamancacorpus.usal.es/SC/index.html; https://gredos.usal.es/handle/10366/82515).
Paula Schintu Martínez (University of Salamanca)
Paula Schintu holds a PhD on Historical Sociolinguistics from the University of Salamanca. She completed her BA in English Studies from the University of Salamanca (2014) and an MA in Advanced English Studies from the Universities of Salamanca and Valladolid (2015). She is currently working as a lecturer in the Department of English Philology (2017—). She has been a visiting researcher at the University of Reading and at the University of Oxford. Her main fields of research are English historical linguistics and sociolinguistics, linguistic variation, diachronic dialectology and enregisterment in historical contexts.
DOCTORAL STUDENTS (CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER):
Maria Bîrlea (in progress)
A corpus-assisted analysis of multimodal patterns of migration in children’s picture books.
Supervisor: Izaskun Elorza
Donia Kaffel (University of Sfax, Tunisia) (in progress)
Linking Adverbials in Tunisian Academic Writing: A Corpus-Based Study of Cohesion and Conjunction Across Genres and Disciplines.
Supervisors: Akila Sellami-Baklouti & Izaskun Elorza
Agata Zelachowska (2025)
The construction of migration and migrants in multimodal discourse: An analysis of conceptual metaphors and metonymies.
Supervisor: Izaskun Elorza
Lorena B. Pérez Penup (2020)
Building an identity as academic writers in English as an Alternative Language: The case of Spanish researcher-professors in the ‘soft’ sciences.
Supervisor: Izaskun Elorza
Miriam Pérez-Veneros (2017)
Narrative voice in popular science in the British press: A corpus analysis on the construal of attributed meanings.
Supervisor: Izaskun Elorza
Blanca García-Riaza (2012)
Attribution and thematization patterns in science popularization articles of The Guardian newspaper.
Supervisor: Izaskun Elorza
Nely Milagros Iglesias Iglesias (2005)
El tratamiento de las unidades fraseológicas en diccionarios bilingües español/alemán y sus implicaciones didácticas en la enseñanza/aprendizaje del alemán como lengua extranjera.
Supervisors: Izaskun Elorza & Jesús Hernández Rojo
VISITORS:
Donia Kaffel (University of Sfax)
(September-November 2023)
Francisco Ivorra (Universitat de València)
(March-April 2022)
PREVIOUS MEMBERS:
Beatriz Hermida Ramos (2021-2022)
Susana Marrón González (2021-2022)
Carmen Sumillera Iglesias (2023-2024)