Elena Semino (born 9 September 1964) is an

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

-born

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

whose research involves stylistics and

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide, or obscure, clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to cr ...

theory A theory is a systematic and rational form of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the conclusions derived from such thinking. It involves contemplative and logical reasoning, often supported by processes such as observation, experimentation, ...

. Focusing on

figurative language The distinction between literal and figurative language exists in all natural languages; the phenomenon is studied within certain areas of language analysis, in particular stylistics, rhetoric, and semantics. *Literal language is the usage of wor ...

in a range of poetic and prose works, most recently she has worked on topics from the domains of medical humanities and health communication. Her projects use corpus linguistic methods as well as qualitative analysis. She served as Head of the Department of Linguistics and English Language at

Lancaster University Lancaster University (officially The University of Lancaster) is a collegiate public university, public research university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established in 1964 by royal charter, as one of several new univer ...

from 2013 to 2019.

Biography

Semino earned her BA in 1988 in Foreign Languages and Literature from the

University of Genoa The University of Genoa () is a public research university. It is one of the largest universities in Italy and it is located in the city of Genoa, on the Italian Riviera in the Liguria region of northwestern Italy. The original university was fou ...

, Italy. She received her MA in 1990 and her PhD in 1994 from

. She taught Italian as a foreign language at Napier Polytechnic (Edinburgh) and at Lancaster University, where in 1992 she took a position as lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language. She became a senior Senior Lecturer in Linguistics there in 2003. She is currently a Professor of Linguistics and Verbal Art and served as Head of the Department of Linguistics and English Language between 2013 and 2019. She serves on the editorial board of ''Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines'' and ''Metaphor and the Social World''. Semino has been a co-PI on grants from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Brazilian research agency CONFAP to study the linguistic representation of urban violence in Brazil using

corpus linguistics Corpus linguistics is an empirical method for the study of language by way of a text corpus (plural ''corpora''). Corpora are balanced, often stratified collections of authentic, "real world", text of speech or writing that aim to represent a giv ...

methods, and a project to funded by ESRC that details how metaphors are used in end-of-life care in the UK (MELC). On 21 November 2018, Semino said that the academics at the

University of Mosul The University of Mosul () is a public university located in Mosul. It is one of the largest educational and research centers in the Middle East, and the second largest in Iraq, behind the University of Baghdad. The University of Mosul was close ...

are "working in conditions that we cannot even imagine" after the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University facilitated to support the teaching of linguistics at

Mosul Mosul ( ; , , ; ; ; ) is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of Nineveh Governorate. It is the second largest city in Iraq overall after the capital Baghdad. Situated on the banks of Tigris, the city encloses the ruins of the ...

Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...

, providing mentoring for staff and students via video-conferencing, advice for PhD students and free access to an online course.

Selected publications

*E. Semino. ''Metaphor in discourse.'' Cambridge University Press. 2008 *E. Semino and M. Short. ''Corpus stylistics: Speech, writing and thought presentation in a corpus of English writing''. Routledge. 2004 *E. Semino, J. Heywood, M. Short. Methodological problems in the analysis of metaphors in a corpus of conversations about cancer. ''Journal of Pragmatics.'' 2004 *E. Seminno and J. Culpeper. ''Cognitive stylistics: Language and cognition in text analysis.'' John Benjamins. 2002

References

External links

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Faculty web page at Lancaster
• �
Video: May I take your metaphor? – how we talk about cancer. Cancer Research UK
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2014 Video: Discussion of a character with autistic spectrum disorder of 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Stylistics
{{DEFAULTSORT:Semino, Elena 1964 births Living people Linguists from the United Kingdom British women linguists Women linguists Alumni of Lancaster University University of Genoa alumni 21st-century British women scientists Academics of Lancaster University Italian emigrants to the United Kingdom 21st-century British women writers Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University