I have always been fascinated by language in its many manifestations: spoken, handwritten, or texted; regional, marginalized, and standard; translanguaged, trans-scripted. Much as language helps us connect with others, it is also an instrument for exclusion and division at all levels, from the (supra-)national to the individual. Yet, after years of studying language and languages, it is clear to me that language doesn't have this power all by itself. It is part of a larger semiotic whole, which includes material and ideological aspects acting as a filter to how we "hear" others and how they "hear" us. It is this enactment of the Self through language that lies at the heart of my research, which usually goes under the more traditional rubrics of "sociolinguistics" and "pragmatics".

More information about Marina Terkourafi

Fields of interest

• Pragmatics
• Sociolinguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Im/politeness
• Language ideologies
• Language attitudes
• Cross-cultural communication
• Historical sociolinguistics of Greek

Research

As a sociolinguist and pragmatician with interests that branch out to the philosophy of language and experimental pragmatics, I am committed to studying language as always in flux shaped by individual cognition and agency, on the one hand, and larger societal dynamics, on the other.

A second guiding principle of my academic work is enriching the linguistic canon (be that at the level of data or scholarly work) with voices from non-Western perspectives and non-standard varieties. I firmly believe this makes not only for more ethical engagement with those we serve, our colleagues, and students, but also for more open-minded science, able to accommodate multiple causation and explanation of linguistic phenomena. In this vein, I teach and publish on Ethics in Linguistics (e.g., Lorentz workshop 2022; LOT winterschool 2024, special issue of "Linguistics" (de Gruyter, 2025)).

Currently, I am supervising 8 doctoral students working on various topics in pragmatics and sociolinguistics. I am also keenly interested in projects aiming to elucidate the nature of social meaning and its relationship to more traditional typologies of pragmatic meaning from a performativity/social constructionist and cross-cultural perspective (panels at IPrA 2023 & 2025, special issue of "Journal of Pragmatics", 2025).

Grants and awards

2024: Research Traineeship, Leiden Faculty of Humanities  “Arabic papyri and politeness” (co-P.I. Petra Sijpestein).

2022: Lorentz Center workshop “Ethics in Linguistics”.P.I. 25 invited participants from Africa, Australia, USA, and Europe (9-13 May 2022).

2021: Research Traineeship, Leiden Faculty of Humanities “Leiden Wall Poems: a Mixed Methods Study of their History, Reception and Impact” (co-P.I. Jan Sleutels).

2019: Research Traineeship, Leiden Faculty of Humanities “Istanbul Greek: documenting a language variety of early cosmopolitanism in its last stages”. (co-P.I. Deniz Tat).

2018: Research Traineeship, Leiden Faculty of Humanities “The interface of cognition and emotion: A Dutch-Japanese comparative study”. (co-P.I. Wataru Uegaki).

2015: SLCL Undergraduate Research award, University of Illinois “Meaning making on the internet: a preliminary investigation.”

2012: National Science Foundation (USA) “Experimental and empirical approaches to grammatical expressions of speaker attitude.”  (co-P.I. Kiel Christianson).

2012: European Science Foundation/EURO-XPRAG Network “Why imply something when you can say it explicitly?”  (co-P.I. Napoleon Katsos).

2012: William and Flora Hewlett Foundation “Experimental and Empirical Approaches to Politeness and Impoliteness.”  Hewlett International Conference grant.

2009: Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) “Lost in Intonation: The interaction of intonation and meaning in the speech of L1, L2 and heritage speakers of Greek and its implications for cross-cultural communication and education.”  P.I.

2009: Campus Research Board Award, University of Illinois: “The languages of global hip-hop: a sociolinguistic investigation.”

2007: Small Research Grant, British Academy “Language contact in medieval Cyprus.”  Co-P.I. (P.I. Ioanna Sitaridou)

2007: International Research Travel Grant, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation “Language contact in medieval Cyprus: The linguistic record.”

2006: Research Grant, Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) “Integrating pragmatics with HPSG: An exploration of theoretical and methodological issues”  (P.I. Ann Copestake).

2003: Small Research Grant, British Academy (UK) “Modeling politeness in a Greek HPSG”  (P.I. Ann Copestake).

Curriculum vitae

After training in Europe (PhD Cambridge, 2001), I obtained my tenure at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the US in 2012. Since 2017, I have been based at Leiden University, where I hold the chair of Sociolinguistics. Coupled with visiting professorships in China, France, Greece, Sweden, and elsewhere, this multi-country trajectory has helped me build a rich inventory of teaching and research experience.

My publications and teaching span the range from language contact in the medieval Mediterranean (Diachronica, 2005) to digitally-mediated communication and multimodality (Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 2015; Journal of Greek Linguistics, 2021, i.a.), taking in broad surveys of geographical regions (undergraduate courses on North America) and linguistic subfields (Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, 2021 (co-ed.); Oxford Bibliography on Sociopragmatics, 2023; entries in Routledge Handbook of Linguistics, 2015 and Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics, 2012, i.a.).
 
In addition to a broad gamut of courses in sociolinguistics and pragmatics, I have taught courses on Language and trust, Ethics in Linguistics, and the languages of the Mediterranean. Several of my former graduate students hold tenured positions in the US.

Having served the field in various positions, including first woman co-editor in chief of the Journal of Pragmatics (2017-2021) and member of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) consultation board (elected 2023-), I am intimately acquainted with the complexities of academic publishing and mentoring is an integral part of my work. I am convinced about the need to create a level playing field for incoming scholars based on the quality of their work and not where they hail from, geographically or socially and strive to strike a balance between helpfulness (to the recipient), fairness (to others), and a critical eye (to the work) in my assessments.

Selected publications

• (2024) The strategic/non-strategic binary in im/politeness research. Journal of Politeness Research 20, 111–134.
• (2023, with M-B. Mosegaard-Hansen) We need to talk about Hearer’s Meaning! Journal of Pragmatics 208, 99-114.
• (2021) Pragmatics as an interdisciplinary field. Journal of Pragmatics 179, 77–84.
• (2021, ed. with M. Haugh & D. Kadar) Handbook of Sociopragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• (2020, with B. Weissman & J. Roy) Different scalar terms are affected by face differently. International Review of Pragmatics 12, 1–43.
• (2019, with F. Ameka) What if…? Imagining non-Western perspectives on pragmatic theory and practice. Journal of Pragmatics 145, 72-82.
• (2019, with B. Weissman) Are false implicatures lies? An empirical investigation. Mind & Language 34, 221-246.
• (2017, with J. Culpeper) Pragmatic approaches (im) politeness. The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness, 11-39.
• (2015) Conventionalization: A new agenda for im/politeness research. Journal of Pragmatics 86, 11-18.
• (2011) The pragmatic variable: Toward a procedural interpretation. Language in Society 40, 343-372.
• (2011) The puzzle of indirect speech: A Reply to Steven Pinker. Journal of Pragmatics 43, 2861-2865.
• (2011) Thank you, Sorry and Please in Cypriot Greek: What happens to politeness markers when they are borrowed across languages? Journal of Pragmatics 43, 218-235.
• (2011) From politeness1 to politeness2: Tracking norms of im/politeness across time and space. Journal of Politeness Research 7, 159-185.
• (2010, ed.) The Languages of Global Hip hop. Bloomsbury.
• (2008) Toward a unified theory of politeness, impoliteness, and rudeness. In: D. Bousfield & M. Locher (eds.) Impoliteness in language, 54–89.
• (2007) Toward a universal notion of face for a universal notion of cooperation. In: L. Horn & I. Kesckes (eds.) Explorations in pragmatics: Linguistic, cognitive and intercultural aspects. 313-344.
• (2005) Beyond the micro-level in politeness research. Journal of Politeness Research 1, 237-262.
• (2005) Understanding the present through the past: Processes of koineisation in Cyprus. Diachronica 22, 309-372.
• (2005) An argument for a frame-based approach to politeness: Evidence from the use of the imperative in Cypriot Greek. In: R. Lakoff & S. Ide (eds.) Broadening the horizon of linguistic politeness, 99-116.
• (2003) Generalised and particularised implicatures of linguistic politeness. In: P. Kühnlein, R. Hannes & H. Zeevat (eds.) Perspectives on dialogue in the new millennium, 149-164.
• (2002) Politeness and formulaicity: evidence from Cypriot Greek. Journal of Greek Linguistics 3, 179-201.

Publications