Mihaela Popa
Research interests
I am a Postdoctoral Researcher within the Leverhulme-funded project "Metaphor and Metonymy: addressing a debate and a neglected problem" led by John Barnden in the School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham. I received my PhD from the University of Geneva (Linguistics and Philosophy of Language) in 2009. I am currently working on philosophical issues arising in connection with the interpretation of figurative speech, in particular metaphor and irony, and the constraints they put on the interpretation of one another when they are combined. The challenges raised by figurative language are taken up in relation to discussions about truth-conditionality criteria and the semantics/pragmatics interface, as they are drawn in recent debates between indexicalism/minimalism and contextualism. My broader research interests concern the general issue of accommodating context-sensitivity within a theory of human communication, in particular how context-sensitivity affects compositionality.
Background
PhD Figuring the Code: Pragmatic Routes to the Non-Literal Mihaela Popa, (University of Geneva, 2009; advisors: Philip Percival , University of Nottingham and Jacques Moeschler, University of Geneva).
Publications
- Forth. Ironic Metaphor Interpretation. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 35.
- 2010 Ironic Metaphor: a case for Metaphor's Contribution to Truth-conditions. In E. Walaszewska, M Kisielewska-Krysiuk & A. Piskorska (ed.) In the Mind and Across Minds: A Relevance-theoretic Perspective on Communication and Translation. 224-245.
- 2009 Is Semantics Really Psychologically Real? In Meaning, Content and Argument. Proceedings of the ILCLI International Workshop on Semantics, Pragmatics, and Rhetoric (ed.) Larrazabal J. & Zubeldia L. University of the Basque Country Press. 497-514.
Submitted
- Irony as a Hybrid of Pretence and Echo.
- Metaphor Priority in Ironic Metaphor.
- Semantics/Pragmatics of Metaphor and Irony: The Embedding Criterion.