210-3688196

Vasiliki Tsakona

Basic Information:

Title: Professor
Area of Specialization: Social and educational approaches to language

Contact details:

Phone No: +30-210 3688096
E-mail:  vtsakona@ecd.uoa.gr

Full cv: http://www.concept-pl.us/villy.tsakona

Office hours: Announced in the beginning of each semester
Contact address: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Department of Early Childhood Education, Navarinou 13a, Athens 106 80, 3rd floor, Office no. 2

Academic information

Education
  • 2004 D. in Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Philology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Thesis title: “Humor in written narratives: A linguistic approach”. [in Greek]
  • 2000 A. in Applied Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Philology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Dissertation title: “Jokes in communication: A pragmatic analysis”. [in Greek]
  • 1996 BA in Greek Philology (Major in Linguistics), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Research interests
  • Humor theory and the analysis of humorous genres
  • Narrative analysis
  • Political and media discourse analysis
  • Discourse and the construction of identities
  • Critical literacy: Theory and applications
  • Language planning and language policy
Courses and Seminars Undergraduate

  • Introduction to linguistics (82709)
  • Critical literacy (82721)
  • Sociolinguistics (82722)
  • Text linguistics (82723)
  • Issues in language policy (82724)
Selected Publications
  • [2026] Analyzing the racist dimension of hospitality in class: A critical literacy proposal prompted by the Ukrainian refugee issue. Hellenic Journal of Research in Education 15 (1), 90-112. [in Greek]
  • [2026] Exploring primary school immigrant students’ soft hate speech: evidence from Greece [co-authored with Nikoletta Panagaki & Argiris Archakis]. Critical Discourse Studies 23 (3), 296–317. Special issue on “Soft hate speech: Critical perspectives from discourse and argumentation studies”, edited by Stavros Assimakopoulos and Dimitris Serafis.
  • [2026] From critical analysis to critical education: The TRACE research report [co-authored with V. Tsami, E. Skoura & A. Archakis]. Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies 349, 1-15.
  • [2025] Ukrainian identities in the Greek media: Constructing the image of the “acceptable” refugee [co-authored with M. Michali]. Theoretical and Applied Linguistics@ro 1 (2), 179-210.
  • [2025] Humor as Resemiotization [special issue co-edited with J. Chovanec]. Punctum: International Journal of Semiotics 11 (1), 1-249.
  • [2025] Turning lesser–known paintings into COVID–19 memes as a means of humorous criticism [co-authored with D. Brzozowska]. Word & Image 41 (2), 142-155.
  • [2024] Exploring the Sociopragmatics of Online Humor. Topics in Humor Research 12. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • [2024] Exploring the Ambivalence of Liquid Racism: In between Antiracist and Racist Discourse [co-edited with Argiris Archakis]. Pragmatics and Beyond New Series 341. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • [2024] Discussing about Liquid Racism in Educational Settings: Teaching Proposals in the Framework of Critical Literacy. Athens: MA “Education and Human Rights”, Department of Early Childhood Education, NKUA & TRACE project: “Tracing Racism to Anti-Racist Discourse: A Critical Approach to European Public Speech on the Migrant and Refugee Crisis”. https://trace2019.wixsite.com/trace-project/semester-assignments-on-postgraduate-course [in Greek]
  • [2024] «About real refugees»: A critical analysis of the representations and evaluations of Ukrainian refugees in the Greek press [co-authored with M. Michali]. Glossologia 31, 81-100. [in Greek]
  • [2024] Liquid racism in Greek online satirical news. European Journal of Humor Research 12 (1), 135-156.
  • [2024] “Loanword translation and corrective acts are incongruous”: Debating metapragmatic stereotypes through humorous memes. In B. Priego-Valverde (ed.), Interactional Humor: Multimodal Design and Negotiation. Boston: Mouton De Gruyter, 319-354.
  • [2024] Challenging the unequal relationships between L1 and L2 speakers of Greek: A teaching proposal in the framework of critical literacy [co-authored with S. Gasteratou]. In I. Galantomos & E. Griva (eds.), First and Second/Foreign Language: Theoretical Approaches and Educational Applications. Athens: Pedio, 241-251. [in Greek]
  • [2024] The sociopragmatics of humor [co-authored with J. Chovanec]. In T. E. Ford, W. Chłopicki & G. Kuipers (eds.), De Gruyter Handbook of Humor Studies. De Gruyter Contemporary Social Sciences Handbooks 2. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 289-305.
  • [2024] Investigating the internal cohesion of meme cycles: How many (sub)cycles can be generated by a memetic drift? In E. Vanderheiden & C.-H. Mayer (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Humor Research (2nd ed.). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 25-49.
  • [2023] Tracing the Infiltration of Racism in Antiracist Discourse: Studies in Liquid Racism [co-edited with A. Archakis & R. Karachaliou]. Athens: Pedio. [in Greek]
  • [2023] Deconstructing imagined identities and imagined communities through humor: Evidence from adult L2 learners’ humorous narratives [co-authored with S. Gasteratou]. Pragmatics and Society 14 (3), 461-483.
  • [2023] “The girl is on fire!”: Interactional humor in YouTube comments on the Notre Dame disaster [co-authored with Jan Chovanec]. In E. Linares Bernabéu (ed.), The Pragmatics of Humor in Interactive Contexts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 87-107.
  • [2022] Comics as narratives. In M. Kakavoulia & P. Politis (eds.), Narrative: A Multidisciplinary Perspective. Athens: Gutenberg, 243-275. [in Greek]
  • [2022] Language and identity [co-authored with A. Archakis]. In D. Goutsos & S. Bella (eds.), Sociolinguistics. Athens: Gutenberg, 233-266. [in Greek]
  • [2022] “It is necessary to try our best to learn the language”: A Greek case study of internalized racism in antiracist discourse [co-authored with A. Archakis]. Journal of International Migration and Integration 23 (1), 161-182.
  • [2021] The humorous rewriting of Orwell’s 1984: The Greek version. European Journal of Humor Research 9 (4), 58-73.
  • [2021] Greek migrant jokes online: A diachronic-comparative study on racist humorous representations [co-authored with A. Archakis]. Internet Pragmatics 4 (1), 28-51.
  • [2020] Recontextualizing Humor: Rethinking the Analysis and Teaching of Humor. Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
  • [2020] Intertextuality and Humor [special issue co-edited with J. Chovanec]. European Journal of Humor Research 8 (3), 1-136.

 
Current research projects 2025-2028

  • Member of the Advisory Board of the research project “DELIAH: Democratic literacy and humor” of the University of Ghent (Belgium), funded by the HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions. https://www.deliah.eu
  • Member of the research team of the research project “HUMLIT: Developing humor literacy: Analyzing production, content and reception of humor to bring positive change in the public sphere” of the Jagiellonian University (Poland), funded by the European Research Executive Agency, MSCA Staff Exchanges. https://humour-in-europe.project.uj.edu.pl
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