Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Overview
I'm originally from Lithuania, where I graduated from BA in English Philology and MA in English Studies. While at university, I spent part of my study period in Spain (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and Quebec (Université de Montréal). After teaching two years at Vilnius University, in 2012 I started my PhD at the IPrA Research Center at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Apart from analysing interactional (primarily jocular) practices in terms of (im)politeness in Australian and British cultural contexts, I've also recently developed interest in identity studies, particularly in relation to jocularity. I have been working with different types of data, including reality television discourse (yes, they made me watch Big Brother!), qualitative interviews (I made [ok, begged] people [to] give me some answers about their interactional behaviour), corpora (no one made anyone do anything here) and, recently, social media (people, just keep using Facebook!).
I've always loved languages, maybe because I've always been surrounded by a variety of them. I'm a native speaker of Lithuanian and Russian, I spent many years studying and then also teaching English and I also have a certificate for teaching Spanish as a foreign language. Due to my study/research relocations, I can also communicate (sometimes extremely poorly) in Dutch, French and Portuguese, and at the moment I'm struggling with Modern Greek!
And now my quest for a 'holy grail' theory continues in the School of Languages and Cultures, here at UQ!
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Teaching areas (past & present):
UQ (undergraduate):
Other:
- English as a Second Language (Vilnius University)
- Academic English (reading, writing, presentations) (Vilnius University)
- Stylistics (Vilnius University)
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Forthcoming publications:
Journal articles
- Sinkeviciute, Valeria. (in preparation). Performing yourself in reality television: Identity construction in initial encounters with the audience and fellow participants. Journal of Pragmatics.
- Sinkeviciute, Valeria. (in preparation). The interplay between humour and identity construction: An overview. Journal of Pragmatics.
- Sinkeviciute, Valeria (in press). Juggling identities in interviews: The metapragmatics of ‘doing humour’. Journal of Pragmatics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.08.005
- Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2018). “Ya bloody drongo!!!”: Impoliteness as situated moral judgement on Facebook. Internet Pragmatics 1(2): 270–301.
Book chapters
- Dynel, Marta and Valeria Sinkeviciute. (under review). Conversational humour. In Michael Haugh, Dániel Z. Kádár and Marina Terkourafi (eds.), Handbook of Sociopragmatics. Cambridge University Press.
- Haugh, Michael and Valeria Sinkeviciute (2019). Offence and conflict talk. In Matthew Evans, Lesley Jeffries and Jim O’Driscoll (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language in Conflict.
Books
- Sinkeviciute, Valeria (under review). Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness: A Pragmatic Analysis of Social Interaction. John Benjamins.
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Projects:
- 2018-2019 (with Dr Wei-Lin Melody Chang): "How far can an Aussie joke travel? Intercultural perspectives on Australian humour" funded by Strategic Research Initiative Fund (SRIF)
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Forthcoming conference presentations/talks:
- 6-8 February 2019 – (with Wei-Lin Melody Chang), The metapragmatics of ‘familiarity’ in interactional humour at Australian Humour Studies Network conference, Melbourne, Australia
- 9-14 June 2019 - “Hey […] this is Australia and we speak and read English”: An analysis of impoliteness in relation to linguistic diversity on a local government’s Facebook page at the 16th International Pragmatics Conference, Hong Kong
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Edited special issues:
- Haugh, Michael and Valeria Sinkeviciute (eds.) (forthcoming). The pragmatics of getting acquainted: Cross-cultural and intercultural perspectives. Journal of Pragmatics.
- Sinkeviciute, Valeria (ed.) (forthcoming). The interplay between humour and identity construction. Journal of Pragmatics.
- Dynel, Marta and Valeria Sinkeviciute (eds.). 2017. Conversational humour: Spotlight on languages and cultures. Language & Communication 55. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02715309/55?sdc=1
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Panel organisation:
- 9-14 June 2019 – (with Marta Dynel), Aggression as (im)politeness on social media, at the 16th International Pragmatics Conference, Hong Kong
- 6-8 February 2019 - Metapragmatic labels and commentary on humorous practices: An (inter-)cultural perspective, at Australian Humour Studies Network conference, Melbourne, Australia
- 1-3 November 2018 - Panel organiser (with Wei-Lin Melody Chang), Doing ‘being ordinary’ in reality television discourse, at 4th International Conference of the American Pragmatics Association (AMPRA), SUNY, Albany, USA
- 16-21 July 2017 – Panel organiser, From self to culture: Identity construction in humour-related discourses, at the 15th International Pragmatics Conference, Belfast, Northern Ireland
- 26-31 July 2015 – Panel organiser (with Marta Dynel), The Pragmatics of Conversational Humour, at the 14th International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, Belgium
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Invited talks/lectures:
- 26 May 2017 - Evaluating (im)polite interactional behaviour: From reality television to qualitative interviews, talk at the Research Seminar at the School of Languages and Cultures, The University of Queensland, Australia
- 10 May 2017 - Metapragmatics and humour, guest lecture at The University of Queensland, Australia
- 6 November 2015 - What makes teasing impolite? “Step[ping] over those lines […] you shouldn’t be crossing”, guest lecture at University of Antwerp, Belgium
- 25 November 2014 - “[Sometimes] it’s not particularly funny, [sometimes] it’s just rude”: Getting a laugh and/or taking offence to teasing, talk at the Research Seminar at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
- 6 December 2013 - (Im)politeness in context, guest lecture at University of Antwerp, Belgium
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Editorial Board member
Advances in (Im)politeness Studies (book series), Springer
Journal Referee
Journal of Pragmatics
Lingua
Sociolinguistic Studies
Research Interests
- Interactional pragmatics
- Sociopragmatics
- Discourse analysis
- (Im)politeness
- Conversational humour
- Identity in interaction
- Australian and British cultural contexts
- Reality television discourse
- Qualitative interviews
- CMC (Facebook communication)
Qualifications
- Bachelor of Arts, Vilnius University
- Master of Arts, Vilnius University
- Doctor of Philosophy, University of Antwerp
Publications
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Journal Article: Accusations and interpersonal conflict in televised multi-party interactions amongst speakers of (Argentinian and Peninsular) Spanish
Haugh, Michael and Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2018) Accusations and interpersonal conflict in televised multi-party interactions amongst speakers of (Argentinian and Peninsular) Spanish. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 6 2: 248-270. doi:10.1075/jlac.00012.hau
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Conference Publication: Doing ‘being ordinary’ and performing the real in a Big Brother house
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2018). Doing ‘being ordinary’ and performing the real in a Big Brother house. In: AMPRA-4, Albany, NY, United States, (). 1-3 November 2018.
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Journal Article: Juggling identities in interviews: The metapragmatics of ‘doing humour’
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2018) Juggling identities in interviews: The metapragmatics of ‘doing humour’. Journal of Pragmatics, . doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2018.08.005
Publications
Book Chapter
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2017). "Everything he says to me it’s like he stabs me in the face": frontstage and backstage reactions to teasing. In Nancy Bell (Ed.), Multiple perspectives on language play (pp. 169-198) Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9781501503993-008
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(Im)politeness and mixed messages
Culpeper, Jonathan, Haugh, Michael and Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2017). (Im)politeness and mixed messages. In Jonathan Culpeper, Michael Haugh and Daniel Z. Kadar (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of linguistic (im)politeness (pp. 323-355) London, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-37508-7_13
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Decoding encoded (im)politeness: ‘Cause on my teasing you can depend’
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2013). Decoding encoded (im)politeness: ‘Cause on my teasing you can depend’. In Marta Dynel (Ed.), Developments in linguistic humour theory (pp. 263-288) Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/thr.1.13sin
Journal Article
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Haugh, Michael and Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2018) Accusations and interpersonal conflict in televised multi-party interactions amongst speakers of (Argentinian and Peninsular) Spanish. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 6 2: 248-270. doi:10.1075/jlac.00012.hau
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Juggling identities in interviews: The metapragmatics of ‘doing humour’
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2018) Juggling identities in interviews: The metapragmatics of ‘doing humour’. Journal of Pragmatics, . doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2018.08.005
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2017) Variability in group identity construction: a case study of the Australian and British Big Brother houses. Discourse, Context and Media, 20 70-82. doi:10.1016/j.dcm.2017.09.006
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2017) "It's just a bit of cultural [...] lost in translation": Australian and British intracultural and intercultural metapragmatic evaluations of jocularity. Lingua, 197 50-67. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2017.03.004
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2017) What makes teasing impolite in Australian and British English? “Step[ping] over those lines […] you shouldn’t be crossing”. Journal of Politeness Research, 13 2: 175-207. doi:10.1515/pr-2015-0034
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Approaching conversational humour culturally: a survey of the emerging area of investigation
Sinkeviciute, Valeria and Dynel, Marta (2017) Approaching conversational humour culturally: a survey of the emerging area of investigation. Language & Communication, 55 1-9. doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2016.12.001
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2017) Funniness and “the preferred reaction” to jocularity in Australian and British English: an analysis of interviewees' metapragmatic comments. Language & Communication, 55 41-54. doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2016.06.004
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2015) "There’s definitely gonna be some serious carnage in this house" or how to be genuinely impolite in Big Brother UK. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 3 2: 317-348. doi:10.1075/jlac.3.2.04sin
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2014) "When a joke's a joke and when it's too much": mateship as a key to interpreting jocular FTAs in Australian English. Journal of Pragmatics, 60 121-139. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2013.11.004
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Sinkeviciute, Valerija (2010) A comparative analysis of politeness in first encounter conversations in British English film and peninsular Spanish film. Lexis: Journal in English Lexicology, HS2 HS 2: 71-93. doi:10.4000/lexis.820
Conference Publication
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Doing ‘being ordinary’ and performing the real in a Big Brother house
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2018). Doing ‘being ordinary’ and performing the real in a Big Brother house. In: AMPRA-4, Albany, NY, United States, (). 1-3 November 2018.
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Variability in group identity construction in reality television discourse
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2018). Variability in group identity construction in reality television discourse. In: 8th International Conference on Intercultural Pragmatics & Communication, Nicosia, Cyprus, (). 8-10 June 2018.
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“I wouldn’t publicly make a big song and dance about it”: Resisting (un)desirable identities
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2018). “I wouldn’t publicly make a big song and dance about it”: Resisting (un)desirable identities. In: Sociolinguistics Symposium 22, Auckland, New Zealand, (). 27-30 June 2018.
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2018). “It’s not nice […] you’re just taking the piss out of me”: Failed humour and differences in its evaluation by (non-)participants. In: 24th Conference of the Australasian Humour Studies Network (AHSN), Cairns Australia, (). 2-4- February 2018.
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2017). Intracultural and intercultural evaluations of mock impoliteness: a case study of Australian and British (non-)participants. In: 10th International Symposium on Politeness, York, United Kingdom, (). 12-14 July 2017.
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Juggling multiple identities: a case of Australian and British views on jocularity
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2017). Juggling multiple identities: a case of Australian and British views on jocularity. In: 15th International Pragmatics Conference, Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, (). 16-21 July 2017.
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Performing yourself: constructing identity in initial encounters
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2017). Performing yourself: constructing identity in initial encounters. In: Michael Haugh and Valeria Sinkeviciute, Symposium "Getting Acquainted across Cultures", St Lucia, Brisbane, Queensland, (13-13). 20 October 2017.
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Sledging Aussies and catty Brits: Cultural variability in (not) taking offence to jocularity
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2016). Sledging Aussies and catty Brits: Cultural variability in (not) taking offence to jocularity. In: 7th International Conference on Intercultural Pragmatics and Communication, Split, Croatia, (). 10-12 June 2016.
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When “it’s funny” means “it’s not funny at all”: Evaluations of jocularity by non-participants
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2016). When “it’s funny” means “it’s not funny at all”: Evaluations of jocularity by non-participants. In: LAFAL 4, Lodz, Poland, (). 17-18 March 2016.
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2016). “If you made a joke […] then you could quite clearly […] show […] what you thought without […] losing face”: A jocular reaction as an expression of a disaffiliative stance. In: Linguistic Impoliteness Rudeness, and Aggression (LIAR IV), Manchester, UK, (). 12-14 July 2016.
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What makes teasing impolite? “Step[ping] over those lines […] you shouldn’t be crossing”
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2015). What makes teasing impolite? “Step[ping] over those lines […] you shouldn’t be crossing”. In: 9th International Im/Politeness Conference, Athens, Greece, (). 1-3 July 2015.
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2015). “Reality is not events themselves but the talk about them”: The role of metalanguage in relation to teasing and (im)politeness. In: 14th International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, Belgium, (). 26-31 July 2015.
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“What is she doing with those people?” Group membership and humour in reality TV
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2015). “What is she doing with those people?” Group membership and humour in reality TV. In: 7th Lodz Symposium: New Developments in Linguistic Pragmatics, Lodz, Poland, (). 12-14 April 2015.
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"I’m just being polite": Performing mateship and kinship in Big Brother Australia and UK
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2014). "I’m just being polite": Performing mateship and kinship in Big Brother Australia and UK. In: 8th International Conference on Politeness, Huddersfield, UK, (). 9-11 July 2014.
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2014). “There’s definitely gonna be some serious carnage in this house” or how to be genuinely impolite in Big Brother UK. In: Sixth International Symposium on Intercultural, Cognitive and Social Pragmatics (EPICS VI), Seville, Spain, (). 12-14 May 2014.
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Backstage Impoliteness: 'Everything he says to me it's like he stabs me in the face'
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2013). Backstage Impoliteness: 'Everything he says to me it's like he stabs me in the face'. In: 13th International Pragmatics Conference, New Delhi, India, (). 8-13 September 2013.
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2013). ‘I think that now you think it’s funny to be rude to people’: Aussies, Big Brother and some serious laughing matters. In: LAFAL 3, Lodz, Poland, (). 21-23 March 2013.
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‘It’s not all that easy’: (Im)politeness in teasing
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2012). ‘It’s not all that easy’: (Im)politeness in teasing. In: 6th Lodz Symposium New Developments in Linguistic Pragmatics (NDLP2012), Lodz, Poland, (). 26-28 May 2012.
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2011). Indirect FTAs: A Cross-Cultural Study of Implicatures and Inferences in Off-record Politeness Strategies. In: Fourth International BAAHE Conference, Brussels, Belgium, (). 1-3 December 2011.
Other Outputs
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2016). “It’s never meant to be offensive…”: an analysis of jocularity and (im)politeness in Australian and British cultural contexts PhD Thesis, Department of Linguistics, University of Antwerp.
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2010). One country, two cultures: a cross-cultural pragmatic study of implicatures and inferences in off-record strategies in Canadian English and Québécois M.A. Thesis, Department of English Philology, Vilnius University.
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Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2008). A comparative analysis of politeness in the first encounter conversations in British English and Peninsular Spanish B.A. Thesis, Department of English Philology, Vilnius University.
PhD and MPhil Supervision
Current Supervision
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Verbal Humour in English as a Lingua Franca
Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors:
