My current research is in medical communication. It is comprised of real data and is qualitative in nature. I study how language is used as a strategy to reflect patient-centred communication. I explore how people use language to build relationships in institutional contexts and how they negotiate power, establish common ground and portray personas.
I am also involved in research on online support groups. My interest is in how information is organized in web-based interaction and, in particular, how cooperation is embodied in linguistic structures.
2012 — present
Alternative medicine therapy sessions as a collaborative enterprise
PhD thesis under the supervision of Dr. Panayiotis Pappas, SFU (Senior Supervisor) and Dr. Maite Taboada, SFU (Co-Supervisor)
This PhD thesis project investigates the communication patterns and discourse strategies of caregivers and their patients.
The contribution of the present research could shed light on the nature of the talk used in the context of alternative medicine and how the used language reflects the holistic approach of this type of therapy – an area that has not been sufficiently explored in a rigorous linguistic manner.
2013 — present
Information technology in healthcare
Collaboration with Dr. Alex Ivanov, City University of Hong Kong
I provided the computer-mediated discourse analysis.
2013 — present
Study on the effects of perceived social indispensability on productivity and satisfaction in electronic group brainstorming
Collaboration with Dr. Alex Ivanov, City University of Hong Kong
I have been involved with designing the experiment, running brainstorming sessions, and the analyzing the discourse of the sessions.
2007 — 2010
Web-based meetings for idea generation: Interface design and discourse analysis
Collaboration with Alex Ivanov, PhD Student, SIAT (SFU)
I helped with the experiment design, organized and facilitated brainstorming sessions, and provided the discourse analysis for the project.
Fall 2008 — Spring 2009
On Swadesh list
Research Assistant for Dr. Panayiotis Pappas, SFU
My part in this project involved translation of the Swadesh list lexical items from English to Old Church Slavonic and Russian.
2007 — 2009
MA thesis project: Linguistic effects on the contact between Greek and Bulgarian languages for recent Bulgarian immigrants to Northern Greece
Principal investigator SSHRC Master Fellowship
The study presented the results of an analysis of code-switching behaviour observed in bilingual Bulgarian-Greek conversations. On the basis of eight hours of recorded conversations with eight participants, a corpus of 234 instances of intra-sentential code- switching were extracted with the complementizer phrase being a unit of analysis. All these instances are analyzed structurally in accordance with the Matrix Language Framework (Myers-Scotton 2002). Code-switching patterns are also discussed in relation to the shared features within the Balkan Sprachbund to which both Bulgarian and Greek belong. The structural analysis focuses on instances of lexical insertions and more specifically, pays attention to single-switch morpheme such as the definite article. It was found that variation between the Bulgarian and Greek definite article combined with Greek noun is probably determined by the language of the preceding lexical item.
Keywords: code-switching, Bulgarian, Greek, definite article, lexical insertions, Balkan Sprachbund.
Fall 2007 — Summer 2009
On clitics in Cypriot Greek
Research Assistant for Dr. Panayiotis Pappas, SFU
My part in this project involved extracting and archiving tokens from audio files recorded in Cypriot Greek.