Languages, Cultures and Visual Studies

Photo of Professor Susana Pinto Cavadas Afonso

Professor Susana Pinto Cavadas Afonso

Senior Lecturer in Portuguese

S.P.C.afonso@exeter.ac.uk

4236

01392 724236

Overview

My research expertise is in Cognitive Linguistics, a theoretical framework concerned with the conceptual representation in language, in particular Cognitive Sociolinguistics, a field that proposes to investigate sociolinguistic variation within the cognitive linguistics framework. My focus in this area is on the Portuguese as a global language, in particular variation of Portuguese (constructional alternations between European and Brazilian Portuguese), having published in Cognitive Linguistics and Linguistics Vanguard.

I also engage in interdisciplinary collaborative research focusing on how alternative conceptualizations which are communicated in verbal interaction in social contexts impacts people’s lives in real terms. I have conducted interdisciplinary research in Science Communication in non-formal contexts with academic colleagues from Museum Studies and from Education in Portugal and Brazil. My overall aim is to contribute to social justice by researching how speakers use language to convey ideas about science, about their role in the interaction, and to what extent the way people use language may enable others to use their voice through co-production of meanings, or maintain well established power dynamics. The results from this research collaboration have been published in Curator: the Museum Journal and Science Education. 

My teaching reflects my research interests. I have led and taught undergraduate modules that focus on global languages, and the relationship between language, cognition and society. I also contribute to modules on intercultural communication. My undergraduate teaching also includes Portuguese language teaching at intermediate and advanced levels.

At postgraduate level, I developed with Professor Francesco Goglia the MA in Intercultural Communication. I designed, convene and teach two modules: SMLM089 Language and Globalisation and SMLM091 Language, Discourse and Society. I also contribute to the teaching of core modules.  

I am currently the co-Director of the MA in Intercultural Communication and the departmental co-Director of Global Engagement.

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Research

Language contact, variation and change. Varieties of Portuguese 

I am currently approching from a Cognitive Linguistics and construction grammar point of view innovative morphosyntactic constructions in non-standard varieties of Portuguese. I am investigating what the properties of these constructions are and how they are organised in construction networks.

In connection with this, I collaborated on the project Convergence/Divergence between European and Brazilian Portuguese, led by Professor Augusto Soares da Silva (Catholic University, Portugal) and funded by the FCT - Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (2018-2019). A major publication on the emergent reflexive and related constructions (se constructions) in Vernacular Brazilian Portuguese has been published in Cognitive Linguistics. 

In the context of the non-European, non-standard varieties of Portuguese, I have investigated innovations, particularly at the morphosyntactic level, observed in the Portuguese spoken in Timor Leste (East Timor) and to what extent these can correspond to the initial stages of an emerging variety of Portuguese. In connection with this research as well as collaborative research on the East Timorese immigrant communities (with Professor Francesco Goglia, Exeter), I was a member of the Leverhulme funded international network 'Shifting Sociolinguistic Realities in the Nation of East Timor and its Diasporas'.

Similar phenomena is also observed in other non-standard varieties of Portuguese, hence I interested in the interplay between contact-induced phenomena and general processes of second language acquisition. I have published a chapter 'Portuguese as a transnational language" in the edited volume Transnational Portuguese studies.

Science communication in non-formal education contexts (museums) 

This is an interdisciplinary and collaborative work with Dr Ana Afonso (University of Minho) and Dr Ana de Souza González (Casa de Oswaldo Cruz) which aims at analysing the conversations between the visitors and between them and museum educators in order to understand visitors' conceptualizations of  scientific (and other) phenomena and how these conceptualizations differ (or not) from the scientific concepts. Also important are museum educators' conceptualizations of the scientific phenomena they communicate to visitors through the use of conventional conceptual metaphors. 

We have collaborated with the Galeria da biodiversidade (Hall of Biodiversity, University of Porto), investigating how visitors interact with each other during the visit to the gallery, and with a Mobile Science Museum in Brazil. 

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Supervision

I happy to consider research proposals in the following areas:

- Cognitive Linguistics

- Cognitive Sociolinguistics

- Construction Grammar

- Conceptual Metaphor

- Language, Cognition and Discourse (discourse analysis and cognitive discourse analysis)   

- Applications of Cognitive Linguistics in Education, Science Communication, Museums, amongst other contexts. 

- Language planning and language policy 

- Pluricentric languages

- Language and globalisation

- Intercultural Communication

Research students

2023- Present: Estefanía Tamayo Pineda (PhD SWWDTP2-funded), "Identification of prepositional constructions for pedagogical application in the teaching of Spanish as a second language" (Supervised with Minna Kirjavainen-Morgan, University of West of England)

2023- Present: Mingwei Wan, "Translanguaging as pedagogical practice in English classrooms in China: Perspectives of and conflicts between classroom discourse, language policy and social context". (Second supervisor. Lead supervisor: Gabriela Meier, Exeter)

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Publications

Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.

| 2024 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2015 | 2012 | 2008 | 2007 |

2024

2022

  • Afonso AS, Pinto Cavadas Afonso S, Simões A, González AC. (2022) Challenges of science communication in a mobile museum". In Fostering scientific citizenship in an uncertain world, Fostering scientific citizenship in an uncertain world. Part 9: Environmental, health and outdoor science education, 679-686.
  • Pinto Cavadas Afonso S, Afonso AS. (2022) Conceptual metaphors in astronomers’ discourses, Fostering scientific citizenship in an uncertain world. Part 7: Discourse and Argumentation in Science Education. Proceedings of ESERA 2021 online conference, 516-521.
  • Pinto Cavadas Afonso S, Afonso AS, Lopes A, Gonzalez ACDS. (2022) What science communication for equitable communication? From conceptualizations to reconceptualizations and practices, Curator: The Museum Journal, DOI:10.1111/cura.12502.

2021

2020

  • Afonso S. (2020) Portuguese as a Transnational Language, Transnational Portuguese Studies, Liverpool University Press, 149-165.

2019

  • Afonso S, Afonso AS, Rodrigues F. (2019) Towards an effective use of language to explain light in the museum, Science Education, volume 103, no. 4, pages 923-946, DOI:10.1002/sce.21517.
  • Pinto Cavadas Afonso S, Afonso AS. (2019) Accessing science museum educators' discourse through Multimodal Narratives, Multimodal Narratives in Research and Teaching Practices, IGI Global, 340-355.

2015

2012

2008

  • Afonso S. (2008) The Family of Impersonal Constructions in European Portuguese. An Onomasiological Constructional Approach. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester.
  • Afonso S. (2008) A gramática de construções: breve introdução e aplicação, Revista Portuguesa de Humanidades, volume 12, pages 393-412.
  • Afonso S. (2008) Existential constructions as impersonalising devices: the case of European Portuguese, Transactions of the Philological Society, volume 106, no. 2, pages 180-215.

2007

  • Barreiro A, Afonso S. (2007) "Construção da lista dourada para as primeiras morfolimpíadas do português", Avaliação conjunta: um novo paradigma no processamento computacional da língua portuguesa, IST Press, 107-118.

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Teaching

My activity as an educator is underpinned by my commitment to cultivate an inclusive, equitable and critically engaged learning environment, in which a more diverse and representative body of knowledge is represented, empowering students to become critical thinkers, culturally competent, and global citizens.

I developed and teach modules at undergraduate and postgraduate levels that relate to my research interests in language, cognition and society as well and language and globalization. I also contribute to the teaching of team-taught modules, e.g. SML3009 - Intercultural Communication in a Global World.

I convene and teach Portuguese language (Intermediate and Advanced Portuguese). In my classes, I am committed to the decolonisation of the curriculum, bringing to the classroom multiple voices and multiple perspectives on sociocultural topics related to countries that have Portuguese as official language, as well as on the historical and contemporary relations between them.  

I am a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Modules taught

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More information

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