Director of the GRIALE research group.
Department of Spanish Studies, General Linguistics and Literature Theory (Spanish language area)
University of Alicante.
Leonor Ruiz Gurillo is a professor of Spanish language at the University of Alicante. She has focused her research on a range of topics on Spanish phraseology, colloquial Spanish, pragmatics, irony and humour. Some of her most salient works are Aspectos de fraseología teórica española (Aspects of Spanish phraseology theory) (Valencia, University, 1997), La fraseología del español coloquial (Phraseology of colloquial Spanish)(Barcelona, Ariel, 1998), Las locuciones en español actual (Locutions in today´s Spanish)(Madrid, Arco Libros, 2001), Ejercicios de fraseología (Exercises in phraseology) (Madrid, Arco Libros, 2002), Hechos pragmáticos del español (Pragmatic facts of the Spanish language) (Alicante, University, 2006), La lingüística del humor en español (The linguistics of Spanish humour) (Madrid, Arco/Libros, 2012) and Humor de género.Del texto a la identidad en español (Gender-based humour.From the text to the identity in Spanish (Madrid, Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2019). She is a founding member of the Val.Es.Co. (Valencia, Español Coloquial /Valencia Colloquial Spanish) group coordinated by Antonio Briz and the EPA-IULMA research group. Likewise, she belongs to IULMA (Inter-university Institute for Modern and Applied Languages and IUIEG (University Institute for Research into Gender Studies).
Since 2002 she has directed the GRIALE research group in which she is responsible for the pragmatic analysis of irony and humour and its didactic application when teaching Spanish as a foreign language. She has coedited the books: Dime cómo ironizas y te diré quién eres: una aproximación pragmática a la ironía (Tell me how you use irony and I´ll tell you who you are:a pragmatic approximations to irony (Frankfurt, Peter Lang, 2009), Irony and Humor: From Pragmatics to Discourse (Ámsterdam, John Benjamins, 2013) and Humor, ironía y géneros textuales (Humour, irony and textual genres (Alicante University, 2013). She is editor of the work Metapragmatics of Humor: Current Research Trends (Ámsterdam, John Benjamins, at a preparatory stage).
Her work has been published in over 120 publications, much of which has been in such prestigious journals as Humor, European Journal of Humour Research, REL, Verba, RFE, Estudios de Lingüística, LEA, Oralia, Español Actual, RILCE, Onomázein, Quarderns de Filologia, Especulo, Contextos and Spanish in Context.