Vasiliki Saloustrou

Vasiliki is a PhD student in Language, Discourse and Communication at King's. She holds an MA in Language and Cultural Diversity from King's and a BA in Greek Linguistics from the University of Patras. Moreover, she is an alumna of the Centre for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University.

Vasiliki is also a Graduate Teaching Assistant at King's. She teaches 'Analysing English 1' on the BA English Language & Linguistics and also facilitates a series of sessions on the 'Analysing Stories & Identities' module.

Vasiliki has worked as a Graduate Research Assistant on the Humour and Critical Literacy impact project at the University of Kent, as well as on the Politeness and Autism research project at King's. She has also worked as a tutor of Modern Greek as a second/foreign language, and as a translator of academic texts, while she has also been involved in lexicography research projects. Vasiliki has presented her research work at international conferences, has been published in academic peer-reviewed journals, and has been involved in the co-ordination of academic seminars and workshops at King's.

In her LAHP-funded PhD thesis, she explores the discursive construction of lay understandings of im/politeness norms in Greek diasporic communities. More specifically, she investigates the ways in which members of the Greek diaspora conceptualise im/politeness norms and the extent to which their assessments of im/polite behaviours may be informed by the sociocultural norms of their homeland. Her academic interests lie in the fields of im/politeness theory, interactional sociolinguistics, narrative analysis and sociolinguistics of Modern Greek. She is particularly interested in lay conceptualisations of im/politeness, the cross-fertilisations between politeness research and narrative and identities analysis, as well as in lay understandings of moral norms in diasporic communities.

Thesis

Vasiliki's thesis title is Im/politeness understandings in Greek diasporic friendship groups: conceptualising im/politeness through small stories and identities analysis.

Principal supervisor: Dr Eva Ogiermann

View Eva's research profile

Secondary supervisor: Professor Alexandra Georgakopoulou-Nunes

View Alexandra's research profile

Vasiliki's project draws on im/politeness research and identities analysis by examining lay understandings of im/politeness norms in interaction (Ogiermann, 2019). It particularly focuses on Greek diasporic friendship groups, and seeks to understand their lay conceptualisations of moral norms, as these are indexed by im/politeness-related evaluations in interactional stories, and as they may be informed by the cultural frames of their homeland and host countries.

Studies looking at im/politeness understandings of members of the Greek diaspora are scarce (but see Murray, 2017). Yet, the ‘in-between’ space that diasporic populations occupy and their exposure to various cultural norms may influence their perceptions of im/politeness. To address this issue, she is conducting a study that adopts a linguistic ethnographic perspective (Rampton, 2007a, 2007b).

Her fieldwork is based in London, Oxford and Copenhagen, where the three groups of participants live. Her data set involves a) 75 hours of audio-recorded and video-taped interactional data; b) field-notes; and c) playback interviews. Interactional and interview data will be analysed using Georgakopoulou’s (2007) small stories framework and Bamberg’s (2004) three-level model of positioning, which are suitable for exploring naturally-occurring collaborative stories, and can allow insights into the construction of diasporic identities and im/politeness-related meanings. Playback interviews will help tap into the participants’ meta-pragmatic comments and thus triangulate her findings.