Dr. Reza Arab is a Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the School of Languages and Cultures in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Queensland, where he also serves as the English as an International Language Major Convenor. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy from Griffith University in 2021, with a thesis titled To be with salt, to speak with taste: metapragmatics of playful speech practices in Persian. Arab's research specializations include pragmatics, cultural linguistics, and intercultural communication, focusing on how humour, metaphor, and language practices shape belonging, identity, and interaction across cultural and institutional contexts. His work incorporates historical pragmatics, contrastive semantics, discourse analysis in national settings, and frameworks such as ethnopragmatics and corpus-based discourse analysis. He has led projects on humour in prison discourse, media representations, political communication, and metaphors of national belonging. Arab's research has been supported by funding from The University of Queensland, the Australian Linguistics Society, the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, and the European Commission Erasmus Mundus mobility programme.

Arab maintains a robust publication portfolio across journals, book chapters, and conferences. Key journal articles include Situational irony in Australian prison radio: humour as a tool for coping and resistance (2025, with Heather Anderson, Media International Australia), Epistemic sentence-initial constructions as incongruity markers: English “it is ironic [that]” vs Persian “bāmaze ast [ke]” (2024, International Review of Pragmatics), Cultural semantics of the ‘salt’ word in Persian (2022, International Journal of Language and Culture), Humour and belonging: a thematic review (2022, with Jessica Milner Davis, European Journal of Humour Research), and Medical certificates: more than just paperwork (2024, with Parvin Delshad and Lauren Ball, Australian Journal of General Practice). Notable book chapters are Metapragmatics of Maze (Taste) in Persian (2024, The Handbook of Cultural Linguistics) and Having fun is a matter of taste: ‘funny’ words in French and Persian (2026, with Kerry Mullan, Explorations in applied ethnolinguistics). He has presented at events such as the 19th International Pragmatics Conference, Australasian Humour Studies Network Conference, and Conference on Discourse, Culture and Interaction. Arab is available for PhD associate supervision and media expertise in his fields.

Professional Email: r.arab@uq.edu.au