Rate My Professor Sophia Waters

Waters has made significant contributions through her publications, including co-editing the book Cultural Keywords in Discourse (John Benjamins, 2017) with Carsten Levisen. Notable chapters from this volume include 'Nice, a cultural keyword: the semantics behind Australian discourses of sociality' (2017), 'How words do things with people' (2017), and 'An invitation to keyword studies: guidance for future research' (2017). Her peer-reviewed articles feature 'The meaning of "manners" in Australian English' in Scandinavian Studies in Language (2022), 'The lexical semantics of blaguer: French ways of bringing people together through persuasion, deception and laughter' in European Journal of Humour Research (2020), 'Lige, a Danish "magic word"?: an ethnopragmatic analysis' in International Journal of Language and Culture (2015, with Carsten Levisen), '"It’s rude to VP": the cultural semantics of rudeness' in Journal of Pragmatics (2012), and 'The semantics of French discourse particles quoi and ben' (2010). She has presented at numerous conferences, such as the Australasian Humour Studies Network (2019), International Pragmatics Association (2013), and Australian Linguistic Society (2011). Waters has also contributed public-facing articles to The Conversation, including 'How do children learn good manners?' (2024) and 'How’s it going, Mal? Why Australians can get away with familiarity but French schoolboys can’t' (2018), alongside media interviews on ABC Radio.