Rate My Professor Sophia Waters

Dr. Sophia Waters is a Senior Lecturer in Writing and Acting Discipline Convenor in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences within the Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences, and Education at the University of New England. She holds a PhD in Linguistics, a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in French, and a Bachelor of Languages, all from the University of New England. With an interdisciplinary background spanning linguistics, French, and writing, Waters teaches academic writing at undergraduate and postgraduate levels as well as linguistics units covering intercultural communication, semantics, and second language acquisition. Her research employs the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to explore discourse studies, semantics, and pragmatics. Key research interests include lexical and cultural semantics, ethnopragmatics, discourse studies, humour studies, and intercultural communication, with specialization in Australian English and French.

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.