Paola Vernillo

I am a post-doctoral researcher (Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies) and lecturer in General Linguistics (Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures) at Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna. In my research, I adopt a cognitive approach to the study of language, with a specific focus on metaphors and their use for the representation of semantic contents and abstract concepts.

I participated in several national and international research projects, including MODELACT (MIUR - Futuro in Ricerca 2012), IMPAQTS "Implicit Manipulation in Politics: Quantitively Assessing the Tendentiousness of Speeches" (PRIN 2017), and MetaphAN "Semantic Biomarkers of Anorexia Nervosa" [MUR (Ministerial Decree 737/2021) – AlmaIdea 2022]. Currently, I am the P.I. of the project "How about metaphors for dinner? A digest of metaphorical conceptualizations in pro-ana communities" (RaAM Research Grant 2022).