About
Title of PhD: The inter-relation of speech and gestures: evidence from figurative and emotional language (provisional)
Supervisor: Dr Sotaro Kita
My research area is psycholinguistics, and I am particularly interested in exploring the inter-relation between language and co-speech gestures. This work involves the investigation of speech-gesture outputs especially when people use metaphorical language.
Qualifications
MRes (Distinction) Speech, Language and Cognition (University College London)
MSc (Distinction equivalent) Applied Linguistics (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)
BA (First Class equivalent) Philology with Major in Linguistics (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)
Biography
I have a First Class degree in Philology with Major in Linguistics and an MSc in Applied Linguistics funded by the Greek state (IKY) at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. I also obtained an MRes in Speech, Language and Cognition at University College of London, where I worked under the lead supervision of Prof.Gabriella Vigliocco on the varying effects of emotion during word processing. Before I started my PhD studies, I gained working experience in Higher Education Institutions as a Teaching Assistant for the post-graduate module “Research Methods” at King’s College London, and as a Research Assistant on a project investigating “Students’ experience and retention in Higher Education” at St Mary’s University College Twickenham.
I am currently a PhD student at the University of Birmingham, where I work under the supervision of Dr.Sotaro Kita. I am aiming to explore how speech determines the way people gesture, and vice-versa, focusing on metaphorical language processing. I was awarded with a 2 years ESRC scholarship at the University of Birmingham.
Research
Research interests
Language Processing; Gestures; Embodied Theory of Cognition ; Theories of Emotion; Research Methods
Other activities
Publications
Conference/ Poster Presentations
Argyriou, P., & Kita, S. (2012). “ How metaphoric is it? The effect of gesture prohibition on interpreting metaphoric expressions”. Paper presented at poster session, ISGS 5th: The Communicative Body in Development, Lund University, Sweden, 24-27 July 2012.
Vinson, D., Argyriou, P., Rodriguez, S., and Vigliocco, G. (2011). “How can failure sometimes be better than success? Varying effects of emotion on lexical processing”. Paper presented at poster session, 17th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing (AMLaP), Université Paris Descartes, Paris, 1-3 September 2011.