Structure, Use, and Meaning Brașov

Jan CHOVANEC is Professor of English linguistics at Masaryk University in Brno, the Czech Republic, specializing in discourse analysis and pragmatics. He has done research on various socio-pragmatic aspects of digital humour in mass media and social media contexts. He is the author of Pragmatics of Tense and Time in News (2014), The Discourse of Online Sportscasting (2018) and co-editor of a number of publications, including Representing the Other in European Media Discourses (2017), The Dynamics of Interactional Humour (2018) and Experiencing Digital Discourses: Multimodality, Engagement, Activism (2025). He serves on the editorial board of the journals Internet Pragmatics and Journal of Pragmatics and is co-editor-in-chief of Discourse, Context & Media.

Cecilia Mihaela POPESCU is Professor of Comparative Romance Linguistics and Pragmatics at the University of Craiova, Romania, and, since 2024, a Senior Researcher at the “Iorgu Iordan – Alexandru Rosetti” Institute of Linguistics of the Romanian Academy. Her doctoral research focused on a comparative analysis of the expression of potentiality and irrealis in Latin, French, and Romanian. Her research interests encompass major areas of Romance linguistics, with a particular focus on (i) the diachronic and typological evolution of morphosyntactic structures from Latin to the Romance languages, with special attention to the semantics of verbal systems (tenses and moods); (ii) processes of lexical transfer, semantic reconfiguration, and language contact; and (iii) discourse organization and pragmatic markers in Romance varieties. From 2016 to 2022, she served on the Board of the International Society of Romance Linguistics (Société de Linguistique Romane).

Roberto MERLO is Professor of Romanian Language and Literature at the University of Turin. His research spans both literary and linguistic studies. In linguistics, he focuses on the history of the Romanian language between East and West and on the specificities of Romanian within the Romance domain, addressing questions of Romanian historical lexicology and morphology, language contact, and heritage Romanian in Italy. He has edited scholarly volumes and critical editions, serves on the scientific boards of specialist journals and book series, and was Secretary (2019–2022) and President (2023–2025) of the Associazione Italiana di Romenistica (AIR).