Amadeu Viana San Andrés

Full Professor of Catalan, Universitat de Lleida

Amadeu Viana is currently Full Professor (catedràtic d'universitat) of Catalan Philology in the Departament de Filologia Catalana i Comunicació at the University of Lleida. Viana's research agenda has focused on discourse analysis and history of discourse, most particularly on history of dialogue and the pragmatic organization (courtesy, indirect styles) that underlies current linguistic exchanges. He has translated and edited Aspectes del pensament sociolingüístic europeu (1995), a collection of texts from Dante to Meillet about the foundations of sociolinguistic thinking. In 1997 he gathered his research about literacy and discourse, linguistic functionalism and sociolinguistic history in the volume Raons relatives (Relative Reasons). As part of his interest in the history of sociolinguistic ideas, he has done research on the work of XVIIIth Century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico (Vico nella storia della filologia, with S. Caianiello, 2004). As a member of the International Pragmatics Association and the International Society for Humor Studies, he is also interested in humor and linguistics and has published Acròbates de l'emoció (Acrobats of Emotion, 2004), a study about conversation, meaning and humor. He has been Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, the University of Naples Federico II, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Chicago. His teaching at the Universitat of Lleida is focused on syntax and sociolinguistics, discourse ideas and pragmatics. In 2010 he has finished a translation of Lichtenberg's aphorisms into Catalan.