Valeria Sinkeviciute

I am Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages and Cultures at The University of Queensland (UQ).

My research interests lie within the broad areas of pragmatics and discourse analysis, particularly, the pragmatics of social interaction (face-to-face and online), identity construction, humour, (im)politeness, getting acquainted and family talk. I have been working with different types of data, including naturally-occurring conversations, reality television discourse, qualitative interviews, corpora and social media.

Currently, I'm working on a research project entitled Family talk in multilingual Australia (AusFamTalk): for more details, see my Research on a Page.

I am Associate Editor in the Journal of Pragmatics, an Editorial Board member in Advances in (Im)politeness Studies (book series), Springer and a member of the IPrA Consultation Board.

I regularly review grant applications and I am a member of:

• College of Experts, European Science Foundation (from 2021)
• Review College, FWO (Research Foundation – Flanders) (2024-2027)

I've always loved languages, maybe because I've always been surrounded by a variety of them. I'm a native speaker of Lithuanian (lietuvių) and Russian (русский), I spent many years studying and then also teaching English and I also have a certificate for teaching Spanish as a foreign language (español como lengua extranjera ELE). Due to my study/research relocations, I can also communicate (sometimes extremely poorly) in Dutch (nederlands), French (français) and Portuguese (português), and at the moment I'm struggling with Modern Greek (ελληνικά) and Japanese (日本語)!

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Programme contribution (current)

Convenor of Master of Applied Linguistics programme

Convenor of Discourse Discussion Group (DDG): Data analysis sessions and Pragmatics & Interaction reading group

• 2026: Fridays, 12 pm - 2 pm & 2 pm - 4 pm;
• Interested in joining or would like to find out more? Fill in the EoI form or contact me via email.

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Course contribution/Teaching areas:

UQ (undergraduate):

• Digital Discourse and Social Media (SLAT3030)

UQ (postgraduate):

• Language, Culture and Communication (SLAT7899)
• Structure of Language (SLAT7705)

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Supervision (MA & PhD):

PhD (current)

• Chilmeg Elden (associate supervisor; with Prof Michael Haugh): The establishment and management of interpersonal relationships in early encounters between Australian and Japanese language exchange partners
• Zhiyi Liu (principal supervisor; with Dr Wei-Lin Melody Chang and Prof Ping Chen): The pragmatics of caring: Relating practices in Chinese-speaking families
• Andrea Rodriguez (principal supervisor; with Prof Michael Haugh): Relational accountability: Insights from categorial work in accounting practices (Transnational family talk in Spanish)
• Chantima Wangsomchok (associate supervisor; with Prof Michael Haugh): Conversational humour in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) workplaces

PhD (completed)

• (2025) Nicholas Hugman (associate supervisor; with Prof Michael Haugh): Towards a (micro)theory of conversational humour: The interactional accomplishment of incongruity
• (2023) Amir Sheikhan (associate supervisor; with Prof Michael Haugh and Dr Wei-Lin Melody Chang): Conversational humour in intercultural initial interactions in English

MA (completed)

• (2025) Sidonie Evans: “That’s what being a dad’s all about”: The construction of the father category and fatherhood in male advice podcasts
• (2025) Marlene Valdés Fuentes: “Mamá, por favor, ¿me dejas que me ponga ahí?: A multimodal analysis of a toddler’s requests in Spanish family interactions
• (2023) Yeisy Vanessa Maldonado Ramirez: Reporting offence to friends in Spanish: A pragmatic analysis of moral grounds and impolite behaviour
• (2023) Shea-Lea Wheeler: A discourse study of fictional self-presentation in Dungeons & Dragons gameplay
• (2021) Zhiyi Liu: Constructing identities of a mother and an older sister/adult child: Membership categorization analysis of Chinese-Australian family talk
• (2021) Maria Nagao: English teachers of young learners in Japan: A discourse analytical study on identity construction
• (2021) Shupei Ni: Relational work in video game live-streaming interactions: Case studies of jocular abuse and joint fantasizing
• (2021) Andrea Rodriguez: “Ay no, I do feel exhausted”: Interactional co-construction and interpersonal management of complaints in Spanish phone conversations between friends and relatives
• (2020) Duyen Hong Ngoc Luong: Teaching English as a foreign language in Vietnam: Teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the English-only approach and code-switching in the classroom

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Forthcoming publications:

Journal articles

• Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2026). The ‘parent’ category as an interactional resource in a sibling dispute over sharing. Discourse Studies 28(4).

Special Issues

• Sinkeviciute, Valeria and Andrea Rodriguez (eds). (2026). Rules of engagement: Relationships and socialisation practices in family discourse. Discourse Studies 28(4).

Edited volume

• Sinkeviciute, Valeria, Andrea Rodriguez and Zhiyi Liu (eds). (under contract). Relating, normativity and culture-in-action in family interaction: 'Doing family’ across languages and spaces. Routledge

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Projects (current):

• 2022-present: "Family talk in multilingual Australia"
  • 2025 (February-April): "‘Who we are’ in multilingual Australia: Language and identity construction in family talk" funded by a Fellowship at the Leibniz-Institute for the German Language (IDS), Mannheim, Germany
  • 2023: "Talking families into being: Analysing family interactions in Australian multilingual context" funded by Research Fund, School of Languages and Cultures (UQ)
  • 2022: "‘Who we are’ in multilingual Brisbane: Family talk in Spanish and Russian speech communities" funded by HASS Enabler Funding Scheme (HASS EFS), Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (UQ)

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Forthcoming conference presentations/talks:

• 23-29 June 2026: Doing ‘being siblings’: The multimodal accomplishment of with and against practices at ICCA2026, Edmonton, Canada

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Edited special issues/volumes:

• Sinkeviciute, Valeria (ed). 2024. Advances in the study of social action in online interaction. Internet Pragmatics https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.7.1
• Haugh, Michael and Valeria Sinkeviciute (eds.). 2021. The pragmatics of initial interactions: Cross-cultural and intercultural perspectives. Journal of Pragmatics. https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-pragmatics/special-issue/10DB1P3LJJ8
• Sinkeviciute, Valeria (ed.). 2019. The interplay between humour and identity construction. Journal of Pragmatics 152. https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-pragmatics/vol/152/suppl/C
• Dynel, Marta and Valeria Sinkeviciute (eds.). 2017. Conversational humour: Spotlight on languages and cultures. Language & Communication 55. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02715309/55?sdc=1

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Reviews of my monograph "Conversational humour and (im)politeness: A pragmatics analysis of social interaction":

• Yang, N. (2022). Book review: Sinkeviciute, Valeria.2019. Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Journal of Politeness Research 18(2): 451-455. https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2020-0015
• Tsami, V. & Saloustrou, V. (2021). Book review: Sinkeviciute, Valeria.(2018). Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. The European Journal of Humour Research 9(3): 179-183. https://europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr/article/view/544/556
• Murphy, J. (2021). Review of Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness: A Pragmatic Analysis of Social Interaction, Valeria Sinkeviciute. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia (2019). 274 pp. ISBN 9789027262110 (e-book). Journal of Pragmatics 183: 105-106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.07.010
• Krendel, A. (2020). Review of Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness. Valeria Sinkeviciute, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 2019 (e-book), ISBN: 9789027262110. Corpus Pragmatics 4: 479–483.https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41701-020-00086-w

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Panel organisation (since 2020):

• 23-29 June 2026 (with Zhiyi Liu and Andrea Rodriguez) - ‘Doing family’ in talk-in-interaction: Diversity across languages, at the International Conference on Conversation Analysis (ICCA2026), Edmonton, Canada
• 22-27 June 2025 (with Andrea Rodriguez) - (Cross-)linguistic studies on relationships and socialisation practices in family discourse, at the 19th International Pragmatics Conference, IPrA2025, Brisbane, Australia
• 9-14 July 2023 (with Andrea Rodriguez) - Membership categorisation and interpersonal relationships in social interaction, at the 18th International Pragmatics Conference, IPrA2023, Brussels, Belgium

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Invited research talks/lectures (since 2020):

• 12 September 2025 - A pragmatic and categorial analysis of a sibling dispute. Talk at Research Seminar Series at Western Sydney University
• 11 December 2024 - “Tú quieres que yo te dé un premio?”: Acción social y categorías en las conversaciones familiares. Talk at Seminario Permanente de Análisis de la Conversación (SPAC)
• 11-13 October 2024 - Online interaction as multimodal accomplishment of the social order. Plenary talk at the 3rd Interactional Conference on Discourse Pragmatics (ICDP-3)
• 21 January 2021 - Social interaction and identity construction. Guest lecture for postgraduate students at University of Maribor, Slovenia
• 20 January 2021 - Pragmatics and social action. Guest lecture for undergraduate students at University of Maribor, Slovenia

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Community workshops

• 30 September 2025 - Peer-review training for PhD and ECRs (UQ Graduate School)
• 2 September 2025 - Workshop on cultural competency (invited by UQ Vice-Chancellor Scholars Enrichment Program)
• 16 October 2024 - Intercultural conversations: Am I being nice or rude? (invited by Student Affairs Division, UQ)
• 21 March 2024 - Harmony in conversation (invited by Mental Health Champions Network, UQ)
• 28 August 2023 - Intercultural conversations: How (not) to handle a conversation (invited by Multicultural Queensland Month)

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Journal Referee

Journal of Pragmatics / Pragmatics / Journal of Politeness Research / Discourse Studies / Lingua / Language & Communication / Research on Language and Social Interaction / Internet Pragmatics / Discourse, Context & Media / Contrastive Pragmatics / Pragmatics and Society / Gender, Work & Organization / Sociolinguistic Studies / Pragmatics & Cognition / Journal of English for Academic Purposes / The Sociological Review