
Eliza
Kitis holds an MA in Linguistics, University
of Essex, and a Ph.D. in
Linguistics, University of Warwick. She is
Professor of Linguistics at the School
of English, Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki,
Greece.
She studied initially in Greece,
where she got a BA in English Language and Literature (recipient of state
studentship IKY on merit during all years of her studies), and during her
residence in UK she obtained her other two degrees. Her 1982 University of Warwick
Ph.D. thesis (under David Holdcroft's supervision) Problems connected with the notion of
Implicature was supported by a three-year major state studentship
awarded on merit by the Department of Education and Science, UK. The thesis is
a major critique of Grice's Program of Logic and Conversation. The notion of
conversational implicature was redefined in terms of intentionality and the
principle of relevance, which was identified as dominant in this type of
implicature and in communication. Many instances of Grice's conversational
implicature were found to be just contextual assumptions ordinarily surrounding
speech-events, often explainable in terms of knowledge frames and scripts. It
was argued that the notions of 'frame' and 'script' played a paramount role in communication
and that implicature had to be 'liberated' from such contextual
assumptions. Conventional implicature was also discussed
and criticized. The thesis can claim a pioneering role (very early in
the day), not only in positing the maxim of relevance as the major determinant of
implicature, but also in showing how insights from various trends emerging at
the time in other disciplines can be brought to bear on the analysis of
implicature and on pragmatics in general. The thesis uses concepts and tools
from the burgeoning fields at the time of cognitive science (e.g., frames, scripts,
knowledge representation theories)
and conversation analysis (ethnomethodology).
Eliza’s teaching and research
have reflected her special interests in semantics,
pragmatics and discourse analysis as well as CDA. At the
Department of English, Aristotle
University she introduced
core courses such as intros in linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse
analysis.
She has
also offered courses on connectives and subordinators of English and Modern
Greek, discourse markers and particles, at graduate level at other Departments.
Her research has been
published in various journals and as book chapters. She is also the author of a
textbook Semantics, Meaning in Language. She served as country research
team leader of COST Action IS0703 (genres). She sits on the editorial boards of
journals, while she is on the international board of reviewers for various other
journals and conferences, (e.g., Journal of Pragmatics, Erkenntniss, ICCLA,
Pragmatics and Society, or for EU Programs), as well as on promotion review
committees internationally. She has taught at the graduate programme of the Dept
of English in Kent State University, Ohio. Additionally, she spent quite a few
semesters and academic years visiting as a scholar various Universities, mainly
in the UK (Leeds, Cambridge, London).
Currently, she divides her time between Thessaloniki and London.