My research is grounded in pragmatics and examines how emotion plays an active role in communication and interpretation. Drawing on relevance theory and appraisal theory, I explore how affective experience and expression shape what is communicated and inferred in context.
I am particularly interested in how this perspective may extend beyond contemporary Western settings, including its application to other cultural and historical contexts such as classical Chinese literature. Below is a list of my most recent academic publications.
Qiu, M., & Wharton, T. (forthcoming). Pragmatics, Emotion and Literature. In Clark B. & Chapman S. (Eds.), Bloomsbury Handbook of Pragmatics and Literature. Bloomsbury.Â
Qiu, M. (2026). Communicating the affective dimension of Classical Chinese poetry. In Nguyen, N. D.-N., Pasic, J. & Alsaleh, H. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 15th Newcastle and Northumbria Postgraduate Conference in Language and Linguistics (NNPCiLL). Advance online publication. [full-text]
Qiu, M. (2024). Processing Poetic Metaphor: A Dual-Route Approach. PhD thesis, University of Brighton. [full-text]
I have presented my research and work in progess at various conferences and workshops, such as:
'Communicating the affective dimension of Classical Chinese poetry', the 15th Newcastle and Northumbria Postgraduate Conference in Language and Linguistics (NNPCiLL), Northumbria University, Apr 2024. [link]
'Mental imagery and the conceptual-perceptual dynamics of the interpretation of poetic metaphor', Postgraduate Workshop in Pragmatics, Athens, Mar 2023.
'Communicating conceptual and perceptual dimensions of metaphor: Dual-route processing of mental imagery', Relevance Researchers' Conference, Oct 2022. [link]