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Abstracts & Bios

Paul Kroeger is a Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Dallas International University and a Senior Linguistic Consultant for SIL International. His research has focused primarily on the syntax and semantics of Western Malayo-Polynesian languages, with a particular interest in languages of Borneo.

Peter Unseth is a proverb scholar who specializes in studying proverbs of Africa. He applies linguistic concepts to the study of proverbs. He is a Professor of Language and Culture Studies at Dallas International University.

Michael Boutin is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Applied Linguistics Department at Dallas International University. His research has focused on the Bonggi of Sabah, Malaysia.

Flavia Belpoliti is Associate Professor of Spanish and Director of the Spanish Language Teaching MA at the Department of Literature and Languages at Texas A&M University- Commerce.  Her research interests include Spanish as Second Language and Spanish as a Heritage Language Pedagogy, Hispanic Sociolinguistics, Spanish in the US, and Discourse Analysis. Her latest publications focus on curriculum design, teacher preparation, and project-based implementations in Spanish as a heritage language classes. Since 2016 she is co-director of the “Texas Coalition for Heritage Spanish” (TeCHS).

Salvatore Attardo, PhD (Purdue, 1991), is professor of Linguistics at Texas A&M University-Commerce. His books include Linguistic Theories of Humor,  (DeGruyter, 1994), Humorous Texts, (DeGruyter, 2001), and The Linguistics of Humor, an introduction (Oxford UP; 2020). He edited HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research (2002-2011), the Encyclopedia of Humor Studies (Sage, 2014) and the Handbook of Language and Humor (Routledge, 2017). Among his recent books are Pragmatics and its applications to TESOL and SLA, (Wiley, 2021), Eye Tracking in Linguistics (Bloomsbury, 2023), both co-authored with Lucy Pickering, and Humor 2.0: How the Internet changed Humor (Anthem, 2023).

Gouda Taha is a PhD candidate in the applied linguistics program at Texas A&M University-Commerce (TAMUC). As a graduate assistant of record (GATor) in the writing program in the Literature and Languages Department at TAMUC, Gouda teaches first-year writing courses, including English 100, 1301, and 1302. His research interests focus on second language acquisition, L2 writing, TESOL, and pragmatics, with a current emphasis on collaborative writing and the integration of AI in L2 writing.