1978-1984
Degree in English Language and Literature
Universidad de San Juan, Argentina (UNSJ)
This was a six-year program with special training in the teaching of English as a foreign language. The work done during these years constituted a magnificent foundation for my formation as a linguist, for apart from studying, I also worked as a student teaching assistant in the subjects of English Phonetics I and II.
When I later moved to Spain, this degree was validated by the Spanish Ministry of Education for a degree of “Licenciada” in English Philology.
1984-1987
Master's Degree in Applied Linguistics
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
In México D.F., I completed my Master’s in Applied Linguistics, again with a specialization in English, at the Centro de Enseñanza de Lenguas Extranjeras (CELE) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The program had a magnificent group of linguists as teachers, and it was there that I had my first encounter with Pragmatics. I had to take several courses on Linguistics and teaching methodology for two years, and during the third year I wrote and eventually defended my Master's thesis, which consisted in the design of an ESP course for Engineers. I graduated with honors and got an award (the ‘Gabino Barreda’ medal) for having obtained the highest average grade of my ‘generation’ (as it was called there).
1992-1996
PhD in Philology (with a specialization in English Linguistics)
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain (UCM)
In 1990, I moved back to the country of my parents and all my ancestors, where two years later I embarked on the PhD program in Philology (with a specialization in English Linguistics) at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. I graduated with honors (Cum Laude por Unanimidad) in 1996, after having defended my thesis on the functions and strategies of ironic discourse. My main area of research here was definitely pragmatics and discourse analysis; I was fascinated by the intricacies and multifarious-ness of verbal irony, a topic that you will see as one of my main concerns in several of my publications. My thesis supervisor was Dr. Angela Downing.
1997-2001
Post-doctoral Research
Georgetown University, Washington D.C., USA
In 1997, my family and I moved to the United States of America, where I carried out post-doctoral research (as a Visiting Scholar) and was later hired as a Lecturer in both the Linguistics Department and the Spanish and Portuguese Department at Georgetown University. My main research focus here was discourse analysis, an area of linguistics which was (and still is) very well represented by many of the well-known scholars in the Georgetown Linguistics Department.