Dimitris Serafis

My research interests lie at the intersection of Critical Discourse Studies, Social Semiotics and Multimodality, and Argumentation Theory/Rhetoric. My focus is on topics such as racism and hate speech, populism and authoritarianism, and communication in times of crisis. As of current, I am the Principal Investigator for the “Un.H.A.T.E – Unveiling Hatred Discourses and Argumentation in the European Public Sphere” research project, examining the – partly implicit – argumentation that stems from discriminatory (mainstream and social media) discursive representations in Southern European contexts (i.e. Greece, Malta, and Italy). It aims to unveil the main argumentative inferences on the basis of which covert hatred attitudes can be justified and, ultimately, normalized in the public sphere. To that end, it employs principles and tools from corpus-assisted Critical Discourse Studies, Argumentation Theory and Multimodality.