Prof. Dr. Stefano De Pascale

Stefano De Pascale obtained a Master's Degree in Linguistics at the KU Leuven (2014), where he developed an interest in corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics and Cognitive Linguistics. He obtained his PhD in Linguistics in 2019 at the same university. In his dissertation he investigated the contribution of token-based semantic vector space models in the study of lexical variation, under the supervision of prof. dr. Stefania Marzo and prof. dr. Dirk Speelman. After working as a postdoctoral scholar in the project “Nephological Semantics – Using token clouds for meaning detection in variationist linguistics”, he obtained a junior FWO-postdoctoral fellowship in 2021 on diachronic semantics and started the same year as a part-time assistant professor of Italian linguistics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he teaches courses on text linguistics/pragmatics and corpus linguistics.  

His research interests lie in advanced corpus and computational linguistic methods, and specifically techniques for measuring distances between language varieties. His areas of expertise are sociolinguistics and usage-based frameworks of language variation and change, with a particular focus on Dutch lexicology and lexical semantics. Finally, he has also participated in research on language attitudes and ideology, and conceptualization of space in bilinguals. Since 2022 he has been involved in the international and interdisciplinary research program “Change is Key!” (PI prof. dr. Nina Tahmasebi), and “Experimental Techniques in Sociolinguistic Research” (PI prof. dr. Gitte Kristiansen). 

Selected publications

• De Pascale, S., Pijpops, D., Van de Velde, F., Zenner, E. (2022). Reassembling the pimped ride: A quantitative look at the integration of a borrowed expression. Frontiers in Communication, 7, Art.No. 777312, 1-13. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2022.777312 

• Calderón, E., De Pascale, S., Adamou, E. (2019). How to speak “geocentric” in an “egocentric” language: A multimodal study among Ngigua-Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals in a rural community of Mexico. Language Sciences, 74, 24-46. doi: 10.1016/j.langsci.2019.04.001 

• Kristiansen, G., Franco, K., De Pascale, S., Rosseel, L., Zhang, W. (Eds.) (2021). Cognitive Sociolinguistics Revisited. (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics [ACL], 48). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN: 9783110733945. doi: 10.1515/9783110733945 

• De Pascale S., Marzo S., Speelman D. (2019). Cultural models in contact: Revealing attitudes toward regional varieties of Italian with Vector Space Models. In: Cognitive Contact Linguistics: Placing Usage, Meaning and Mind at the Core of Contact-Induced Variation and Change (213-250). ISBN: 9783110616781. 

• De Pascale, S., Marzo, S., Speelman, D. (2017). Evaluating regional variation in Italian: towards a change in standard language ideology? In: M. Cerruti, C. Crocco, S. Marzo (Eds.), Towards a New Standard: Theoretical and Empirical Studies on the Restandardization of Italian, (118-142). (Language and Social Life, 6). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN: 978-1-61451-888-4. doi: 10.1515/9781614518839-005.