Marianna Falcone is a PhD student at King’s College London in the School of Education, Communication & Society. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Philology (2014) and a MA in Linguistics (2016) from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy.

While studying for her doctoral degree, Marianna has worked as an Assistant Researcher on a series of projects investigating multiple topics, such as metaphor acquisition, metaphor in health communication, and linguistic creativity.

Marianna has also worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant leading seminars on the ‘English Lexis’ module on King's English Language & Linguistics BA programme.

Thesis

Marianna’s thesis title is: Metaphors in narratives about diabetes: cross-cultural differences and similarities.

Her project, drawing on the field of cognitive linguistics, investigates the use of metaphor framings in narratives about lived experiences of chronic illness, namely Type 2 Diabetes. By comparing data from Italian and English participants, the research also investigates the influence that cultural and/or linguistic aspects may have on figurative speech.

Principal supervisor: Professor Gabriella Rundblad

Secondary supervisor: Khalida Ismail