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Dr Vahid Parvaresh

Vahid Parvaresh
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Deputy Head of School

Vahid is an expert in verbal communication, pragmatics and discourse analysis. His research focuses on how people communicate meanings that go beyond the words they explicitly use, examining phenomena such as vagueness, indirectness, inference and im/politeness. His work shows how communication, particularly when meaning is expressed vaguely, is shaped by context, shared assumptions and social expectations. This view stands in conflict with conventional views of language as a straightforward system for transmitting information.

Vahid is also an expert in offence, hate speech and language aggression. His research focuses on how utterances come to be understood as offensive or hateful, how people interpret and respond to them, and how hateful meanings can emerge without explicitly hateful words. His work also provides insights into how vulnerable groups, including gender and sexual minority communities as well as immigrants, can become subject to stigmatisation, marginalisation and exclusion through everyday language, often in subtle or even unconscious ways.

Connect with Vahid on Linkedin

[email protected]

Faculty:
Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Education and Social Sciences
School:
Humanities and Social Sciences
Location:
Cambridge
Areas of Expertise:
Language and linguistics
Research Supervision:
Yes
Courses taught:
Background

Vahid uses linguistic analysis to understand how people make sense of one another and navigate an increasingly complex social and digital world. His research examines how language reveals the values, assumptions and social expectations that shape human interaction, from everyday impoliteness and interpersonal conflict to prejudice, hate speech and social exclusion. By investigating how meaning is conveyed beyond words, how offence is interpreted and how hostility and hate can be expressed indirectly, he shows how linguistic analysis can illuminate wider social issues that are often difficult to recognise or explain.

These questions take on particular significance in digital communication, where people interact across social and cultural boundaries and harmful language can be difficult to identify. Vahid’s research explores how offensive and hateful meanings emerge through patterns of language use, as well as the challenges these pose for the detection of harmful content. His most recent book (with Tahmineh Tayebi), Words that Wound: Exploring Online Offensive Language (Cambridge University Press, 2026), examines how people create, interpret and adapt offensive language in online environments. Across his research, Vahid demonstrates the value of linguistics for understanding contemporary social challenges.

Spoken Languages
  • English
  • Persian
Research interests
  • Pragmatics and the contextual interpretation of language
  • Offensive language and offence-taking
  • Hate speech and covertly expressed hate
  • Language aggression and impoliteness
  • Context, implication and indirect meaning
  • Online discourse and social media
  • Linguistic approaches to hate-speech detection
Areas of research supervision

Vahid is happy to discuss research ideas with prospective PhD students whose interests align with his work. Potential topics include pragmatics, offensive language, offence-taking, hate speech and online discourse, with particular scope to explore covert hate speech. He welcomes enquiries from prospective students who wish to develop a research proposal in these or related areas.

PhD students supervised as first or additional supervisor:

  • Gemma Harvey: Language and Conflict in North Cambridgeshire
  • Greg Stevens: Digital Literacies within ‘Korean’ Diasporic Spaces
  • Muhja Al-Hadi: Incivility and Offence in the Omani Society
  • Khouloud Boukhris: Conflictual Interactions in Computer-Mediated Communication
  • Erizal Lugman: Intercultural Competence and (Im)Politeness during the Intercultural Adjustment Period of Indonesian Students in the UK
  • Andrew Jarvis: Ethnography of Lower Proficiency Learners at an EMI University in Hong Kong
  • Kate Lightfoot: Competence, Attitudes, and Education: A Study of Heritage French in The UK

Vahid currently supervises in the following areas:

  • Pragmatics
  • Hate speech
  • Social media discourse
  • Language and conflict
Teaching

Vahid currently teaches on the following modules:

  • How Texts Work
  • New Media Discourse
  • Research Methods in Applied Linguistics
  • Language and the Law
Qualifications
  • BA, English Language and Literature, University of Isfahan
  • MA, Applied Linguistics, University of Tehrann
  • PhD, Applied Linguistics, University of Isfahann
  • PGCert (Learning and Teaching in Higher Education), Anglia Ruskin University
Memberships, editorial boards
Research grants, consultancy, knowledge exchange
  • British Academy/Leverhulme: Discrimination Unveiled: A Mixed-Methods Study of Hate Speech (9622£). Awarded to Vahid Parvaresh (ARU) & Tahmineh Tayebi (Aston University)
Selected recent publications

Tayebi, T. and Parvaresh, V. (2026) Words that Wound: Exploring Online Offensive Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Parvaresh, V. and Harvey, G. (2024) ‘Rhetorical questions as conveyors of hate speech’, in Hate Speech in Social Media: Linguistic Approaches. Cham: Springer.

Parvaresh, V. (2023) ‘Covertly communicated hate speech: A corpus-assisted pragmatic study’, Journal of Pragmatics, 205, pp. 63–77.

Parvaresh, V. (2022) ‘On the morality of taking offence’, Language & Communication, 87, pp. 60–72.

Parvaresh, V. and Tayebi, T. (2021) ‘Taking offence at the (un)said: Towards a more radical contextualist approach’, Journal of Politeness Research, 17(1), pp. 111–138.

Kádár, D.Z., Parvaresh, V. and Márquez Reiter, R. (2021) ‘Alternative approaches to politeness and impoliteness: An introduction’, Journal of Politeness Research, 17(1), pp. 1–7.

Kádár, D.Z., Parvaresh, V. and Ning, P. (2019) ‘Morality, moral order, and language conflict and aggression: A position paper’, Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 7(1), pp. 6–31.

Parvaresh, V. (2019) ‘Moral impoliteness’, Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 7(1), pp. 79–104.

Parvaresh, V. and Kádár, D.Z. (2019) ‘Morality and language aggression’, Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 7(1), pp. 1–5.

Parvaresh, V. and Zhang, G. (2019) ‘‘Sort of’ across languages of the Asia and Oceania regions’, Special Issue of Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 29(1).

Parvaresh, V. and Sheikhan, A. (2019) ‘Pragmatic functions of ‘sort of’ in Persian: A vague language perspective’, Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 29(1), pp. 86–110.

Kádár, D.Z. and Parvaresh, V. (eds.) (2019) Morality and Language Aggression. Special issue of Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 7(1).

Zhang, G. and Parvaresh, V., 2019. Elastic language in persuasion and comforting. Springer International Publishing.

Parvaresh, V., & Tayebi, T. (2018). Impoliteness, aggression and the moral order. Journal of Pragmatics, 132, 91-107.